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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

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Book I Chapter 20

Chapter 20: Coming into Being and Passing Away

On coming into being and passing away.

1a ⟨Aëtius⟩: Parmenides and Melissus

Parmenides and Melissus denied coming into being and passing away, because they held the whole to be unmoving.⁵⁶¹

1b Heraclitus: The river

Heraclitus says that everything moves on and nothing remains; and, comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says that you could not step twice into the same river.⁵⁶²

1c ⟨Aëtius⟩: Plato

Plato held the world to be perishable so far as its nature is concerned, for it is perceptible because it is also bodily; nevertheless, it will not perish, owing to God’s providence and his holding it together.⁵⁶³

1d ⟨Aëtius⟩: Combination and separation

Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Epicurus, and all who construct worlds by gathering together finely divided bodies introduce combinations and separations, but not generation and destruction in the strict sense. For these occur, on their account, not in respect of quality through alteration, but in respect of quantity through aggregation.⁵⁶⁴

1d ⟨Aëtius⟩: Alterable matter

Pythagoras and all who posit matter capable of being affected hold that generation and destruction occur in the strict sense. For from the alteration, transformation, and dissolution of the elements [of generation and destruction] arise juxtaposition and mixture, blending and fusion.⁵⁶⁵

1e ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: The world as seed

Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus hold that substance changes into fire as though into a seed, and that from this the world’s ordering is once again brought to completion just as it was before.⁵⁶⁶

1e ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Panaetius

Panaetius considers the eternity of the world more plausible, and more acceptable to him, than the transformation of all things into fire.⁵⁶⁷

1f ⟨Aëtius⟩: The perishable region

Aristotle declared that the portion of the world beneath the moon is subject to being affected; in it, things around the earth also suffer decay.⁵⁶⁸

Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Melissus held the world to be ungenerated, eternal, and imperishable.

1f ⟨Aëtius⟩: Recurring periods

[And] those who say that the world’s ordering is everlasting also say that there are recurring periods in which everything takes place in the same respects and in the same way, and the same arrangement and ordering of the world is preserved.⁵⁶⁹

1f ⟨Aëtius⟩: Destruction of worlds

Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, Diogenes, and Leucippus held the world to be perishable.

The Stoics too held the world to be perishable, but through conflagration.⁵⁷⁰

Empedocles held that the world ⟨comes into being and⟩ perishes through the alternating dominance of Strife and Love.⁵⁷¹

1f ⟨Aëtius⟩: Democritus and Epicurus

Democritus held that a world perishes when the larger overcomes the smaller.⁵⁷²

Epicurus held that a world perishes in very many ways: like an animal, like a plant, and in many other ways.

1g ⟨Aëtius⟩: Philolaus

Philolaus held that the destruction of the world is twofold: in one case, when fire streams down from heaven; in the other, through lunar water poured out by the revolution of the air.⁵⁷³

2 Philolaus, On the Soul: An imperishable world

From On the Soul, by Philolaus the Pythagorean.⁵⁷⁴

Philolaus held the world to be imperishable. Thus he says in On the Soul:

“For this reason it remains imperishable and unwearied for endless eternity. Neither within it nor outside it will any other cause be found more powerful than that soul and capable of destroying it.⁵⁷⁵ Indeed, this world endures from eternity to eternity, one world governed by one kindred power, supreme and unsurpassable.”

2 Philolaus: Two regions of the world

“The world also possesses the principle of motion and change, being one and continuous, pervaded by nature’s breath and carried around by an eternal principle. One part of it is unchanging, while another changes. The unchanging part extends from the soul that encompasses the whole as far as ⟨the⟩ moon; the changing part, from the moon as far as the earth.”⁵⁷⁶

2 Philolaus: The mover and the moved

“Since the mover revolves from eternity to eternity, while what is moved takes its condition from the way the mover leads it, the one must be ever moving and the other ever undergoing affection. The one is wholly the province of mind and soul, the other of generation and change.⁵⁷⁷ The one is prior in power and superior; the other is posterior and subordinate. What is composed of both of these, the ever-running divine and the ever-changing generated, is the world.”⁵⁷⁸

2 Philolaus: Continuity through generation

“It is therefore right to say that the world is an eternal activity of God and of generation, in accordance with the coordinated sequence of changing nature.⁵⁷⁹ The world, being one, always endures in the same state and the same way; but the things that come into being and perish are many. Even things undergoing destruction are preserved in their nature and form through generation, restoring the same [form] once again to the father and craftsman who begot them.”⁵⁸⁰

561.Genesis and phthora mean coming into being and passing away; in the following reports they are also rendered “generation” and “destruction.” Their scope includes the formation and dissolution of things, not merely birth and death. Wachsmuth supplies the attribution to Aëtius here and in 1c, 1d, 1f, and 1g.

562.This is drawn from Plato, Cratylus 402a, where Socrates reports Heraclitus’s view. As Wachsmuth notes, it is an insertion from Plato, not part of the surrounding Aëtian material. The river saying is thus presented through Plato’s report, rather than as a securely verbatim quotation from Heraclitus’s book.

563.The report distinguishes being capable of dissolution from actually being dissolved. Synochē is the holding together or cohesion supplied by God. Compare the passages from the Timaeus collected below in excerpts 9 and 10.

564.The compiler groups these philosophers by the persistence of their underlying constituents. The grouping does not make their constituents identical: the text says “finely divided bodies,” not that every thinker listed posits atoms. The contrast is between qualitative alteration and quantitative aggregation.

565.The four kinds of combination use the vocabulary explained in chapter 17, though this report does not give those definitions. Wachsmuth rejects “of generation and destruction” with reference to the parallel text. The intrusive words remain bracketed in both languages and should be skipped in a continuous reading.

566.Wachsmuth supplies the attribution to Arius Didymus, physical fragment 36 in Diels. Fire is compared to a seed from which the ordered world develops again; the return to fire does not mean that substance becomes nothing. Compare the reports of the cosmic cycle in I.17.3.

567.The comparative wording matters: the report presents Panaetius’s preference for one account over another. It should not be strengthened into a demonstration of the impossibility of conflagration.

568.The Aristotelian report restricts susceptibility to decay to the region below the moon. The following sentence reports a different account of the world as a whole. “Ungenerated” distinguishes having no origin from continuing without an end.

569.No philosopher is named in this sentence. The translation leaves its proponents anonymous and does not silently attach the claim to the preceding names. Wachsmuth rejects the initial kai, “and.”

570.Ekpyrōsis is the world’s transformation into fire. The general heading “the Stoics” here should be read alongside the distinct opinion of Panaetius just recorded in 1e.

571.The supplied words “comes into being and” are printed by Wachsmuth. Antepikrateia expresses reciprocal or alternating ascendancy; the two powers are named neikos, Strife, and philia, Love.

572.The larger and smaller are understood as worlds. The report is compressed and does not describe how one overcomes another. The following analogies likewise assert several possible modes of destruction without specifying their mechanisms.

573.The second mechanism is obscure. The rendering follows the printed text, including “through water”; it does not substitute another explanation of the moon’s role. Wachsmuth repairs the passage using its repetition at I.21.6d and a parallel source. This report differs from the claim of imperishability attributed to Philolaus in the next excerpt.

574.This is the traditional attribution. The excerpt, conventionally fragment 21, is generally treated as a later work written under Philolaus’s name, rather than secure evidence for the historical Philolaus. Its Doric forms are retained. See C. A. Huffman, “Philolaus,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, section 1.4; L. Zhmud, “What is Pythagorean in the Pseudo-Pythagorean Literature?”, Philologus 163 (2019), 72-94, section 4.

575.The Greek autas, “her” or “it,” is feminine and has no explicit antecedent in the surviving opening. “That soul” is an interpretive clarification, suggested by the title and the later mention of the world-encompassing soul. The masculine pronouns refer to the world.

576.The distinction concerns the unchanging celestial region and the changing region below the moon. The former is still described as moving in a circle: “unchanging” here is not equivalent to motionless. “By an eternal principle” follows the emended ex archas aidiō printed by Wachsmuth. The base edition places a dash before this paragraph; no missing words are supplied.

577.“Province” is a tentative rendering of anakōma, a difficult word. Wachsmuth’s apparatus records Boeckh’s interpretation as rule or dominion, alongside doubts about the transmitted reading. The translation preserves the contrast without treating the noun’s meaning as certain.

578.The passage distinguishes the active and affected components, then identifies the world with their combination. “Ever moving” follows aeikinaton; it should not be substituted with an unmoved mover imported from a different philosophical account.

579.The genitives “of God and of generation” are both retained. The compressed phrase about synakolouthia is understood as the coordinated succession of natural changes; the passage joins divine activity with continuing generation.

580.Continuity of nature and form is distinguished from the perishing of individual things. Wachsmuth rejects the repeated “form” as an explanatory addition, while recording an alternative supplement, “nature and form.” It remains visible in brackets; the retained “the same” points back to what is preserved.