Note 43 — Chapter XXXI · KRATYLUS.
Reading edition
Spengel justly remarks (Art. Scr. p. 52) respecting the hypotheses of the Platonic commentators:— “Platonem quidem liberare gestiunt, falsâ, ironiâ, non ex animi sententiâ omnia in Cratylo prolata esse dicentes. Sed præter alia multa et hoc neglexerunt viri docti, easdem verborum originationes, quas in Cratylo, in cæteris quoque dialogis, ubi nullus est facetiis locus, et seria omnia aguntur, recurrere.”
This passage is cited by K. F. Hermann, Gesch. und Syst. d. Platon. Phil. Not. 474, p. 656. Hermann’s own remarks on the dialogue (pp. 494-497) are very indistinct, but he seems to agree with Schleiermacher in singling out Antisthenes as the object of attack.
The third portion of Lehrsch’s work, Ueber die Sprachphilosophie der Alten, cites numerous examples of the etymologies attempted by the ancients, from Homer downwards, many of them collected from the Etymologicon Magnum. When we read the etymologies propounded seriously by Greek and Latin philosophers (especially the Stoic Chrysippus), literary men, jurists, and poets, we shall not be astonished at those found in the Platonic Kratylus. The etymology of Θεὸς ἀπὸ τοῦ θεῖν, given in the Kratylus (p. 397 D), as well as in the Pythagorean Philolaus (see Boeckh, Philolaus, pp. 168-175), and repeated by Clemens Alexandrinus, is not more absurd than that of θεὸς ἀπὸ τοῦ θεῖναι, given by Herodot. ii. 52, and also repeated by Clemens, see Wesseling’s note. None of the etymologies of the Kratylus is more strange than that of Ζεὺς-Δία-Ζῆνα (p. 396 B). Yet this is reproduced in the Pseudo-Aristotelian Treatise, Περὶ Κόσμου (p. 401, a. 15), as well as by the Stoic Zeno (Diogen. Laert. vii. 147). The treatise of Cornutus, De Nat. Deor. with Osann’s Commentary, is instructive in enabling us to appreciate the taste of ancient times as to what was probable or admissible in etymology. There are few of the etymologies in the Kratylus more singular than that of ἄνθρωπος from ἀναθρῶν ἂ ὅπωπεν. Yet this is cited by Ammonius as a perfectly good derivation, ad Aristot. De Interpret. p. 103, b. 8, Schol. Bekk., and also in the Etymologicon Magnum.