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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 60

Chapter 60 · Breathing and bodily processes

On breathing and bodily processes.²⁰⁶⁶

1.1 · Breathing in a world without a void

Plato, from the Timaeus.

“Let us return to the process of breathing and consider the causes through which it has come to be as it now is. The account is this. Since there is no void into which any moving thing could enter, yet breath moves outward from us, what follows is already clear to everyone: it does not pass into a void, but pushes what is next to it out of its place.”²⁰⁶⁷

1.2 · A circuit of displacement

“What is pushed always drives out its neighbor in turn. Under this very necessity, the whole mass is driven around into the place from which the breath departed; entering there and filling it again, it follows the breath. All this happens together, as though a wheel were turning, because there is no void.”²⁰⁶⁸

1.3 · Refilling the chest and lung

“Thus the region of the chest and lung, having let the breath out, is filled again by the air around the body, which penetrates inward through the porous parts of the flesh and is driven around.”²⁰⁶⁹

1.4 · The return movement of air

“Then, turning back and passing through the body from outside, the air drives the breath inward through the passage of the mouth and the nostrils.”²⁰⁷⁰

1.5 · The source of bodily heat

“We must give the following cause of their beginning. Every animal has its hottest parts within itself, around the blood and the vessels, as though there were a spring of fire inside it.”²⁰⁷¹

1.6 · The mesh of fire and air

“We also liken this to the mesh of a fish trap: what is stretched through the middle is woven wholly of fire, while the other parts, outside, are of air. We must agree that what is hot naturally travels outward to its own region, toward what is akin to it.”²⁰⁷²

1.7 · Two outlets

“There are two outlets, one outward through the body, the other through the mouth and nostrils. Whenever the heat rushes toward one, it drives the air around by the other. What is driven around falls into the fire and is heated; what goes out is cooled.”²⁰⁷³

1.8 · Alternating inhalation and exhalation

“When the heat shifts and what lies by the other outlet grows hotter, the hotter part leans more in that direction in turn, moving toward its own nature, and drives around what lies by the opposite route. This continually undergoes the same effects and returns them in kind, producing a circle that is always being rocked to and fro by both movements, and so brings about inhalation and exhalation.”²⁰⁷⁴

1.9 · Cupping, drinking, and moving bodies

“The causes of the effects associated with medical cupping vessels, of drinking, and of thrown objects that, once released, travel through the air or along the ground must also be investigated in this way.”²⁰⁷⁵

1.10 · Discord and concord

“So too with sounds that appear swift or slow, high or low: sometimes they arrive in discord because of dissimilarity in the movement they cause within us, and sometimes in concord because of similarity.”²⁰⁷⁶

1.11 · The slower sounds catch the earlier movements

“For the slower sounds catch the movements of the earlier, faster sounds when those movements are already subsiding and have become similar to the movements with which the slower sounds, approaching later, move them.”²⁰⁷⁷

1.12 · A single experience from high and low

“On catching them, they do not disturb them by imposing a different movement. Instead, they join on the beginning of a slower movement [and] in accordance with ⟨the⟩ likeness of the faster one as it dies away, and blend a single experience from high and low sound.”²⁰⁷⁸

1.13 · Pleasure and intelligent delight

“Hence they provide pleasure to those without understanding, but gladness to those with understanding, through the movement of divine harmony arising in mortal motions.”²⁰⁷⁹

1.14 · Water, lightning, amber, and magnets

“Moreover, all flows of water, the falls of thunderbolts, and the wonders associated with the attraction of amber and Heraclean stones: in none of these is there ever any pulling force.”²⁰⁸⁰

1.15 · How the apparent marvels arise

“The absence of any void, their driving one another around, and [the] fact that, as they separate and combine, all of them exchange places and travel each to its own seat: through these processes interwoven with one another, the apparent marvels will prove to have been produced, to anyone who investigates properly.”²⁰⁸¹

1.16 · Breathing and the distribution of nourishment

“Breathing too, from which our account began, has come about in the same manner and through these processes, as was said earlier. Fire cuts up the food and, swinging within, follows the breath; through this shared oscillation it fills the vessels from the belly by drawing up the cut particles from there. For these reasons, streams of nourishment have thus come to flow throughout the whole body in every animal.”²⁰⁸²

2066.Heeren restored the heading from Photius p. 112b36; it is absent from FP. Pathē means affections or things undergone, here rendered bodily processes to suit the excerpt’s subject. The chapter ends Book I with a continuous Timaeus passage on breathing, related physical motions, and nourishment.

2067.The edition identifies Timaeus 79a-81a. The explanation begins from the denial of a void and describes reciprocal displacement. Pneuma is breath or moving air in this context. The argument belongs to the ancient physical model, whose assumptions are retained in the translation.

2068.The whole mass is the displaced air understood from the context. The wheel compares a continuous circuit in which departure from one place entails replacement from another. The claim that the events occur together is retained, as is the repetition of the no-void premise.

2069.The printed construction lacks an explicit noun for the region that releases the breath and becomes full. The English supplies region to make the relation intelligible; the Greek is unchanged. The apparatus records to tōn stēthōn in Plato where this printing has tōn stēthōn. The account assumes that air can pass through the flesh.

2070.This printing has exōthen, from outside, where the apparatus records exō, outward, in Plato. The printed direction is retained even though it makes the reversal less easy to follow. Anapnoē here denotes the breath driven inward; the surrounding account distinguishes this from the outward phase.

2071.Their beginning refers to the motions just described. The spring or source of fire supplies the heat that will account for their alternation. Phlebes here are vessels associated with the blood. The comparison does not identify a discrete anatomical organ as the spring.

2072.Kyrtos is a basket-like fish trap. The comparison recalls an earlier description in the Timaeus, outside this excerpt. The English smooths the compressed construction after liken while preserving the central fire and outer air. Movement toward what is akin explains why internal heat tends outward.

2073.The Greek uses dual forms for the two routes. Heat and air are made explicit in the English where the shifting subjects are understood from the preceding account. The contrast is between the bodily surface and the mouth and nostrils, with heating inward and cooling outward.

2074.The final construction is difficult. The English provisionally connects kyklon, circle, with the resulting oscillation produced by the two movements. The apparatus records kyklōi houtō, thus in a circle, for Plato in place of this printing’s kyklon aei. The printed wording is retained, including the distinction between anapnoē and ekpnoē at the end.

2075.Iatrikai sikyai are cupping vessels used in ancient medicine. The argument extends reciprocal displacement to effects otherwise described in terms of suction or continued motion after release. The apparatus reports a different word connected with swallowing in Plato; the printed posis, drinking, is retained here.

2076.The explanation connects concord and discord with the movements that sounds produce in the perceiver. Swift and slow are retained as the text’s physical descriptions, alongside high and low pitch; they are not replaced with a modern account in terms of frequency. Compare I.53.5.3.

2077.The slower sounds are the grammatical subject, and the earlier movements the object of catch. The relative clause is compressed: the English takes ais as referring to the movements imparted by the later sounds, and ekeinas to the earlier movements. This interpretation retains the printed wording without supplying a missing Greek noun.

2078.The editor rejects kai, and, and supplies tēn, the. Both signs remain visible. The English provisionally takes kata ... homoiotēta as according to the likeness, with the faster movement understood as the one now subsiding. The construction and printed punctuation are difficult; the note does not claim to settle them. Pathē is an experience or affection produced by the blended sounds.

2079.The contrast is between hēdonē, pleasure, and euphrosynē, gladness or intelligent delight. The printing reads kinēsis, movement, of divine harmony; the apparatus records mimēsis, imitation, in Plato. The translation deliberately retains movement. Mortal motions are the motions in embodied perceivers.

2080.Ēlektra here means pieces of amber; Heraclean stones are lodestones or magnets. The text names the apparent attraction and then denies holkē, a pulling force, as its explanation. The next sentence attributes the effects to displacement and the motions of separating and combining bodies within the no-void model.

2081.The rejected ta is a redundant article, represented by bracketed the in English. The long sentence shifts construction; the translation gathers the stated processes into the explanation of the marvels. The language of working wonders describes the surprising effects, not an additional supernatural cause.

2082.Fire remains the subject of cutting, swinging, following, and filling. The belly or internal cavity supplies the cut material to the vessels. The passage links the earlier respiratory model with digestion and distribution of nourishment; it does not describe circulation in the modern anatomical sense.