Note 103 — Chapter XI · THE PHILOSOPHERS

Dem. φθαρτὴν (εἶναι τὴν ψυχὴν) τῷ σώματι συνδιαφθειρομένην, Dox. 393a, 8 [Vors. A 109]. Since the disruption of the soul-atoms is not effected at a single blow death may, in consequence, sometimes be only apparent; i.e. when many but not all the soul-particles have escaped. For this reason also, with the possible re-assemblage of the soul-atoms, ἀναβιώσεις of the apparently dead may occur. Cases of this kind seem to have been treated in the work περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου: see Procl., in Rp. ii, 113, 6 Kr.; D.L. ix, 46; it is counted among the most famous, or at least the most popular of Dem.’s writings in the anecdote ap. Ath. 168 B; cf. [Hp.] Ep. 10, 3, p. 291 Hch. [ix, 322 Lit.]; Vors. 55 C, 2. This view of the retention of vitality, of course, only applies to the period immediately following the (apparent) death (it is fairly correctly represented by [Plu.] Plac. Ph. 4, 4, 4 [Dox. 390], it was probably attributed to Dem. on account of a similar observation made by Parmenides; see above, p. 373). Nevertheless, out of it grew up the assertion, which was then attributed to Dem., that in fact τὰ νεκρὰ τῶν σωμάτων αἰσθάνεται: e.g. Alex. Aph. in Arist., Top. 21, 21; [Vors. ii, 38, 8]; Stob., Ecl. i, p. 477, 18 W. In the case, at least, of those that are really “dead”, i.e. of bodies that have been deserted by all the soul-atoms, Dem. certainly never taught the presence of αἴσθησις: against the vulgarization of his opinions that would attribute such a view as this to him (as Epicurus himself did) the Democritici spoken of by Cic. (TD. i, 82) made their protest.—The work περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου can certainly not have confined itself to considerations of a purely physical nature; otherwise Thrasyllos (D.L. ix, 46) could not have classified it among the ἠθικὰ βιβλία of Dem. [Vors. ii, 19]. It is, indeed, difficult to imagine what from Dem.’s point of view there could have been to say about “the things in the Underworld”. It is hardly possible to suppose (as Mullach, Dem. fr., pp. 117–18, and Heyne do) that Dem. would think himself obliged either to answer or to parody the fabulous inventions of the poets about the realm of shadows. It is difficult to be certain that Dem. was really the author of the work: the forgery of later times was particularly fond of turning the most clear-headed of materialists into a mage and a jack-of-all-trades. (Dem.’s observations of the possibility of ἀναβιοῦν is in part at least the origin of the writing π. τ. ἐν ᾅδου; it is also responsible for the anecdote that makes him promise to the Persian king that he will restore his dead wife to life again, etc.—a variation of an ingenious story widely spread both in the East and the West. See my Lecture on Greek Novel-writing: Verh. der Philologenvers. zu Rostock, 1875, p. 68 f.)—The “fragmenta moralia” of Dem. are with rare exceptions (e.g. Mull. frr. 7, 23, 48, 49, etc. = 146, 159, 147, 127 D.) wholesale fabrications of the feeblest kind. One of them, however (119 Mull., 297 D.), agrees at least with what Dem. may very well have said about the punishments in Hell (though in rather different words—he was incapable of quite such a monstrosity as μυθοπλαστέοντες, which sounds very late Greek. Vain efforts have been made to justify this μυθοπλαστέω by reference to the older μυθοπλάστης. But μυθοποιός, ὀδοφύλαξ, ἀργυροκόπος, etc., are also old, and it is no secret that verbs derived by further extension from such composite verbal nouns are mostly late formations: thus μυθοποιέω, ὀδοφυλακέω, ἀργυροκοπέω, and again πετροβολέω, ἱεροφαντέω, τεκνοκτονέω, etc.). In another of these falsa no echo even of Dem.’s thought is to be found: fr. moral. 1 Mull. [171 D.] ψυχὴ οἰκητήριον δαίμονος.