Note 414 — Chapter III · HERAKLEITOS OF EPHESOS

In his note on fr. 66 (= 26 Byw.), Diels seeks to minimise the difficulty of the ἐκπύρωσις by saying that it is only a little one, and can last but a moment; but the contradiction noted above remains all the same. Diels holds that Herakleitos was “dark only in form,” and that “he himself was perfectly clear as to the sense and scope of his ideas” (Herakleitos, p. i.). To which I would add that he was probably called “the Dark” just because the Stoics sometimes found it hard to read their own ideas into his words.