In this new contribution to the study of the Derveni papyrus, Hladký looks at the Derveni author as a philosopher first and foremost. The most important novel and convincing point of the book is that the Derveni author engages with Heraclitus’s ideas to a greater extent than had been recognized, namely, throughout the early columns of the papyrus and in his critique of initiatory practices in col xx. This discovery allows Hladký to identify one (possibly two) new Heraclitean fragment(s) in the Derveni papyrus. Hladký’s suggestion that Heraclitus also shaped, more than hitherto assumed, the cosmology of the Derveni author rests on weaker evidentiary grounds and remains more speculative. This study provides a welcome contribution to the ongoing advancement of our understanding of this fascinating text.
The book offers the first comprehensive study of the papyrus in English since the seminal book by Betegh (2004) and the editio princeps by KPT 2006.[1] Despite its own emphasis and innovative suggestions on specific issues, Hladký agrees in many important respects with previous scholars (e.g., the importance of Anaxagoras and Diogenes of Apollonia for the Derveni author’s philosophical outlook), and specifically with Betegh regarding the importance of Archelaus of Athens. Overall, Hladký highlights the philosophical nature of the work, in distinction from those scholars who have seen the Derveni author as a primarily religious author (e.g. Betegh 2004, Piano 2016).
The book’s four chapters are prefaced by a text and translation of the papyrus and an introduction to its discovery and editorial history. The Greek text, with facing translation and a selective apparatus criticus, is compiled from existing editions, mainly KPT 2006 and Janko’s texts (as in Kotwick 2017 and Janko 2022), and “has no ambition to be a critical edition” (5). The first chapter offers general remarks on the background and purpose of the allegorical method used by the Derveni author (11-22).
In the second chapter, Hladký develops a strong argument for the importance of Heraclitus for the formation of the early columns (col. i-vi KPT; 41-46 Janko). These roughly seventy pages are the highlight of the book, bringing forward important evidence for the relevance of Heraclitus in the Derveni papyrus and for Heraclitus’ work itself. The Derveni author mentions Heraclitus in iv.5 and quotes him verbatim in iv.7-9.[2]
Hladký argues convincingly that Heraclitus was at the forefront of the Derveni author’s mind not only in col. iv but also in cols. v and vi (and possibly the heavily damaged col. iii), as well as in column xx. In a first step, Hladký looks at the Ps-Heraclitean Epistles 4-9, written probably in the first cent. CE by someone with very good knowledge of Heraclitus and shows that Ep. 9.17-25 is a close parallel to col. iv. It mentions the size of the sun, a divine law that should not be transgressed, and the Erinyes, who, as guardians of justice, will notice any transgression.. Both the author of the Epistles and the Derveni author used Heraclitus. In a second step, Hladký reveals Clement of Alexandria’s Protrepticus 2.22.1-4 to be a useful parallel to cols. v and vi. Col. vi describes a libation ritual in which Magoi sacrifice many-knobbed cakes to souls and Mystai similarly to the Eumenides. Scholars have connected the “many-knobbed cakes” (πόπανα πολυόμφαλα) with Clement’s mentioning of the same expression in Protr. 2.22.4. Hladký shows that this mention comes at the end of a passage that contains several Heraclitean fragments, among them B14 DK, where Heraclitus prophesies death to “magoi … and mystai”. Thus, the entire section in Clement is a parallel to col. vi, which is hence revealed to contain Heraclitean material. The curious πόπανα πολυόμφαλα (with alliteration and Heraclitean word-formation, 47) may well come from Heraclitus.[3] Yet, importantly, although the Derveni author and Clement each adopt Heraclitus’ criticism of “excessive and exaggerated rituals”, Hladký emphasizes that only the Derveni author sees the solution in a “symbolic explanation” of the ritual that leads to its deeper meaning (45-48; also 66-67).
Hladký then turns to col. xx, where the Derveni author criticizes traditional initiation practices. Scholars have long debated the presence of a paragraphos that marks line 11 as a quotation; also, lines 11-12 read like a summary of what preceded. Col. xx.11-12:
πρὶν μὲν τὰ [ἱ]ερὰ ἐπιτελέσαι, ἐλπίζον[τε]ς εἰδήσειν, ἐπ̣[ιτελέσ]αντ[ες] δέ, στερηθέντες κα[ὶ τῆ]ς ἐλπί[δος] ἀπέρχονται.
“before rites with sacred things are performed, they expect they would gain knowledge, after performing them, they leave deprived of the expectation, too”. (transl. Hladký)
Hladký points to thematic and vocabulary parallels between col. xx (hearing and seeing; understanding and expectation, 57-62) and Heraclitean fragments, such as B14, 17, 18, 27, 34, 40, and 55, several of which also Sider (1997) connected with col. xx. Based on these multiple pieces of evidence (paragraphos, structure of col. xx, and parallels with known Heraclitean fragments), Hladký proposes that col. xx.11-12 is in fact a quotation from Heraclitus (54-67). This is, to my mind, an important and convincing proposal, to which one could add that the stylistic features of the lines (alliteration, word repetition, chiastic juxtaposition of opposites, ring composition) corroborate an ascription to Heraclitus.
That col. xi.8-9, also marked by a paragraphos, is a quotation from Heraclitus, had been suggested by Janko 1997. Hladký supports this with further Heraclitean parallels (B 93-94; pp. 63-65). Here, however, the external and internal evidence for a Heraclitean ascription is weaker. Still, considering the presence of Heraclitus in thematically related sections, it remains a promising hypothesis.
The third chapter turns to the Orphic poem cited by the Derveni author. Here Hladký relies largely “on existing scholarly consensus” (100) but wants to “introduce some new points and argue for certain more general shifts in its overall reconstruction”. One of those “general shifts”, I take it, is to align the Derveni theogony not with other, later-attested Orphic theogonies, but instead with Hesiod’s Theogony on the one hand and with the Near Eastern myth about Kumarbi (herein following Burkert 1987 and Betegh 2004) on the other. One of the “new points” concerns the crucial OF 8 (col. xiii.4), αἰδοῖον κατέπινεν, ὃς αἰθέρα ἔκθορε πρῶτος. Hladký understand the line as “he swallowed the phallus, he who sprang out into the aither first”, with the relative pronoun referring to the subject that is expressed in the verb (and possibly in the previous verse) and that Hladký takes to be Kronos. Hladký proposes cautiously (109) that it is Kronos instead of Zeus (as in the later Orphic theogonies) who swallows something and that what he swallows, is the phallus of Uranos (there is a long-standing debate whether αἰδοῖον meant “revered”, describing the god Protogonos, likely named in xvi.3, or “genital”). This new understanding of OF 8 is interesting, but it comes with problems. The first problem regards the understanding of the relative pronoun ὃς as “he who”. It seems linguistically unlikely that ὃς refers to the subject implied in the verb κατέπινεν[4] rather than takes up αἰδοῖον as an adjective (“revered”) specifying a masculine noun in the previous verse, or, less likely, refers to the possessor of the αἰδοῖον, then understood as “genital”, who on that understanding would have been named in the previous verse. Second, according to Hladký, Zeus then, in contrast to Kronos, does not swallow anything, but simply takes Uranos’ phallus in his hand. I find this reconstruction hard to square with the description in xvi.3-6 (OF 12), where Zeus is said to become one with the cosmos and single (αὐτὸς δ᾽ ἄρα μοῦνος ἔγεντο). How does holding the phallus, even if the world ‘grew onto’ it (cf. 130), make Zeus single? (Cf. the later Orphic Rhapsodies, where Zeus swallows the god Phanes-Protogonos and with him the entire world; and the Orphic hymn quoted in the Ps.-Aristotelian De mundo, ll.8-9). Moreover, why would Zeus be celebrated for becoming single by holding the phallus, when Kronos who ingests it earlier is not?
The fourth chapter analyzes the Derveni author’s interpretation of the Orphic poem. In its main part, Hladký reconstructs in detail the cosmological theory the Derveni author derives from the poem. Hladký states that he relies on scholarly consensus but gives “a different perspective on some important issues” (159). For instance, Hladký suggests that the cosmology can be divided into several steps, whereas many scholars have distinguished mainly two (175-76); Hladký furthermore ascribes a crucial role to fire (and the sun) (176-87) and links that to Heraclitus. Hladký looks for parallels with Heraclitus that go beyond the verbal echoes scholars have identified. Although Hladký clearly points to interesting aspects of fire (e.g., its opposition with the cold), his advocacy for fire’s centrality seems at times unjustified, as, for instance, in the crucial lines col. ix.5-10. Instead of assuming (with most scholars) that mind (since Zeus has just been mentioned) is the subject of γινώσκ[ω]ν and of the corresponding main verb ἐξαλλάσ[σει, Hladký proposes that the subject of the participle is an “impersonal ‘the one who understands’ and that is … Orpheus” (xxx-xxxi; 178), while the subject of the main verb is the fire. This understanding strains basic rules of Greek grammar: γινώσκων is not ὁ γινώσκων and, more crucially, διὰ τὴν θάλψιν does not mark the beginning of a new sentence, and so γινώσκων and ἐξαλλάσ[σει have the same subject; moreover, his reading forces Hladký to add a new main verb (“[knows]”) that is not in the Greek.
In the final section, Hladký aptly situates the Derveni author in the context of Anaxagoras and Diogenes of Apollonia and highlights, in line with Betegh 2004, the close relation to Archelaus; finally, he defends the label “a heraclitizing Anaxagorean” (261), coined by Lebedev 1989.
In conclusion, Hladký calls the Derveni author “a late Presocratic philosopher with a distinctive Anaxagorean background” (276). By emphasizing throughout the book the “philosophical” side of the Derveni author (7-8, 23, 157), in distinction from his “religious” expertise that other scholars have highlighted, Hladký inevitably tends to reinforce disciplinary boundaries that scholarship has increasingly shown to be anachronistic or unhelpful for our understanding of the intellectual history of late fifth century.[5] Instead of pitting the label “philosopher” against the label “religious thinker”, one may view the Derveni author as a philosopher and a religious expert and an early linguist and a literary critic etc., because his work antedates the disciplinary categories developed by Plato and Aristotle.
All in all, the book contributes in at least two important ways: First, it demonstrates the relevance of Heraclitus for several crucial aspects of the Derveni papyrus and identifies one very likely (col.xx) and another possible (col.xi) new fragment of Heraclitus. Second, by probing new, at times speculative, readings of vexed passages, it will likely invigorate the scholarship on the Derveni papyrus.
Bibliography
Betegh, G. 2004. The Derveni Papyrus. Cosmology, Theology and Interpretation. Cambridge.
Billings, J. 2021. The Philosophical Stage. Drama and Dialectic in Classical Athens. Princeton: PUP.
Burkert, W. 1987. “Oriental and Greek mythology: the meeting of parallels”, in J. Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology, London, 10-40.
Janko, R. 1997. ‘The Physicist as Hierophant: Aristophanes, Socrates and the Authorship of the Derveni Papyrus’, ZPE 118: 61-94.
Janko, R. 2022. ‘The Derveni Papyrus, Columns 41–7 (formerly I–VII): A Proekdosis from Digital Microscopy’, in Most 2022, 3–57.
Kotwick, M. E. 2017. Der Papyrus von Derveni. Griechisch-deutsch. Berlin and Boston.
Kouremenos, T., Parássoglou, G. M., and Tsantsanoglou, K. 2006. The Derveni Papyrus. Edited with Introduction and Commentary. Firenze. [KPT]
Kurke, L. 2011. Aesopic Conversations: Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose, Princeton.
Laskaris, J. 2002. The Art is Long. On Sacred Disease and the Scientific Tradition. Leiden, Boston, Köln.
Lebedev, A. V. 1989. “Heraclitus in the P.Derveni”, ZPE 79: 39-47.
Moore, C. 2020. Calling Philosophers Names: On the Origin of a Discipline. Princeton.
Most, G. W. (ed.) 2022. Studies on the Derveni Papyrus, Vol. 2. Oxford.
Papadopoulou, I. and Muellner, L. (eds.) 2014. Poetry as Initiation. The Center for Hellenic Studies Symposium on the Derveni Papyrus. Washington, DC.
Piano, V. 2016. Il papiro di Derveni tra religione e filosofia. Studi e testi per il Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini, vol. 18. Florence.
Roth, Paul. 1984. “Teiresias as Mantis and Intellectual in Euripides’ Bacchae.” TAPA 114: 59–69.
Santamaría, M.A. (ed.) 2019. The Derveni Papyrus. Unearthing Ancient Mysteries. Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava 36. Leiden and Boston.
Sider, D. 1997. “Heraclitus in the Derveni Papyrus.” In A. Laks and G. Most (eds.), Studies on the Derveni Papyrus, Oxford: OUP, 129-48.
Notes
[1] Other book-length treatments are Piano 2016 and Kotwick 2017; edited volumes on various aspects of the papyrus are Papadopoulou 2014, Santamaria 2019, and Most 2022.
[2] Some comments on Hladký’s text and translation of those lines (p. xxi): “the sun in cosmos” is infelicitous; in any case, in translation κόσμου may better be paired with κατὰ φύσιν, in full awareness of its syntactic ambiguity (cf. p. 33 and Ps-Heraclitean Ep. 5.8-11); “overstep boundaries” needs to be “overstep its boundaries” to render the article (τοὺ[ς); the futures ἐκ]β̣[ήσετα]ι̣ and ἐξευρήσου[σι are not potential/counterfactual (“if … transgressed … , E. would find out”), but neutral future conditions (typical for warnings and threats) and should be rendered accordingly; the interesting new supplement κατ[αμετ]ρεῖ may be slightly too short (4 letters vs. 5-letters the supplements by KPT and others, and the 4.5-letter supplement by Janko).
[3] Hladký suggests (47) that the lines that follow B 14 in Clement’s text may contain “a yet unknown fragment of Heraclitus”.
[4] It would have been good to provide parallels from epic poetry where a relative pronoun that is preceded by an oblique case noun/adjective + verb refers to the person implied in the verb instead of the noun/adjective.
[5] For instance, Roth 1984, Laskaris 2002, Kurke 2011, Moore 2020, Billings 2021.