Note 383 — Chapter III · HERAKLEITOS OF EPHESOS

The presence of Herakleitean matter in this treatise was pointed out by Gesner, but Bernays was the first to make any considerable use of it in reconstructing the system. The older literature of the subject has been in the main superseded by Carl Fredrichs’ Hippokratische Untersuchungen (1899), where also a satisfactory text of the sections which concern us is given for the first time. Fredrichs shows that (as I said already in the first edition) the work belongs to the period of eclecticism and reaction which I have briefly characterised in § 184, and he points out that c 3, which was formerly supposed to be mainly Herakleitean, is really from some work which was strongly influenced by Empedokles and Anaxagoras. I think, however, that he goes wrong in attributing the section to a nameless “Physiker” of the school of Archelaos, or even to Archelaos himself; it is far more like what we should expect from the eclectic Herakleiteans whom Plato describes in Crat. 413 c (see p. 161, n. 374). He is certainly wrong in holding the doctrine of the balance of fire and water not to be Herakleitean, and there is no justification for separating the remark quoted in the text from its context because it happens to agree almost verbally with the beginning of c. 3. As we shall see, that passage too is of Herakleitean origin.