Review: PresocraticsAuthor(s): Jaap MansfeldSource: Phronesis, Vol. 48, No. 2 (2003), pp. 164-173Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4182724Accessed: 26/05/2010 07:47

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Book Notes

Presocratics

JAAP MANSFELD

Two copies arrived in Utrecht, one for me personally (for which I am most grateful) with a request for "kritische Zeile und die Rezension", the other for Phronesis, of B. Sijakovic's Bibliographia Praesocratica.1 The author advises us that this work has for the most part been compiled from other bibliogra- phies, from lexica, from secondary literature, etc. And "[oJn a scale unusual in the West it takes into consideration literature on the subject written in Modem Greek and the Slavic languages" (p. 29). To these entries no translation has been added. The material has been meticulously and (over-)systematically arranged, so access should not be a problem. Apart from the extensive indices ad finem there is even one to the table of contents, pp. 20-5. Main divisions: "From Myth to Philosophy"; "Problems and Concepts"; "Philosophers and Doctrines" (no paragraph on the Democriteans); "Presocratics in Intellectual Tradition". No separate treatment of the Sophists. For S. the historiography of ancient philosophy (closely linked with literature dealing with history of philosophy as a topic, pp. 91-118) apparently begins with Hegel, and is con- tinued by Heidegger. To find information on philosophical historiography in antiquity we have to proceed to pp. 622 ff., the first paragraphs of the sec- tion "Presocratics in Intellectual Tradition". I do not doubt that this huge col- lection, the richest so far, will be quite useful. Thumb-reading one naturally misses this or that paper, this or that book - but there proves to be so much one has (alas, or fortunately?) failed to read!

Chr. Riedweg has written a thorough and instructive short monograph on Pythagoras (and Pythagoreanism), apparently intended for a larger public.2 He begins with the Pythagoras-Bild of the later, quasi-hagiographic literature, then works his way towards the historical Pythagoras. What I found illumi-

1 B. Sijakovic, Bibliographia Praesocratica: A Bibliographical Guide to the Studies of Early Greek Philosophy in its Religious and Scientific Contexts with an Introductory Bibliography on the Historiography of Philosophy (over 8,500 Authors, 17,664 Entries from 1450 to 2000). Paris: Les Belles Lettres 2001, pp. 704, ISBN 2-252-18002-8. Hardback. No price indicated.

2 Chr. Riedweg, Pythagoras . Leben * Lehre - Nachwirkung, Munchen: C.H. Beck 2002, pp. 206. 20.50 C.

C Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2003 Phronesis XLVIiI12 Also available online - www.brill.nl

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nating is his application of sociological studies concerned with charismatic figures, or role models, and sects. Pythagoras indeed seems to have been, or is at least described as, such an Identifikationsfigur, and what (mostly in much later literature) we learn about his followers seems indeed to point to a sec- tarian group in the modern sense of the word sect. This sect, its history, its way(s) of life, and some of its more prominent purported members are described. Information about the reception of Pythagoreanism in Plato's Academy is pro- vided, followed by brief accounts of pseudo-Pythagorean writings, of Neo- Pythagoreanism, and of the Pythagoras-Bild of the middle ages and early modern times.

It is to be noted that R.'s Pythagoras is by no means a mere guru: the author persuasively argues that we have no right to reject as unscientific those aspects of number speculation (inclusive of the account of cosmogony attrib- uted to Pythagoreans by Aristotle) which seem abstruse to us, and he inter- estingly attempts to find links with Ionian natural philosophy and Orphism in the akousmata as well. He even suggests that the story of Pythagoras' inven- tion of the term "philosophy" may be true, and that he may have written. Another contribution to the Pythagoras legend? I, for my part, have not come round to this attribution to Pythagoras himself, or to early Pythagoreans, of some views and doctrines of which it is not even certain that they are at all early (though I cannot prove that Pythagoras did not write).

Earlier volumes of S. Mouraviev's Heraclitea have been mentioned in Phronesis 45 (2000) 346-7. Several further instalments of this vast project have since been published, viz. two useful volumes of texts (embedded literal quotations of Heraclitus picked out in bold, other varieties of citation also vis- ible typographically), with rich critical apparatus, apparatus of parallels, and a French translation. These get us as far as Stephanus of Alexandria.3 And we now also have a monograph of more than four hundred pages of small prnt on Heraclitus' language.4 The texts are in chronological order, deter- mined by the date of the quoting author. A somewhat cumbersome grid of referential annotation is intended to introduce some system into this cornu- copia. But it is not so easy to find out in what sort of contexts, in whose

I S. Mouraviev, Heraclitea II.A.2, Traditio 2, De Seneque a Diogene Laerce, Sankt Augustin: Akademia Verlag 2000, pp. xxxii, 257-610. Hardback, 60.35 C. ISBN 3-89665-134-X; II.A.3, De Plotin d Etienne d'Alexandrie, ibid. 2002, pp. xiv, 611-799. Hardback, 39.50 E. ISBN 3-89665-196-X. One more volume (II.A.4) is to follow. For the CD-ROM see next n.

4 S. Mouraviev, Heraclitea III.3.A, Heraclite d'Ephese. Les Vestiges. 3. Les frag- ments du livre d'Heraclite. A. Le langage de l'Obscur. Introduction cd la poe'tique des fragments, Sankt Augustin: Akademia Verlag 2002, pp. xxiv, 438. Hardback, 69.50 C. ISBN 3-89665-197-8. A CD-ROM is added to this volume, containing inter alia the contents of II.A.1-3, with some corrections.

166 BOOK NOTES

company, or for what reason(s) Heraclitus was mentioned and/or cited. The selection, moreover, is as a rule limited to passages with the name(-label) Heraclitus. This entails that quotations, or reminiscencies, lacking this name (e.g. part of fr. B94 D.-K. at Hipp., Ref. 6.26.1; fr. B62 D.-K. at Philo, Deter. 48) may be absent. Sometimes texts occur more than once (Aetius and sources for Aetius, for instance). The advantage, I gather, is that one who knows the name of a quoting author will know immediately where to look.

The monograph is the revised version of a Parisian dissertation defended in 1996. It begins with an overview of earlier literature concerned with the language of Heraclitus, illustrated by means of copious quotations in French translation. M.'s command of this not always easily accessible literature is impressive. He points out (e.g. p. 77, p. 85, p. 127) that even those who study Heraclitus' verbal art disertis verbis are often unaware of the efforts of their predecessors. Much therefore is to be learned from this Forschungsbericht. A drawback however is that M. has been encouraged by the OuLiPian approaches to the fragments of E. Pels, whose Dutch dissertation5 (difficult also for a native speaker) he has manfully struggled to understand - though even Pels in M.'s view has failed to see the light ("il n'a pas remarque les trois quarts de ce qui distingue le langage heracliteen", p. 119). For Heraclitus is an innovator: his style consist of the choices made among the means pro- vided by the language he uses, and according to the rules imposed by it, but his poetics consist in transgressing these rules each time he needs to say some- thing this language is too poor to express in adequate fashion (M., p. 213).

A preliminary edition of the fragments in D.-K. sequence (with some addi- tions and omissions), occasionally emended(?) by M., is found pp. 160-74. These texts are then analyzed both from the point of view of their style and of their poetics, that is to say in relation to sound, accent, rhyme, echo, vocab- ulary, morphology, word-order, tropes, parallellism, antithesis, primary mean- ing, hidden meaning, allusion, anomaly, symbolism, repetition, variation, asyndeton, correspondence, balance, difference, association, dissociation, etc., as a rule with the help of figures (lines and arrows linking or distinguishing letters, syllables, words, formulas in various ways). An indispensable "glos- saire linguistique et po6tologique" is found pp. 416-22.

A plurality of such configurations proves to be feasible for most of the individual fragments. The road towards understanding Heraclitus' thought according to M. is via his language: one should not argue from content to form, but conversely, because his language is his thought.

I E. Pels, Vormen van opspraak. - taal- en denkstructuren bij Herakleitos -, diss. Amsterdam University, Delft: Eburon 1992. "Taal- en denkstructuren bij H." means "structures of language and thought in H." The word "opspraak" means "discredit", "scandal" vel. sim., but also contains "-spraak" (cfr. German Sprache) as its second syllable. So e.g. "Forms of discredit/speech". Ingenious, isn't it? Almost Heraclitean!

BOOK NOTES 167

Naturally it is impossible to do justice here to the enormous work accom- plished by M., and one cannot deny that one's understanding of Heraclitus is furthered by his laborious excercises. But the bricolage-technique, for instance, by means of which he manages to detect, or even to "hear", and thus to add between brackets a (for our understanding wholly superfluous) word, viz. Xpuoxv, at the end of fr. B22 D.-K. by lifting K + ' + PE + ON from the final words iai c 'lptaiWcouv O6Xiyv is impressive, but in my view not to be recommended.

As to the famous scoteinosity, it is useful to recall that Plato and Aristotle are far from pleased by the Ephesian's syntax, or by his choice of words (and Theophrastus ap. D.L. 9.6 = fr. 233 FHS&G is not complimentary about his exposition either). It is only much later that we hear about his "obscurity", which is then seen as in some sense positive, as an asset, and thus becomes a boon and a blessing for exegetes. This reminder does not, of course, entail that we should forbid ourselves to enjoy Heraclitus' prose, or to try to take him seriously as a philosopher; Plato for instance certainly took him seriously.

Nevertheless one may well ask "What is presocratic philosophy?"6 - for the term "presocratic" is modem, and the term "philosophy" was not used at the time in the sense required by the standard formula "presocratic philoso- phy". Even the "what is.. .?" of the question is questionable. "Presocratic philosophy" (to go on using the unavoidable catch-phrase) has no essence, as is clear from the five papers in the first section of this volume which attempt to find some answers. One can only - like Socrates' victims in some of Plato's dialogues - give examples and try to establish lines of demarcation, that is to say can only provide extensional and descriptive definitions. A skeptical old friend of mine even pretends that one may work in the field on a no need to know basis.

From the rich collection of views, insights, and arguments to be found here I can only give a few samples. A. Laks in the well-argued opening paper points out, inter alia, that a demarcation between "Socrates" and those who wrote "on nature" is already indicated by Plato and Aristotle, after whom it becomes a standard ingredient of the Successions literature. Already before Plato spokespeople as diverse as e.g. Euripides and the author of Ancient Medicine provide descriptive definitions of this inquiry into nature, the latter even giving an identifiable example by mentioning Empedocles' name. If (fol- lowing Aristotle) we wish to have this enterprise begin at Miletus, we now

6 A. Laks and C. Louguet (eds.), Qu'est-ce que la philosophie presocratique? - What is Presocratic Philosophy? (Cahiers de Philologie, 20), Lille: Septentrion 2002. ISBN 2-85939-740-X, pp. 550. Sewn, 29 C. Index nominum et locorum, lists of liter- ature cited at end of each chapter. The volume is the result of a conference held in Lille, 2 to 4 October 2000. I have been informed that the question will be pursued further during a conference to be held in Rome, September 2004.

168 BOOK NOTES

have to recognize that the "early philosophical" or "scientific" view of nature, or rather reality, is much poorer (L. uses the term "appauvrissement") than that to be found in what we are accustomed to call "myth".

G.E.R. Lloyd, in an equally well-argued paper, insists that "philosophy", before Plato, is not what we mean by it, and that the characteristic term "inquiry" (historie) even after Plato has to be qualified by the addition of what it is an inquiry into. Interests were many and varied, and there are not only differ- erences but also considerable points of overlap between doctors, Sophists, and those who wrote about nature. And why exclude some of Herodotus' inquiries, or mathematics? So demarcation, classification, and characterization remain hazardous. But we should try.

M.M. Sassi is concerned with the well-worn problem of the origins of phi- losophy in Greece (i.e. both with the origins of philosophy in Greece and with the origins of philosophy in Greece), against the backdrop of what she calls "the tradition" (i.e. the cultural tradition and environment). Extensive bibli- ography.7 She is right to discuss not only Burkert's theories,8 but to remind us also of Cornford's venerable thesis concerning the reverberations of Baby- lonian mythology and ritual and of Egyptian mythology, and the influence of esp. Hesiodean myth. She is also right to emphasize a distinguishing mark of the inquiry into nature neglected by Cornford, viz. the tradition of criticism resulting in a quick succession of original and bold hypotheses about the cos- mos etc. - a development, she points out, furthered by the spread of literacy. She also dwells on the nuanced views of Plato and Aristotle pertaining to a distinction between myth and reason. However I suspect that Arist. Metaph. 984al, te'nVxJ1cev oMoa, has been overtranslated (S., p. 69, writes "s'est trou- vee par hasard", but "happens to be" is sufficient). Pace S., Aristotle does not suggest that it is by accident that this particular mythological view is about physics, but states (or so I believe) that it is impossible to find out whether or not it is, or is meant to be. And one would like to know what professional orientalists today think of the orientalizing ingredients of Cornford's, or Burkert's, hypotheses. The one I listened to was skeptical.

M.L. Gemelli Marciano interestingly studies the way in which the adressees of the writings and the opponents of the authors are treated in the extant remains of especially Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Empedocles. One cannot, indeed, deny that you have some kind of metier whenever you encounter agonistic jalousie de metier. Though Xenophanes' me'tier seems to have been different from Heraclitus' (he illustrates Hesiod's (pOoveEl. . . 6ot8ob; &otK)

7 Add J.-P. Vernant, Les origines de la pensee grecque, Paris 1962; G. Colli, La nascita della filosofia (Piccola Biblioteca Adelphi, 29), Milan 51983; and G. Casertano, La nascita della filosofia vista dai Greci (Morte o rinascita della filosofia?), Naples 1977.

8 Cfr. e.g. Phronesis 45 (2000) 343.

BOOK NOTES 169

and Heraclitus, as we know, is very critical of Xenophanes, their polemical modus operandi is quite similar. But I find it hard to believe that Xenophanes' "skeptical" fr. B34 D.-K. is directed against his rivals' belief in the authority of Hesiod and Homer (thus G.M., p. 92).

P. Curd defends the thesis that the Presocratics really are what, from the point of view of what she calls the Anglo-Saxon tradition, one may call gen- uine philosophers. I think she is right in opposing the tendency to overem- phasize the poetical and mystagogical side of these men.

These general papers, which complement one another and because of this variety are useful as an introduction to early Greek philosophy and science, are followed by a section entitled "Editer les presocratiques". W. Leszl writes about what is involved when one wants to edit the remains of Democritus, and correctly points out that a plurality of lines of transmission must be involved. I intend to discuss part of the argument of this paper elsewhere, because in an interesting way it is quite critical of doxographical studies by some of my Dutch colleagues and myself. Here I need only say that, when one looks at the tradition(s) from the angle of the individual concerned (in this case: Democritus), the prospect is indeed quite different from the one obtained when, like Diels, one starts - or suggests one starts - from the Peripatetic, especially (as he believed) the Theophrastean tradition.9

0. Primavesi has collected the ancient testimonies and quotations of Empedocles. Four lists are given: one of everything involved, one of verba- tim quotations only, one, most interestingly, of additions (lines counted) to the corpus of verbatim quotations per quoting author in chronological order, and one of these additions in order of importance, i.e. according to the num- ber of lines cited. This provides a preliminary overview of the Empedocles reception in antiquity. He most usefully adds some evidence that has been overlooked by most scholars, or in some cases by everyone. He also lists echoes of Empedocles in Aratus and Apollonius Rhodius, and points to words in the vocabulary of these poets which can be only paralleled in the Papyrus de Strasbourg: further evidence of reception.

A. Barnabe competently reviews the evidence for Early Orphism, and dis- cusses the relation of Orphism with the Presocratics. Skepticism about Early Orphism, he submits, is no longer on the agenda, and we should inquire into the views held by Orphics about cosmogony, truth and knowledge, the soul, and ethics. A valuable and extensive bibliography has been added.-" One hopes to see Barnabe's edition of the texts before long.

9 As I have for instance argued myself in a paper about Xenophanes which Leszl overlooked: Theophrastus and the Xenophanes Doxography, Mnemosyne 40 (1987) 147-73.

10 Add G. Ricciardelli (ed.), Inni orfici (Fondazione Lorenzo Valla), Milan: Mondadori 2000 (the texts with translation and very substantial commentary), and G. Pugliese

170 BOOK NOTES

A number of largely original studies concerned, in a more or less tradi- tional way, with individual personalities and specific texts follow. Here I can only list and select. D. Sider shows in what way Democritus was concerned to describe the climate and to predict the weather, thus improving our picture of the great man. C. Huffman brilliantly proves that one should not link Poly- clitus' applied mathematics with Pythagoreanism. A.P.D. Mourelatos explains Xenophanes' bizarre astronomical cloudology, and proves that Achilles is not on the same level as Aetius. D.W. Graham demonstrates the crucial impor- tance for the development of cosmology of the discoveiy that the light of the moon is derived from the sun. G. Betegh instructively discusses the early globes and orreries which may have been constructed to illustrate early cos- mological theories. M. Adomenas in a fine-spun exposition studies the vari- ous ways Heraclitus is presented and echoed in Plato's works. P.-M. Morel rewardingly discusses Aristotle as a source for Democritus in the Parva natu- ralia. R. McKirahan with remarkable results analyzes Aristotle's discussion and treatment of Zeno's first paradox concerned with motion, the so-called Dichotomy. And C. Louguet provides a well-argued new interpretation of the "other world" in Anaxagoras fr. B4 D.-K.

Another, more modest collection of papers was also published last year; these are about Plato as a source of (in the sense of: for) the Presocratics." Little attention is devoted to intermediate sources for Presocratic doctrines Plato may have been influenced by. In the Introduction A. Brancacci explains the term "presocratic", while M. Dixsaut dwells on Plato's peculiarities as a source. On the one hand he discusses earlier views from a certain distance, and on the other he also turns some of his predecessors into fictional con- temporaries participating in the discussion. (But note: apart from several Sophists, and Zeno and Parmenides, none of the "ancients" is a 8tcxX6yo1) icpoC;onoV. Heraclitus apparently never was as important to Plato as Parmenides came to be). Ms Dixsaut posits that therefore Plato may also help us to understand the Presocratics. This short piece really provides matter for reflection.

The editors contribute one essay each. A. Brancacci capably and originally writes about Protagoras' doctrine of 60opocc&a, as reconstructable from Plato (and other sources.. .). M. Dixsaut approaches the reports (in MXG and Sextus) of Gorgias' On Not-Being from passages in Plato's Parmenides,

Carratelli (ed.), Le lamine d'oro orfiche. Istruzioni per il viaggio oltremondano degli iniziati greci (Biblioteca Adelphi, 419), Milan: Adelphi 2001 (texts, translation, comments).

"' M. Dixsaut - A. Brancacci (eds.), Platon: Source des Presocratiques. Exploration (Bibliothdque d'histoire de la philosophie), Paris: Vrin 2002, pp. 239. ISBN 2-7116- 1582-0. Sewn, 20 C. Succinct biliography pertaining to the theme of the volume; index of names cited, not locorum. These papers go back to a colloquium held in Rome, 24- 25 November 2000.

BOOK NOTES 171

because - cfr. her remarks in the Introduction - she believes that Plato may help us to understand On Not-Being. A remarkable tour de force; others have tried to argue the other way round. And though Plato wrote a dialogue enti- tled Gorgias, not even the name is mentioned in the Parmenides. One may also ask to what extent Plato help us, e.g. to understand Parmenides' poem in the Parmenides.

The most interesting paper in this volume, to my mind at least, is that by L. Brisson: Platon, Pythagore et les Pythagoriciens. Fun, clear, well-argued. He posits that we know practically nothing about either Pythagoras or Early Pythagoreanism or, for that matter, Early Orphism, and deconstructs the ref- erences and passages which have been used as evidence. Xenophanes' dog is put away. The Philolaus fragments believed (since Burkert's epoch-making book) to be genuine are pseudo-Pythagorean. Philolaus' stay at Thebes is hard to reconcile, from a chronological point of view, with his being a contempo- rary of Empedocles, and how can we know he was a Pythagorean? But B. fails to realize that Philolaus' trip to Thebes, like that of Zeno and Parmenides to Athens, for which Plato is our source too, may well belong with the tra- dition of "voyages posthumes". And part of the evidence is not discussed; Burkert and his followers will be right in holding that the parallels between these fragments and the various accounts of Pythagorean doctrines in Aristotle (e.g. pertaining to the planetary sytem) should not be seen as the results of pseudepigraphic imitation. However this may be, as a counterweight to the less critical accounts of Pythagoreanism by Chr. Riedweg, or by Ch. Kahn (mentioned Phronesis 47 (2002) 187-8), and of Orphism by A. Barnabe, Brisson's spirited diatribe is most welcome.

Other papers: F. Aronadio discusses ontology and language in Heraclitus and Plato. G. Casertano writes on Parmenides, Plato, and truth. N.L. Cordero shows that the cosmological cycle of the myth of the Politicus is not that of Empedocles. P.-M. Morel argues that Plato in the Timaeus incorporates a type of necessity derived from Democritus, subordinating it to the dominant divine dispensation. L. Ayache a shade surprisingly posits that the reference to Hippocrates at Phdr. 270c pertains to the Corpus Hippocraticum (with the exclusion of the later tracts, I presume) as a whole.

One of the most famous treatises of this corpus, Sacred Disease, is the sub- ject of a fine monograph by J. Laskaris.'2 I include a few words about this study here because of the overlap between philosophy and medicine. Ms Laskaris shows that the opponents of the author of the treatise practise a religiously inspired traditional kind of medicine, which did not disappear because of his criticism. Competition between rivals for a hearing and a living is one of his

12 J. Laskaris, The Art is Long. On the Sacred Disease and the Scientific Tradition (Studies in Ancient Medicine, 25), Leiden a Boston a Koin: Brill 2002, pp. viii, 172. ISBN 90-04-12152. Hardback, C. 69.

172 BOOK NOTES

motives for writing, the author claiming not only that only his kind of med- icine is a techne', but also (an original and illuminating observation of Ms Laskaris) intimating that his view of the divine is superior to that of the tra- ditionalists. Arguing about what constitutes a techne' has been learned from others: Sacred Disease would be based on a public oration more sophistico. But I believe that this emphasis on the sophistic background and agonistic'3 motivation, and this downsizing of the rationalistic aspect which (here she is right) was much more applauded in modern than in ancient times, obscures an important point. The author of Ancient Medicine is a true-blue Hippocratic in that, for him, disease is a natural process. I still believe that this view was developed thanks to the impact of the presocratic inquiry into nature. And there is a not so insignificant slip in the (over-)translation of oi &vOpconot at ? 3 Grensemann, as "[these] people (i.e., the magic-religious healers)" (p. 85). Just as elsewhere in the treatise oi &vOp(onot means "people (in general)"; at ? 10 Gr. the formula otoboto. .. .av0p&onot is immediately qualified by the words that follow, viz. otot Kai vuv etai gayot Te cai icaOapTai CtX.

I conclude by mentioning the well-deserved Festschrift of Alex Moure- latos.'4 This is (almost entirely) about the Presocratics. It contains, as it

13 I profit from the use of this term to recommend a book which deserves much more than a footnote (but I would not know in what other way to link it to these Book Notes): G.E.R. Lloyd - N. Sivin, The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece, New Haven and London: Yale University Press 2003, pp. xvii, 348. Hardback, ?25. One of the striking results of this fascinating comparatist study is the highlighting of the consequences of the strongly agonistic character of Greek culture in this period (much more than a mise a' jour of Burckhardt's Kulturgeschichte being at stake here). Chinese culture, admirable and fascinating in its own right, was much less capable of producing diversity, especially from the time when work in the fields of science, philosophy and medicine had to be given the form of a sort of advice to the almighty emperor. The difference between what may hap- pen in a huge centralized empire and what turned out to be possible in a number of small states in perpetual conflict (and conflict also deternined to a degree the lives of their inhabitants) played a decisive role.

14 V. Caston and D.W. Graham (eds.), Presocratic Philosophy. Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, Aldershot: Ashgate 2002, pp. xv, 346. ISBN 0-7546-0502-7. Hardback, ?47,50. Good indexes. Contents: S. White, Thales and the Stars; M. Gagarin, Greek Law and the Presocratics; D.W. Graham, Heraclitus and Parmenides; A. Nehamas, Parmenidean BeinglHeraclitean Fire; R.J. Hankinson, Parmenides and the Meta- physics of Changelessness; Ch.H. Kahn, Parmenides and Plato; S. Austin, Parmenides, Double Negation, and Dialectic; H. Granger, The Cosmology of Mortals; D. Furley, Anaxagoras, Plato and the Naming of Parts; A. Laks, Reading the Readings: On the First Persons Plural in the Strasburg Empedocles; P. Curd, The Metaphysics of Physics: Mixture and Separation in Empedocles and Anaxagoras; J. Brunschwig, Democritus and Xeniades; J. Annas, Democritus and Eudaimonism; S. Berryman, Democritus and the Explanatory Power of the Void; P. Woodruff, Natural Justice?;

BOOK NOTES 173

should, a bibliography of Alex's numerous contributions to our field, and a nice photograph. I was invited to contribute a paper myself, which prevents me from providing a more or less critical account of the volume. However, may I be allowed to say that the contributions of Alex's other friends are most valuable?

Utrecht University, Department of Philosophy

V. Caston, Gorgias on Thought and its Objects; 0. Goldin, To Tell the Truth: Dissoi Logoi 4 and Aristotle's Responses; C. Huffman, Archytas and the Sophists; J. Mansfeld, Aetius, Aristotle and Others on Coming to be and Passing away; P. Thom, The Pervasiveness of Being; S. Broadie, Three Philosophers Look at the Stars; W. Prior, Protagoras' Great Speech and Plato's Defence of Athenian Democracy.