(33) (Thales foretold an eclipse.)
(34) . . . the seasons that bring all things.
(35) Hesiod is most men's teacher. Men are sure he knew very many things, a man who did not know day or night! They are one.[1] R. P. 39 b.
(36) God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger; but he takes various shapes, just as fire,[2] when it is mingled with spices, is named according to the savour of each. R. P. 39 b.
(37) If all things were turned to smoke, the nostrils would distinguish them.
(38) Souls smell in Hades. R. P. 46 d.
(39) Cold things become warm, and what is warm cools; what is wet dries, and the parched is moistened.
(40) It scatters and it gathers; it advances and retires.
(41, 42) You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. R. P. 33.
(43) Homer was wrong in saying: "Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!" He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for, if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away.[3] . . . R. P. 34 d.
(44) War is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has made gods and some men, some bond and some free. R. P. 34.
(45) Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions,[4] like that of the bow and the lyre. R. P. 34.E
(46) It is the opposite which is good for us.[5]
(47) The hidden attunement is better than the open. R. P. 34.
(48) Let us not conjecture at random about the greatest things.
- ↑ Hesiod said Day was the child of Night (Theog. 124).
- ↑ Reading ὅκωπερ πῦρ for ὅκωσπερ with Diels.
- ↑ Il. xviii. 107. I add οἰχήσεσθαι γὰρ πάντα from Simpl. in Cat. 412, 26. It must represent something that was in the original.
- ↑ I cannot believe Herakleitos said both παλίντονος and παλίντροπος ἁρμονίη, and I prefer Plutarch's παλίντονος (R.P. 34 b) to the παλίντροπος of Hippolytos. Diels thinks that the polemic of Parmenides favours παλίντροπος, but see below, p. 164, n. 1, and Chap. IV. p. 174, n. 3.
- ↑ This refers to the medical rule αἱ δ' ἰατρεῖαι διὰ τῶν ἐναντίων, e.g. βοηθεῖν τῷ θερμῷ ἐπὶ τὸ ψυχρόν.
