BMCR 2018.03.15

Early Greek Philosophy. 9 volumes. Loeb Classical Library, 524-532​

, , Early Greek Philosophy. 9 volumes. Loeb Classical Library, 524-532​. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016.

The set comprises ISBN 9780674996540, 9780674996892, 9780674996915, 9780674996922, 9780674997066, 9780674997073, 9780674997080, 9780674997097, 9780674997103. Full bibliographic data and preview links appear below.

[This is Part I of a two-part review of the nine-volume new Loeb set on early Greek philosophy. Part II (BMCR 2018.03.16) takes up in greater detail some select issues of translation.]

Decades of historical and philological research in the 19th century culminated in 1903 in the epoch-making first comprehensive edition, by Hermann Diels, of the texts (fragments and testimonia) of early Greek philosophy. In its later editions, with revisions and additional material by Walther Kranz (1922-1952), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (often referred to as Diels-Kranz) became the indispensable standard in its particular field, throughout the 20th century and still to this day. But later scholarship and the advent (from the 1970s) of the digital Thesaurus Linguae Graecae made it poignantly evident that a new collection of the texts of the early Greek philosophers would be needed.

Several starts for such a project were announced after World War II, but eventually abandoned, as the view came to take hold among classicists that the only realistic option was separate new editions of the texts for individual figures. And indeed, quite apart from independently produced new editions, a project of coordinated new editions has been under way for more than a decade in the De Gruyter series, “Traditio Praesocratica.”1 Volumes in the latter series aim to present the maximum possible of source texts, including selections from ancient and medieval sources in languages other than Greek or Latin. But it will probably take at least another decade for the “Traditio” project to be completed. And, given its scope and its strong emphasis on Rezeptionsgeschichte, the “Traditio” series will mostly be serving the interests of specialists.

Fortunately, and rather against the diffidence that had prevailed in the second half of the twentieth century, the project of updating Diels-Kranz did, after all, get pursued, and it has now been very admirably realized: by André Laks and Glenn W. Most in their nine-volume Early Greek Philosophy (2016) in the Loeb Classical Library and in a corresponding French-language edition.2 I’ll be commenting only on the Loeb set henceforth, referring to it as EGP, except for brief asides to the French edition. EGP provides sizably more material than has been available in Diels-Kranz—though not quite to the same scale as that envisaged for the Traditio volumes. Most importantly, EGP also seeks to serve, as Diels himself had originally conceived of his Vorsokratiker, as a source-book for university courses.3 Indeed, and very much in the spirit of the Loeb series as a whole, the intended readership of EGP is even broader. As Laks and Most state at the start: “While we hope that the present edition will be useful to specialists, its primary intention is to present to the larger public the information we possess concerning early Greek philosophy” (vol. 1, p. 5). Thus all the selected ancient texts in EGP are displayed with English translations.4 And as is only right within the framework of the Loeb Classical Library, Laks and Most do not primarily aim in their translations for literary elegance or for interpretative ingenuity; rather—with due concern for those users of the set who cannot, without some assistance, read ancient Greek or Latin5—they seek to provide well-crafted translations that guide such readers to an accurate understanding of the ancient texts on the facing page. Occasionally, as needed, transliterations of crucial Greek terms are provided within parentheses in the translation.

The first volume of the set (“Introductory and Reference Materials”) contains aids, for specialists and non-specialist alike, to the use of the remaining eight volumes. And beyond what one would normally expect from a set of this type—viz., list of abbreviations, concordances (for Diels-Kranz → EGP, and vice versa), general bibliography, indexes of ancient names, all of which are provided—vol. 1 also includes a 39-page Glossary of “the most significant Greek and Latin terms that appear in this edition” (p. 219). In this Glossary one finds brief explanations of the history and semasiology of these terms, along with references, in many of the entries, to the texts in which use of the term at issue is salient.

Included at pp. 2-3 of the first volume is a “conspectus” of the volumes in the set. Curiously missing in this table are the chapter numbers. A reader who, like the present reviewer, needs to search across the whole Loeb set would need to pencil-in the chapter numbers on the “conspectus,” or even better make a reference copy of the “Table des matières” of the French edition, which, of course, has the same chapter numbers as the Loeb set. Likewise inconventiently missing in EGP are chapter numbers in the running heads of individual volumes. By contrast, chapter numbers are displayed in the running heads of the French edition—as they have always been displayed in Diels-Kranz editions, and, among other smaller collections, in Graham’s Cambridge set.6

Of crucial value to non-specialists is the first chapter in volume 2, which puts together a sequence of texts to document and to illustrate the ancient genre of doxography. Presented in historical sequence, these texts come from pre-Aristotelian accounts, from Aristotelian and Peripatetic schemes, from the chapters of the Aëtius manual, as well as from the later doxographies that are structured not, as in Aëtius, by topic but rather by schools and successions. Included in that same first chapter (vol. 2, pp. 26-31) is a table in three columns that provides an example of the reconstruction of the Aëtius manual from parallel texts in Theodoret, pseudo-Plutarch, and Stobaeus.

Laks and Most do not undertake to present new editions of the text of fragments for any one figure or group of this period. Rather, heeding to the concern that forestalled and delayed a new Diels-Kranz over decades, they rely and draw on what they designate as the “edition of reference” in each case. Moreover, in contrast to the Traditio series, which presents the source texts in strictly historical order (by the dating of the source author), EGP adheres, by and large, to the thematic organization of the material that is observed in most of the chapters of Diels-Kranz. But whereas the thematic organization in Diels-Kranz is implicit, and often not perspicuous, in EGP it is very helpfully and explicitly articulated by an outline. The latter is first presented in all of its components of topics and sub- topics at the start of each chapter. The outline’s components are then redeployed as section headings under which the germane selections of texts are presented.

It is well known that in one important respect Diels-Kranz has actually done some mischief. Its familiar segregation of texts into A and B sections—”A” for testimonia concerning biography and doctrines, and “B” for what might be claimed as actual excerpts or quotations from the writings of the early thinkers—has fostered a tendency (certainly among the unwary) to undervalue the testimonia and to overestimate the status of B fragments, on the assumption (or hope) that these B fragments represent an author’s ipsissima verba.7 But except in the case of authors who composed in poetic form, there is much uncertainty in retrieving an early author’s exact words from the context in which a later (often much later) author has embedded them. Even isolated lines of poetry, which the ancient sources often quoted from memory, are subject to transformation in the course of the ancient tradition. Besides, separating putative quotations from the full context in which they have been preserved poses the risk of suppressing important clues and relevant supplements that are present in those source-contexts. Within the thematic articulation in EGP, material with respect to which there is some confidence that it constitutes a quotation is allowed to stand out, within some portion of its ancient context, by being set in bold font—both on the Greek page and in the translation. An exception to the use of bold font for securely attested quotations is made in the case of long texts: for example, for the epideictic speeches of Gorgias, or for the Dissoi Logoi. Correspondingly, italic font is used—but, it seems, not consistently throughout the eight volumes of text selections—for material judged to be suspect with respect to authorship.

Pointedly avoided by the two editors in their comments is the term “Presocratic” (or “pre-Socratic”). The historically more accurate term, “pre-Platonic,” is also eschewed. After all, even Diels-Kranz, which no doubt has been the strongest influence in making Vorsokratiker /”Presocratics” the standard term, included texts for Archytas, who was Plato’s contemporary and associate, as well as for those Pythagoreans who were Aristotle’s contemporaries. But aside from the inaptness of the traditional term, preference for the term “Early Greek Philosophy” reflects the concern by Laks and Most not to favor the main line of the physiologoi, the “natural philosophers,” to the neglect of the broader religious and humanistic currents in early Greek philosophical thought. Accordingly, the space devoted to the Sophists is impressively generous (two volumes, 924 Loeb pages total).8 And in this connection, many users of EGP will be surprised to find (pace Plato) that Socrates is included among the Sophists.9 Emphasizing the interest Socrates shares with the Sophists on issues of “moral and political excellence and the use of language and argument,” the editors of EGP urge that “it makes most sense to see Socrates as an idiosyncratic Athenian ‘sophist’ ” (vol. 8, p. 293).10

No less innovative and engagingly welcome is the inclusion in the second of the two volumes on the Sophists of an appendix of 110 pages on “Philosophy and Philosophers in Greek Comedy and Tragedy.” This encompasses allusions to the natural philosophers or to the Sophists, and to doctrines of either group, as well as passages of philosophical reflection spoken by a main character or by the chorus. In line, moreover, with the editors’ broad conception of early Greek philosophy is the inclusion in vol. 6 of a seventy-page chapter on early Greek medicine. The thirty-seven distinct texts in this chapter, only thirteen of which occur—in a minor or incidental way at that—in Diels-Kranz, discuss the relation between medicine and philosophical thought, cosmophysiological models, and issues of scientific methodology. This chapter supplements and enhances the earlier section in vol. 5 on “Philosophy and Medicine,” in which the texts for Alcmaeon and Hippo are collected.

Broadened thematic compass is reflected in yet another way, in the material that covers the earliest stages of the intellectual development, the Archaic origins. Of the twenty-two selections on pre- philosophical or mytho-poetic “cosmological speculations” in vol. 2, more than half have no counterpart in Diels-Kranz. Included are the now more securely attested early texts for Orphic cosmogonies, among which the Derveni Papyrus gets its own special chapter in vol. 6, as well as texts from Musaeus, Acusilaus, and other authors of Archaic cosmotheogonies. A notably distinct new contribution in vol. 2 is a chapter on reflections on the gods, on the human condition, and broadly on themes of moral conduct (67 pages). The selections are drawn from Homer, Hesiod, lyric poetry, and drama. Out of the total of thirty-nine selections in this chapter, only nine are represented in Diels-Kranz.

The classical corpus of source material is augmented in EGP with the inclusion of texts from oriental sources: viz. Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, and Syriac. The language (or script) in which these texts are written is in many cases identified, but not always. Only a scatter of such texts has appeared in later editions of Diels-Kranz or in smaller collections on early Greek philosophy. For the three “Milesians” that have so far been covered in the “Traditio Praesocratica” project, yet more texts from oriental sources can now be found in the volumes of that series. But the claim in EGP (vol. 1, p. 9) that inclusion of ample selections from oriental sources is “a first for a collection of this type” is certainly well-placed and true.

Users of EGP need to gain at the start a clear understanding of, and familiarize themselves with, the set’s structure and conventions. In the case of Diels-Kranz, or of other source-books for early Greek philosophy—or, for that matter, of other sets in the Loeb Classical Library—users often have the expectation (reasonably enough) that they can “dip” into a particular section of the book they wish to consult without necessarily having read the book’s introduction or preface. This will not work for EGP. Even so simple a matter as identifying the correct footnote that corresponds to a footnote-marker may cause confusion. This happens when there is more than a single text lemma on a single page, or when a single lemma carries over across two or more pages. One is used to expect that footnotes in a book appear in a sequence either by page or by chapter. But in the main chapters of EGP, numbering of footnotes is by lemma. So, upon seeing in the upper half of the page a marker for footnote 1 or 2 for some text X, one’s eye might well search for the corresponding number and footnote-text at the bottom of the page. But what appears there may be the quite different footnote(s) for another text Y.

Readers of EGP must also familiarize themselves with the code letters (explained in vol. 1, pp. 7-13) that identify different types of material. Shown in bold font before the number assigned to each lemma in a chapter, the code letters are: P, for “person,” i.e., information about a thinker’s life, character, and reputed sayings; D, for “doctrine,” whether in testimony or as recognized fragments (the latter in bold font) from the author’s works; R for “reception,” i.e., for reports of doctrine that are recognizably filtered or colored by the perception or even transformation of the author’s ideas in later stages of the ancient tradition; and T, for “text,” in chapters that do not focus on a figure or group of figures but on a theme, e.g., Archaic cosmologies, early medicine, philosophy in dramatic authors. The distinction between D texts and R texts is not one that is observed in Diels-Kranz, except marginally, in those chapters for which a “C” section (for “imitation,” or “dubious,” or “not genuine”) is appended.

Some measures of the extent to which EGP supplements or exceeds what has been available in Diels-Kranz have already been given. More such measures may be gathered by canvassing the concordance tables in vol. 1 of EGP. By way of illustration: for Heraclitus, an additional 61 texts; for Parmenides, 33; for Empedocles, 50; for the Atomists, 50. But, as the editors of EGP admit and explicitly advise (vol. 1, p. 10), there is much material in Diels-Kranz that is not represented in the Loeb set. It should also be noted that in many cases, with respect to a D or R lemma, EGP selects less than is available in the germane A or B section in Diels-Kranz. Readers of EGP are advised of such abridgements or omissions by the notation “<". Thus, for example, for lemma D36 in the Antiphon chapter, the omission of the long passage on the squaring of the circle from John Philoponus' commentary on Aristotle's Physics, which is B13b in Diels-Kranz, is indicated as follows: "D36 (

One may, of course, wonder about the degree of confidence with which the D/R distinction in EGP can in many cases be drawn. The editors forthrightly acknowledge this concern, but it is of great interest to note how they assess in the end their studied endeavor to implement the distinction: “[W]e ourselves were surprised to see how often it turned out to be easy to distinguish unambiguously between information on the one hand and interpretation and criticism, on the other: and the advantages of this kind of presentation seemed to us greatly to outweigh the disadvantages.” (Vol. 1, p. 12)

Even if we allow that the editors of EGP were mostly successful in drawing the D/R distinction, the extricating of D texts from the larger souce-context does cause problems, which the editors have tried to mitigate with cross-referencing. In many cases, however, the cross-referencing is not sufficient. This is especially serious in the case of the Empedocles texts. Yes, in the case of the R texts, there are frequent back-references to D texts. But the reverse is provided only sparingly. Thus, for example, in the case of D10 = Diels-Kranz B115, on the punishmnent of guilty divinities, there are at least eight R texts that provide context (nos. 48, 50, 53, 55, 59, 67, 74, and 89). The main sources for D10 are, of course, mentioned at the head of that lemma, but in the absence of cross-references, the reader would have to do a lot of searching of the R section to identify the lemmata that provide the contexts at issue.

As indicated earlier above, each chapter in EGP starts with an outline that surveys the chapter’s content and then provides the headings that articulate the thematic grouping of the lemmata. These outlines are of superlative value: they are clearly formulated, and they consistently show interpretative insight. But it is also in this connection that users of EGP need to approach individual chapters with some prior preparation or practice, specifically for the correct reading of the scope of section headings. For, in contrast to what is available at the start of a chapter, at which stage the outline is displayed in outline-formatting with staggered indents, there is no visual display of the logical subordination of themes in the main body of the chapter, where the outline components have become headings for chapter sections. With the helpful outline formatting no longer in view, the only indication of the thematic scope of headings is provided by lemma numbers, which must be carefully noted, appearing in parentheses next to the headings.11

To facilitate cross-referencing, EGP employs a system of forty-five abbreviations. Explained in vol. 1, pp. 27-29, these range in size from three letters (e.g., “EMP” for Empedocles) to nearly complete but truncated names (“ANAXIMAND,” for Anaximander). In this connection, there was an opportunity, which unfortunately was missed, to establish a standard for abbreviations in early Greek philosophy. This would have been achieved had EGP adopted and simply extended the very intelligent system of three-letter abbreviations that was devised by Daniel W. Graham and introduced in his two-volume set, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy.12

Laks and Most frequently note and acknowledge that translations and interpretations different from the ones they offer are possible. In some cases, especially ones with respect to which issues redound across several authors, it would be right to offer critical comments. This I undertake in Part II of this review, BMCR 2018.03.16. Here I must note certain defects that mar this otherwise splendid set. It is perhaps inevitable in a work that is so humongous in magnitude and scope—the nine volumes add up to 4,093 pages13—that readers will find misprints and other flaws that need correction; and unfortunately there are scores of them. Several are easily corrigible, even by readers who are not advanced in their understanding of Ancient Greek: e.g., Χενοφάνεά τε for Ξενοφάνεά τε in vol. 3. p. 146 at D20, repeated in vol. 4, p. 32 at P27; or εὕρεμα for εὕρημα in vol. 3, p. 284 at R76. A number of others are potentially mischievous. Thus, for example, in vol. 7, p. 394 at R34, the Hellenistic term hekta, “things had/possessed,” i.e., qualities,” is rendered “external things” (as though what we had in the text was not περὶ τῶν ἑκτῶν but rather περὶ τῶν ἐκτός); in vol. 5, p. 376, at D25.5, γραπτοῖς . . . ζῴοισι, which should be translated “with painted pictures,” is rendered “with painted animals”; in vol. 8, p. 276, at R10c, χελιδόνα, “swallow,” is translated “sparrow.”

A flaw that has, unfortunately, become almost endemic in published texts that include Greek is in the hyphenation of Greek words. Word-processing software is not yet equipped to hyphenate Greek in accordance with Greek syllabication, and software that does have some such capability conform to the syllabication rules for Modern Greek. EGP seems to adhere to a rule of hyphenating compound words after the prepositional element of the compound in all cases, even if there has been ecthlipsis (so, for example, EGP allows κατ-έκαυσαν, ἀπ-έθανεν, μετ-έχοιεν); but in many places we find avoidance of this, inconsistently, when there is ecthlipsis (e.g., με-τῆλθεν, πα-ρέχονται) and even without ecthlipsis (e.g., συ-νεβίωσεν). There are numerous examples in EGP of hyphen preceding consonant pairs such as -γκ, -γμ, -μπ, -ντ (e.g., ἀνά-γκη, Ὀλυ-μπιάδος, πά-ντα), even though no Ancient Greek word begins with any of these consonant pairs. But there are also consonant splits in cases of hyphenation in which the consonant pair is possible at the start of an Ancient Greek word (thus, wrongly, τεθ-νεῶτος). There are also bad splits within a diphthong (Μυ-ῖαν), or erroneous splits of consonant clusters (αἰ-σχρῶς, Ἀστ-ρονομίη).

Laks and Most are aware of the defects cited in the two preceding paragraphs. And (just as it happened with the early editions of Diels-Kranz), there will be lists of errata in future editions or printings of the Loeb set and of the corresponding French edition by Fayard. In the interim, until such future editions, corrections have now been posted on the academia.edu in the sites, respectively, for Glenn Most (for the Loeb set) and for André Laks (for the French edition).

Would it be right to say, in conclusion, that EGP has now replaced or superseded Diels-Kranz? Laks and Most desist from putting forward such a claim. Accordingly, all the texts that are within the compass of Diels-Kranz are marked either only by the A or B numbers they bear in the latter, or by the additional notations, “≠ DK,” “<," or ">,” to indicate either “not in Diels Kranz,” or either “less” or “more” in either the A or B sections in Diels-Kranz. It is relevant to observe here that the reason why Diels had seen no need to provide translations for A texts—let alone explanations to rather cryptic references in the apparatus crititicus—was that he could assume that his readers had received the right preparation in their classical Gymnasium or Lycée. The right answer to my concluding question is that EGP is conceived and is suited to be right for the needs of the pluralistic academic cohorts and “larger public” of the twenty-first century, just as the 1903 Vorsokratiker was right for the readership of its own time. In spite of the inconveniences and defects mentioned above, and pace any claims of better translations to be noted by me, or already put forward by other reviewers, the fair assessment is this: André Laks and Glenn W. Most have made available to the world of scholarship in early Greek philosophy a resource of immense value. Every study of a thinker or of an issue within the thematic ambit of EGP must henceforth start by canvassing and taking into account the appropriate selections in the Loeb set. Moreover, instructors at both the undergraduate and the post-graduate level now have materials in EGP that are far more accessible to students, let alone richer in content, than what was available to those rarely privileged early-twentieth-century students in Berlin who had the good fortune to attend Hermann Diels’ university lectures and seminars on the pre-Socratics.

The separate titles of the volumes in the set are as follows:

Laks, André and Glenn W. Most (edd., trans.). Early Greek Philosophy, Volume 1: Introductory and Reference Materials. Loeb classical library, 524. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016. 258 p. $26.00. ISBN 9780674996540.
Preview

Laks, André and Glenn W. Most (edd., trans.). Early Greek Philosophy, Volume II: Beginnings and Early Ionian Thinkers, Part 1. Loeb classical library, 525. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016. 400 p. $26.00. ISBN 9780674996892.
Preview

Laks, André and Glenn W. Most (edd., trans.). Early Greek Philosophy, Volume III: Early Ionian Thinkers, Part 2. Loeb classical library, 526. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016. 352 p. $26.00. ISBN 9780674996915.
Preview

Laks, André and Glenn W. Most (edd., trans.). Early Greek Philosophy, Volume IV: Western Greek Thinkers, Part 1. Loeb classical library 527. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016. 464 p. $26.00. ISBN 9780674996922.
Preview

Laks, André and Glenn W. Most (edd., trans.). Early Greek Philosophy, Volume V: Western Greek Thinkers, Part 2. Loeb classical library, 528. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016. 816 p. $26.00. ISBN 9780674997066.
Preview

Laks, André and Glenn W. Most (edd., trans.). Early Greek Philosophy, Volume VI: Later Ionian and Athenian Thinkers, Part 1. Loeb classical library, 529. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016. 448 p. $26.00. ISBN 9780674997073.
Preview

Laks, André and Glenn W. Most (edd., trans.). Early Greek Philosophy, Volume VII: Later Ionian and Athenian Thinkers, Part 2. Loeb classical library, 530. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016. 512 p. $26.00. ISBN 9780674997080.
Preview

Laks, André and Glenn W. Most (edd., trans.). Early Greek Philosophy, Volume VIII: Sophists, Part 1. Loeb classical library, 531. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016. 576 p. $26.00. ISBN 9780674997097.
Preview

Laks, André and Glenn W. Most (edd., trans.). Early Greek Philosophy, Volume IX: Sophists, Part 2. Loeb classical library, 532. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016. 370 p. $26.00. ISBN 9780674997103.
Preview

Notes

1. Die Milesier, Band 1: Thales, ed. by GeorgWöhrle (2009), English language edn. 2014; vol. 2, also by Wöhrle, Anaximander und Anaximenes (2011). Vol. 3, Xenophanes von Kolophon, ed. by Benedikt Strobel, is forthcoming in 2018.

2. Les débuts de la philosophie: des premiers penseurs grecs à Socrate (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Fayard, 2016). See also n. 12, below.

3. Diels’s famously modest and cautionary characterization of the scope of the Vorsokratiker is in the opening sentence of the preface to the 1903 edtion: “Das vorliegende Buch ist zunächst bestimmt, Vorlesungen über griechische Philosophie zugrunde gelegt zu werden.”

4. Even though complete translations of the “A” sections in Diels-Kranz have been available for some time in collections published in other languages, EGP is the first work in which a very large portion of the Diels-Kranz “A” texts is available in English. The previously most comprehensive source-book in English explicitly acknowledges in its subtitle the less-than-complete scope of coverage: Daniel W. Graham, ed., The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

5. Let alone Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Syriac—see below.

6. See above, note 4.

7. In the English-speaking world, this tendency was reinforced from the 1940s into the 1960s by Kathleen Freeman’s Ancilla to the pre-Socratic Philosophers : a complete translation of the fragment in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Oxford, 1948 and several later editions). For, in spite of its title, the Ancilla offered translations only of the “B” texts of Diels-Kranz. Freeman’s earlier published book, The pre-Socratic Philosophers; a Companion to Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Oxford, 1946), had included summaries of the contents of “A” texts.

8. This includes a 46-page chapter that collects texts that capture the perception of “sophists” collectively and the application of the term “sophistic” in authors from Plato and Isocrates to Philostratus.

9. The space devoted to Socrates qua Sophist (119 pages) is second only to that for Gorgias (178 pages).

10. About half of the 108 lemmata on Socrates are drawn from the editions of Socrates testimonia by G. G. Giannantoni: Socrate—Tutte le testimonianze (Bari, 1971); and Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae (Naples, 1990). The other half have been added mostly from selections from Plato.

11. Thus an unprepared reader who is searching material in, say, the Heraclitus chapter in vol. 3 might erroneously assume that at pp. 160-61, the heading “The Opposites (D47-D81)/The Unity of Opposites (D47-D62)” pertains only to the lemmata that appear over the next almost eight pages, since a new section, with the heading “War (D63-D64),” starts on the lower quartile of pp. 166-167. In fact, as is shown by the lemma-numbers in parenthesis after the second half of the heading at pp. 160-61, it is only the latter that pertains to the lemmata gathered in the almost eight pages before the section “War (D63–64). The first half of that same heading at pp. 160-61 has much broader scope: it pertains to all thirty-five lemmata over the subsequent sixteen pages, all the way to the lowest quartile of pp. 176-77. The heading “War (D63-D64),” which might put the unprepared reader on the wrong track, is just the second of seven sub-sections between pages 160 and 177. The thematic hierarchy in the case of the present example from the Heraclitus chapter is displayed clearly at p. 117.

12. See above, n. 4. The twenty-one abbreviations used in Graham 2010 are displayed in that set’s table of contents, vol. 1, pp. vii–viii.

13. The French single-volume edition comes to 1674 pages, but in oversize format and in small print.