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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

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Book I Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Principles and Elements

On the principles and elements of the universe.³²²

1 Hesiod, Theogony (116-119)

First of all Chaos came to be; then broad-breasted Earth, the ever-secure seat of all the immortals who possess snowy Olympus’s summit, and misty Tartarus in the depths of the broad-pathed earth.³²³

2 Homer, Iliad (14.246)

And Oceanus, who is the source from which all have sprung.

3 Orpheus

⟨And⟩ one sovereign body, within which all these circle: fire ⟨and⟩ water and earth and aether, night and day.³²⁴

4 ⟨Homer, Iliad (14.201)⟩

And Oceanus, source of the gods, and mother Tethys.³²⁵

5 Linus, On the Nature of the World

Thus all things are ever governed through strife; all things come from the whole, and the whole from all things. All things are one, each a part of the whole, and all within one: from what was once one whole all these things came to be, and from all things one will again arise in time’s allotted course, always one and many, though not to be seen in the same state. [And] these things will happen many times; no end will ever come, though it always has limits; a [pēion: unresolved] kind has obtained the same.³²⁶ For thus immortal death envelops everything, passing as mortal; all that is perishable dies, but what exists will change its manner through varied appearances and shapes, ⟨so as⟩ to conceal everything’s aspect; it will remain imperishable and ever-existent, as it is constituted here.³²⁷

6 ⟨Plutarch⟩

Homer indicates dissolution into the generative elements of the universe when he says:

But may you all turn into water and earth!³²⁸

7 Heraclitus

For all things come from fire, and all things end in fire.³²⁹

8 Orpheus

Fair-flowing Oceanus was the first to institute marriage: he married Tethys, his sister born of the same mother.

9 Hesiod, Theogony (126-128)

Earth first bore starry Heaven, equal to herself, so that he might cover her on every side, and be an ever-secure seat for the blessed gods.

10 Philemon

No one has escaped me in a single deed, nor in what he will do, nor in what he did long ago, neither god nor man. I am that watcher, Air, whom one might also call Zeus. I do what belongs to a god: I am everywhere, here in Athens, in Patrae, in Sicily, in every city, in every house, in every one of you. There is no place where air is absent; whoever is present everywhere must necessarily know everything [being present everywhere].³³⁰

11a ⟨Empedocles⟩

First hear the four roots of everything: shining Zeus, life-bearing Hera, and Aidoneus, and Nestis, who with her tears moistens the mortal wellspring. As these came together, Strife stood apart at the outermost edge.³³¹

11b ⟨Plutarch⟩, part 1

By Zeus Empedocles means boiling heat ⟨and⟩ aether; by life-bearing Hera, earth; and by Aidoneus, air, because it has no light of its own but is illuminated by the sun, moon, and stars. By Nestis and “the mortal wellspring” he means seed and water.³³² The universe thus consists of four elements, whose nature is constituted by opposites: dryness and moisture, heat and cold. Through their proportion and mixture with one another, this nature makes the universe one, undergoing changes in its parts but admitting no dissolution of the whole.

11b ⟨Plutarch⟩, part 2

For he says:

At one time all come together into one through Love, at another each is borne apart by Strife’s hatred.

Homer alludes to the friendship and strife of the universe’s parts in these lines, in which Hera says:³³³

For I go to visit the limits of earth that feeds so many, and Oceanus, source of the gods, and mother Tethys; I go to visit them and settle their unresolved quarrels.

12 ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩: Thales

Thales of Miletus declared water to be the principle of existing things: he says that everything comes from water and everything is dissolved into water. His first inference rests on this: the origin of all animals is their generative fluid, which is moist. It is accordingly reasonable that all things too should have their origin in moisture. Second, ⟨that⟩ all plants are nourished and bear fruit through moisture, but dry up when deprived of it. Third, that even the fire of the sun and stars is nourished by exhalations from waters, as is the world itself.³³⁴

12 ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩: Anaximander

Anaximander of Miletus, son of Praxiades, says that ⟨the⟩ principle of existing things is the unlimited: everything comes to be from it and perishes into it. Hence unlimited worlds are generated and perish again into that from which they arise. He says, then, that it is boundless so that ⟨the⟩ process of coming-to-be that takes place may never fail. But he errs in not saying what the unlimited is. The unlimited is nothing other than matter; yet matter cannot be activity unless an agent is presupposed.³³⁵

12 ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩: Xenocrates

Xenocrates holds that the universe is constituted from the One and the ever-flowing, using “ever-flowing” to allude to matter through its multiplicity.³³⁶

12 ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩: Xenophanes

Xenophanes holds that earth is the principle of everything; for he writes in On Nature:

For all things come from earth, and all things end in earth.

12 ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩: Anaximenes

Anaximenes of Miletus, son of Eurystratus, declared air to be the principle of existing things: everything comes to be from it and is dissolved back into it. “Just as our soul, being air, holds us together,” he says, “so breath and air encompass the whole world.” Air and breath are used as synonymous terms. But he errs in thinking that animals are constituted from simple, uniform air and breath: matter cannot stand as the sole principle of existing things; an acting cause must also be assumed. Silver, for example, is not enough for a cup to come into being unless there is an agent, namely the silversmith.³³⁷

12 ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩: Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, son of Hegesibulus, declared like-parted constituents to be the principles of existing things. We take in food of a uniform kind, bread and water, and from it veins, arteries, flesh, sinews, bones, and the other parts are nourished. Since this happens, we must admit that all existing things are present in the food we take in, and that everything grows from things that already exist. The food therefore contains parts discernible by reason. ⟨And because⟩ the parts in the food ⟨are like⟩ the things produced, he called them “like-parted constituents” and principles of existing things. He made these constituents matter, and mind, which arranged everything, the acting cause.³³⁸

322.Archai are origins or explanatory first principles; stoicheia are constituent elements. Their relation is itself disputed in the chapter, especially in excerpts 16b and 16c. The ancient elements should not be identified with the elements of modern chemistry.

323.Compare I.9.5, where the selection instead proceeds to Love. Here Tartarus, the deep region beneath the earth, completes the extract. Chaos is the primordial gap or chasm.

324.The excerpt presents the world’s constituents within one sovereign body. Aether names the upper, luminous region of the sky; its precise physical role varies among the authors collected here. The attribution is the source’s heading.

325.Oceanus and Tethys recur in excerpt 8 as a primordial married pair, and in 11b within an allegorical interpretation of Homer.

326.The middle lines are damaged. The clause beginning pēion cannot be securely construed: genos means “kind” or “race,” ellache “obtained by lot,” and tauton “the same.” The bracketed warning is supplied by this translation, and the surrounding English is provisional. The preceding masculine echōn, “having,” also lacks a clear subject. Wachsmuth’s apparatus records competing repairs.

327.The poem contrasts the death of perishable forms with an underlying existence that persists through change. “Immortal death” and “passing as mortal” preserve the printed paradox; the final lines also depend on editorial repairs. The source’s square brackets mark the rejected connective de, rendered “[And].”

328.Iliad 7.99. The commentator reads the line as physical doctrine. Wachsmuth supplies Plutarch’s name but identifies the source in his apparatus as a work transmitted under Plutarch’s name rather than securely his.

329.Although placed among poetic excerpts, this sentence is printed as prose. Wachsmuth connects it with the report that reappears below in excerpt 14; it need not be Heraclitus’s own wording.

330.This repeats I.1.32, with fuller wording and an intact attribution. The relative pronoun “whom” is supplied at the beginning; English recasts the construction as “No one has escaped me ... I am that watcher.” The final repetition is bracketed by the editor as intrusive.

331.The “roots” are the enduring constituents commonly called elements. “Mortal wellspring” is taken as the object of “moistens”; the Greek retains the source’s intervening comma. The last line is a separate Empedoclean verse joined to the list here, as the source’s verse references indicate. Its ex is read adverbially, “apart” or “outside.” The next excerpt offers an interpretation of the divine names.

332.These identifications are those of the present commentator. They make divine genealogy into physical explanation: the names stand for constituents and their powers. As in excerpt 6, the supplied Plutarch-heading refers to the tradition of works transmitted under his name.

333.The commentator connects Empedocles’s Love and Strife with Homeric reconciliation. The Homeric excerpt joins Iliad 14.200-201 to 14.205, skipping the intervening lines; the printed reference is imprecise. The English follows the actual verses quoted.

334.This is a report of Thales’s doctrine and its supposed reasons, not a surviving treatise by Thales. Wachsmuth supplies Aëtius’s name for the compilation of opinions; the Latin heading is rendered in Greek and English. “Generative fluid” translates gonē, seed or semen.

335.Apeiron means the unlimited or boundless. The criticism beginning “But he errs” is the reporter’s judgment, not Anaximander’s own admission. Its contrast is between material and acting cause. “Be activity” keeps the unusual printed predicate energeia; the apparatus records the proposed reading “be in actuality.”

336.The compressed explanation connects matter’s multiplicity with the term aenaon, “ever-flowing.” Wachsmuth notes that Stobaeus has inserted this report and the following Xenophanes excerpt from elsewhere into the sequence assigned to Aëtius.

337.Pneuma here is “breath,” explicitly equated with air by the report. The silversmith analogy belongs to the reporter’s criticism: a material alone does not explain the action that shapes it.

338.Homoiomereiai is the report’s technical term: constituents whose parts are like the substances they nourish or produce. The argument infers their presence even where they cannot be separately perceived. Nous, “mind,” is distinguished from these material constituents as the cause of arrangement. The English divides the supplied phrase to preserve its syntax.