From the book
Stobaeus, Volume I
John Stobaeus · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Smoke
καπνός
kapnosKapnos is smoke.
Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordKapnos is smoke.
- In StobaeusMenander’s comic speaker dismisses mortal foresight as smoke and nonsense, assigning real control to Fortune.
- In this edition“Smoke” preserves the concrete image; paraphrasing it simply as error would lose the rhetoric.
- A place to beginSmoke figures the supposed emptiness of human foresight.
- English renderings
- smoke
Meaning
Kapnos is smoke. Figuratively it can characterize something as insubstantial or ineffectual.
Use in the book
Menander’s comic speaker dismisses mortal foresight as smoke and nonsense, assigning real control to Fortune. The image gives rhetorical force to the claim that human names are merely attached to deeds Fortune performs. It expresses a speaker’s extreme assessment of agency, not necessarily the dramatist’s settled doctrine.
Places to read
- I.6.1aSmoke figures the supposed emptiness of human foresight.
Translation in this edition
“Smoke” preserves the concrete image; paraphrasing it simply as error would lose the rhetoric.
Source note
Wachsmuth, volume I, printed pp. 83–84. Pronoia here means mortal foresight, contrasted with Fortune’s governing power, rather than divine providence.
From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Smoke
καπνοῖο δίκην (kapnoio dikēn); ἀπέπταν (apeptan)
Kapnoio dikēn means in the manner of smoke, the simile's explicit comparison.
Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordKapnoio dikēn means in the manner of smoke, the simile's explicit comparison.
- In EmpedoclesPeople have looked on only a small part of life before being lifted up like smoke and flying away.
- In this edition“Lifted like smoke and fly away” preserves the simile as a comparison.
- A place to readThe smoke simile connects short-lived observation with disappearing human lives.
Meaning
Kapnoio dikēn means in the manner of smoke, the simile's explicit comparison. Apeptan describes flying away. The picture occurs within the diagnosis of human limitation in B 2.
Use in the book
People have looked on only a small part of life before being lifted up like smoke and flying away. The image is not an isolated lament: it explains why experience cannot automatically become comprehensive knowledge. Human life is short, movement is uncontrolled, and the observer disappears before surveying the whole he claims to have found.
The simile brings the passage's argument into visible form. Smoke can be present to the eye yet unable to maintain a stable shape or location; the verse stresses rising and departure, not a durable store of observation. The following description of people driven in every direction continues the emphasis on partial and contingent encounter. The modest scale of what they have seen contrasts with the ambition of their conclusions.
Nothing in the line says that a transmigrating daimon is literally smoke or that a human self becomes a cloud after death. Nor does the comparison explain how smoke is physically composed. It functions here as an image of fleeting mortality and the short interval available for inquiry. Reading it beside the poem's stable constituents can sharpen the distinction between a mortal life and what endures through mixtures, but the simile alone does not supply that ontology.
Places to read
- B 2.3–6The smoke simile connects short-lived observation with disappearing human lives.
Translation in this edition
“Lifted like smoke and fly away” preserves the simile as a comparison. It should not be converted into an unmarked doctrinal statement about the material of souls.