Boiling heat

Use in the book

Aëtius and the Homeric Allegories gloss Zeus by ζέσις and aither. The English version renders the first occurrence as “fire and aither” but the parallel as “boiling heat and the aither.” A lexicon must preserve the difference between the material fire and the heat-language actually used in the Greek. The gloss can associate Zeus with the activity of the fiery constituent without proving that Empedocles reduced that constituent to a quality.

Aëtius’ excerpt continues with heat and cold and with proportion and blending, while the Homeric Allegories speaks of dryness and wetness. Both are later accounts that explain the system through contraries. The ellipses make their full relation to the preceding divine explanations uncertain. They should not be used to smuggle the complete Aristotelian theory of paired qualities into the poem. What is secure locally is that the interpreters move from named roots to opposed sensible qualities when describing how the All is wrought.

Places to read

1. A 33 (testimony)2Aëtius I 3,20. Uses ζέσις in the Zeus gloss, then heat and cold in a compressed account of proportion and blending.
2. A 33 (testimony)2Homeric Allegories, in Stobaeus. Preserves boiling heat and aither, then invokes dry and wet as opposites.

Translation in this edition

The English “fire” in Aëtius is smoother and less lexically exact than the printed ζέσιν. The discontinuous excerpt should not be filled out into an unprinted theory of four primary qualities.