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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

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Book I Chapter 18

Chapter 18: Void, Place, and Space

On void and place ⟨and space⟩.⁴⁸⁷

1a ⟨Aëtius⟩: The natural philosophers

All the natural philosophers from Thales onward rejected the void as something truly empty.⁴⁸⁸

1a ⟨Aëtius⟩: Empedocles

Empedocles.

No part of the whole is empty, nor is anything superfluous.⁴⁸⁹

1a ⟨Aëtius⟩: The atomists

Democritus and others, Leucippus, Metrodorus, and Epicurus, held that atoms are infinite in number, whereas the void is infinite in extent.⁴⁹⁰

1b ⟨Aëtius⟩: Strato

Strato said that there is no void outside the world, but that one can come into being within it. Place is the interval between what contains and what is contained.⁴⁹¹

1c ⟨Aëtius⟩: Aristotle on the Pythagoreans

Aristotle writes in the fourth book of the Physics: “The Pythagoreans say that void exists and enters the heaven from the infinite breath, as though the heaven were breathing.”⁴⁹² In the first book of On the Philosophy of Pythagoras, he writes that the heaven is one, and that time, breath, and the void are brought into it from the infinite; the void continually separates the spaces belonging to individual things.⁴⁹³

1c ⟨Aëtius⟩: Place and void

Elsewhere too he says that place is the unmoving boundary of what contains, or that in which bodies remain and move: full when it encloses the body on every side, empty when it has absolutely nothing in itself.⁴⁹⁴

1c ⟨Aëtius⟩: Motion without void

Place and body, then, must exist, but void does not exist at all, except as an object of thought; for its nature, if actually realized, would destroy both the mutual responsiveness of existing things and the continuity of bodies.⁴⁹⁵ Motions occur from place to place [in respect of what comes before] as bodies successively take one another’s places.⁴⁹⁶ He admits nothing infinite, either in number or in extent.⁴⁹⁷

1d ⟨Aëtius⟩: Zeno

Zeno and his followers held that there is no void within the world, but an infinite void outside it. Void, place, and space differ: void is an absence of body; place is what is occupied by body; space is what is occupied in part.⁴⁹⁸

1e Thales

When Thales was asked, “What is the greatest thing?” he replied, “Place: the world contains everything else, but place contains the world.”⁴⁹⁹

2 Hermes: Motion and its setting

From the writings of Hermes addressed to Asclepius.⁵⁰⁰

⟨Hermes⟩ Everything that moves, Asclepius, moves in something and is moved by something, does it not?

⟨Asclepius⟩ Certainly.

⟨Hermes⟩ Must not ⟨that⟩ in which it moves be greater ⟨than⟩ the moving thing?

⟨Asclepius⟩ It must.

⟨Hermes⟩ Then what moves it is stronger than what is moved?

⟨Asclepius⟩ Yes, stronger.⁵⁰¹

2 Hermes: The world as body

⟨Hermes⟩ And must that in which something moves have a nature opposite to the nature of the moving thing?

⟨Asclepius⟩ Most certainly.

⟨Hermes⟩ This world, then, is great, since no body is greater than it?

⟨Asclepius⟩ That is agreed.

⟨Hermes⟩ And solidly packed? For it is filled with many other great bodies, or rather with all the bodies there are?

⟨Asclepius⟩ That is so.

⟨Hermes⟩ And the world is a body?

⟨Asclepius⟩ A body.

⟨Hermes⟩ And one that moves?

⟨Asclepius⟩ Certainly.⁵⁰²

2 Hermes: Incorporeal place

⟨Hermes⟩ How large, then, must the place in which it moves be, and what must its nature be? Must it not be much greater, so that it can accommodate the continuity of its movement, and the moving thing does not stop moving because it is cramped by the narrowness?

⟨Asclepius⟩ Something immensely great, Trismegistus.

⟨Hermes⟩ And of what nature? The opposite nature, then, Asclepius? And the nature opposite to body is the incorporeal?

⟨Asclepius⟩ That is agreed.⁵⁰³

2 Hermes: The divine and God

⟨Hermes⟩ Place, then, is incorporeal, and the incorporeal is either ⟨the⟩ divine or God. By the divine I now mean what has not come into being, rather than what has come into being.⁵⁰⁴

3 From the same work: Empty vessels

From the same work.

⟨Hermes⟩ Not one of the things that exist is empty, by the very account of its existence. What exists could not be an existing thing unless it were full of existence; for what exists can never become empty.⁵⁰⁵

⟨Asclepius⟩ Are there not some empty things, then, Trismegistus, such as a jar, an earthenware pot, a vat, and other things of that kind?⁵⁰⁶

3 Hermes: Air as body

⟨Hermes⟩ What a great error, ⟨O⟩ Asclepius! Do you think that these things, which are instead utterly full and packed, are empty?

⟨Asclepius⟩ What do you mean, Trismegistus?

⟨Hermes⟩ Is air not a body?

⟨Asclepius⟩ It is a body.⁵⁰⁷

487.Kenon, topos, and chōra are rendered “void,” “place,” and “space” to preserve the distinctions discussed below. Their definitions vary among the reports. Wachsmuth restores “and space” in the heading from Photius and the ancient table of contents; the words are absent from the principal manuscripts.

488.The report makes a broad claim, then places a contrasting account of the atomists immediately after Empedocles’s verse. “Truly empty” means devoid of body, not merely lacking a particular visible occupant. The attribution to Aëtius is supplied in the base edition.

489.The single verse denies both a void within the whole and anything superfluous. Peritton can mean excess or surplus; the translation does not supply an additional cosmological argument.

490.The two kinds of infinity are explicitly distinguished: the number of atoms and the spatial extent of the void. The report does not say that any individual atom is infinitely large.

491.The wording allows void to arise inside the world while denying it outside. Strato’s definition of place as an interval should be distinguished from the boundary definition in the next report.

492.The first quotation corresponds to Physics IV.6, 213b22-24. It reports a Pythagorean view rather than Aristotle’s own position. Pneuma is “breath”; the breathing image belongs to the account itself.

493.The second passage is testimony from a separately titled work of Aristotle. “Spaces” renders the plural chōras. The void functions here as a separator. Wachsmuth notes that part of excerpt 1c may derive from Arius Didymus; the printed attribution is therefore not certain for every clause.

494.The boundary definition is followed by a broader description of place as what bodies occupy. The contrast between full and empty explains the terms; it does not establish the actual existence of void, which the next sentences deny.

495.The contrast with an object of thought guides “if actually realized.” The printed phrase is kat’ endelecheian, whose relation here to actuality rather than continuance is difficult; the Greek spelling is retained. Sympatheia is mutual responsiveness or shared affection, and allēlouchia is the connected succession of bodies.

496.The bracketed phrase kata to proteron is rejected by Usener in the base edition. The account makes movement possible by reciprocal displacement, without an intervening void; the rejected words should be omitted in a continuous reading.

497.This is the report’s compressed conclusion. It should not be expanded into a denial of every sense of infinity in Aristotle.

498.Erēmia is absence or being bereft: the definition makes body the criterion of occupation. Keep this threefold distinction separate from Epicurus’s report in 4a and the questioning formulation in Chrysippus’s report in 4d.

499.This is an attributed saying. Its superlative rests on the relation of container to contained; it is not given here as a developed geometrical argument.

500.This dialogue is transmitted under the name of Hermes and corresponds to the opening of Corpus Hermeticum II. The supplied speaker labels are absent from Stobaeus’s principal manuscripts; the editor distributes the speeches using the separate Hermetic tradition. Asclepius is the addressee in Stobaeus’s heading, although the apparatus records Tat in other witnesses.

501.The argument distinguishes where motion occurs from what causes it. “That” represents the supplied Greek article and “than” the supplied comparative particle. The translation preserves the dialogue’s successive premises without treating them as established physical laws.

502.Stibaros describes something solid or compact; here the next clause explains it by the bodies that fill the world. The Greek article before “world” is supplied by comparison with the Hermetic text. English “this world” absorbs that article and has no separate word to bracket.

503.Trismegistus, “thrice greatest,” is the title by which Asclepius addresses Hermes. The argument moves from the need for room to the claim that the containing place has a nature opposite to body. This premise belongs to this dialogue, not to every account collected in the chapter.

504.The distinction between “the divine” and “God” is retained. Genēton and agenēton concern coming into being; the printed spelling uses a single n, while the apparatus records forms with double n. The extract stops here before the dialogue’s further discussion.

505.This second extract resumes later in Corpus Hermeticum II, at section 10. The argument links being empty with being deprived of existence. The separate Hermetic text has additional wording about nonbeing; the apparatus records it, but it is not supplied in Stobaeus’s excerpt.

506.The examples are ordinary containers. Lēnos is a vat or trough, often a wine vat; the translation retains Stobaeus’s reading rather than substituting the different examples found in other witnesses.

507.The reply challenges the ordinary description of a container as empty when it contains no visible liquid or solid: it still contains air. The supplied vocative particle is shown as “O” here and below; unmarked Greek vocatives are normally rendered without that English interjection.