Diotimos Reading Desk

Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.

← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Mixture and Blending

On mixture and blending.

1 ⟨Aëtius, Opinions⟩: Thales

Thales and his followers held blends to be mixtures of the elements through alteration.⁴⁶⁶

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Anaxagoras and Democritus

⟨The followers of Anaxagoras and Democritus⟩ held that blends arise through the juxtaposition of the elements.⁴⁶⁷

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Empedocles and Xenocrates

Empedocles and Xenocrates construct the elements out of smaller masses, which are the smallest things and, as it were, elements of elements.⁴⁶⁸

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Plato

Plato held that the three bodies, fire, air, and water, can change into one another, but that earth cannot change into any of them.⁴⁶⁹

2 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Aristotle

Aristotle and his followers.⁴⁷⁰

They say that bodies, when broken into small parts, are placed beside one another, but are blended with respect to their incorporeal principles, if indeed there are such principles.⁴⁷¹

3 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Zeno

Zeno explicitly declared as follows: “The ordering of the whole out of its substance in a cycle must occur in this way: when fire changes through air into water, some of it settles and earth forms, [and] while of the remainder some stays water, air arises from what evaporates; and as the air becomes finer, fire is kindled.⁴⁷² Mixture ⟨and⟩ blending occur through the transformation of the elements into one another, one entire body passing through the entirety of another.”⁴⁷³

3 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Cleanthes, part 1

Cleanthes speaks somewhat as follows: when the whole has been turned to flame, its center first contracts, and then the adjoining parts are extinguished throughout. When the whole has become moist, the outermost fire, encountering resistance from the center, turns back in the opposite direction. Then, turning in this way, it grows upward, he says, and begins to order the whole.⁴⁷⁴

3 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Cleanthes, part 2

As it continually carries out such a cycle and ordering, the tension in the substance of all things never ceases.⁴⁷⁵ For just as all the parts of a single individual grow from seeds at their proper times, so too the parts of the whole, among which are animals and plants, grow at their proper times.⁴⁷⁶

3 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Cleanthes, part 3

And just as certain principles of the parts come together into a seed and are mixed, and are separated again when the parts have come into being, so all things arise from one, and from all things one is compounded [into], as the cycle proceeds in an orderly and harmonious way.⁴⁷⁷

4 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Chrysippus, part 1

Chrysippus firmly maintained something of this kind: what exists is breath moving itself toward itself and out of itself, or breath moving itself forward and backward. Breath is specified because it is said to be air in motion; something analogous occurs with aether too, so that it also falls under a common account.⁴⁷⁸

4 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Kinds of combination

Such motion occurs only on the account of those who hold that substance admits every kind of change: fusion, composition, mixing, growing together, and the like. For the followers of the Stoic school hold that juxtaposition, mixture, blending, and fusion differ from one another.⁴⁷⁹

4 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition is contact between bodies at their surfaces, as we observe in heaps containing wheat, barley, lentils, and anything else of that kind, and in the pebbles and sand on beaches.⁴⁸⁰

4 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Mixture

Mixture is the mutual extension of two or more bodies through one another in their entirety, while their inherent qualities persist, as happens with fire and glowing iron; for in these cases the mutual extension occurs ⟨through⟩ the whole of the bodies.⁴⁸¹ The same holds for the souls within us: they extend throughout the whole of our bodies, for these thinkers hold that body extends through body.⁴⁸²

4 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Blending

Blending, they say, is the mutual extension of two or more liquid bodies throughout one another, while their qualities persist. [Mixture occurs also in dry bodies, such as fire and iron, and the soul and the body that contains it; blending, however, they say occurs only in liquids.]⁴⁸³

4 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Qualities retained

For the quality of each of the liquids blended together is manifested along with the others in the blend, as in wine, honey, water, vinegar, and the like.⁴⁸⁴ That the qualities of the blended constituents persist in such blends is evident from their often being separated from one another by some contrivance. Thus, if someone lowers an oiled sponge into wine blended with water, he will separate the water from the wine, as the water rises into the sponge.⁴⁸⁵

4 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Fusion

Fusion is the alteration of two ⟨or⟩ more qualities belonging to bodies, producing another quality different from them, as happens in the compounding of perfumes and medicinal preparations.⁴⁸⁶

466.Mixis and krasis are rendered “mixture” and “blending.” Their precise relation varies among the reports; excerpt 4 distinguishes them more narrowly. Alloiōsis means alteration, here contrasted with the juxtaposition described next. Wachsmuth supplies the attribution to Aëtius for all of excerpt 1.

467.The entire subject is supplied in the base edition from the parallel report in the Opinions attributed to Plutarch, I.17. Parathesis means placing things beside one another; the report contrasts this with alteration of the elements themselves.

468.The wording posits constituents more fundamental than the things ordinarily called elements. Onkoi are masses or bodies; the report does not call them atoms. “Smaller” follows the printed mikroterōn, although Wachsmuth notes a parallel reading meaning “smallest.” The English takes the final clause to describe the constituent masses.

469.Compare Timaeus 54b-56e: the geometrical constituents of fire, air, and water allow their transformation into one another, whereas earth is constructed from a different kind of triangle. The qualification concerns conversion into the other elements, not an absolute inability of earth to undergo any change.

470.The attribution to Arius Didymus is supplied by Wachsmuth for excerpts 2-4. “Aristotle and his followers” is the surviving heading within this excerpt. This short report is translated as transmitted and edited here, rather than expanded into a reconstruction of Aristotle’s theory.

471.Logoi is rendered “principles,” though the word can also mean accounts or formulas. Wachsmuth prints Diels’s conjectural dative, tois asōmatois logois, in place of an accusative. The English construes this as “with respect to their incorporeal principles”; the exact relation remains compressed. The parenthetical doubt is retained, although Heeren deleted it.

472.Periodos here is the cosmic cycle, not the orbit of a single heavenly body. The text moves from fire through air to water, then describes the formation of earth and the renewed production of air and fire. The clause about air becoming finer is Wachsmuth’s emendation of a damaged reading.

473.The first bracketed “and” is rejected by the editor; the second, in angle brackets, is supplied. The concluding clause asserts passage of a whole body through another whole body, rather than an arrangement of separate particles beside one another.

474.The sequence describes a return from the fiery condition to an ordered world. Synizein is to settle or contract; antitypein is to resist or strike back. The report speaks both of the whole becoming moist and of fire at its extremity: the translation preserves that compressed description.

475.The opening construction is difficult. This rendering takes fire as the implicit subject of “carrying out,” while “tension” is the subject of “never ceases.” Wachsmuth follows the correction ton ... tonon, an accusative, in place of the transmitted genitive tou ... tonou. His apparatus also records a proposal to insert “the fire” after the participle; the facing Greek does not add those words.

476.Tonos is tension or tautness, here a continuing condition within the substance of the world. The comparison treats the development of the whole through the pattern of an individual’s growth, with parts appearing at their appropriate times.

477.The logoi here are principles of the developing parts, gathered in the seed before those parts emerge distinctly. The rejected eis, “into,” is retained in brackets after the English verb; it should be omitted in a continuous reading. The remaining construction makes “one” the thing compounded from all things.

478.Pneuma means breath or wind. The account treats it as bodily and describes its opposed motions; it is not presented as an immaterial spirit. “What exists” translates to on. The final clause extends the same account to aether. Logos here means an account or description, rather than the developmental principles mentioned by Cleanthes.

479.The four terms in the second sentence are parathesis, mixis, krasis, and synchysis. The following definitions specify their differences. “Fusion” is used for synchysis because the final definition involves alteration of the original qualities into a new quality; it does not mean simply melting a solid.

480.The examples leave the constituent bodies beside one another, meeting at their boundaries. This prepares the contrast with the complete mutual extension described under mixture.

481.Antiparektasis denotes mutual extension or coextension. Both the completeness of the interpenetration and the persistence of the constituents’ qualities belong to the definition. Wachsmuth supplies di’, “through,” in the repeated explanation of the fire-and-iron example.

482.The example of the soul applies the same bodily account to an organism. The soul extends through the body rather than occupying a separate compartment beside it. This is the position reported here, distinct from the reference to incorporeal principles in excerpt 2.

483.The bracketed sentences summarize the distinction between mixture and blending. Wachsmuth rejects them as a marginal explanation that entered the text: they repeat what precedes and interrupt the connection with the next “for.” They remain visible in both languages; the continuous argument runs from the persistence of qualities directly to the following examples.

484.The argument concerns the continued identity of the constituents’ qualities even when the liquids extend through one another. Their recoverability is offered as evidence that those qualities have survived the blending.

485.The oiled sponge is an ancient example used to support separability; the translation preserves the report’s claim. Compare Philo, On the Confusion of Tongues 185-186, where the same example appears. Philo’s proposed explanation involving the sponge’s origin in water is not part of this excerpt.

486.This final definition turns on the production of a new quality, unlike blending, in which the earlier qualities persist. Wachsmuth supplies ē, “or.” His apparatus records that the manuscripts next repeat a passage of Posidonius belonging to I.20.7; he omits that duplication, and this chapter ends here.