Chapter IV: Parmenides of Elea (2)

The fact is, there is really no evidence that any one ever adopted the theory of celestial spheres at all, till Aristotle turned the geometrical construction which Eudoxos had set up as a hypothesis “to save appearances” (σῴζειν τὰ φαινόμενα ) into real things.[473] From that time forward we hear a great deal about spheres, and it was natural that later writers should attribute them to the Pythagoreans; but there is no occasion to do violence to the language of Parmenides by turning his “crowns” into anything of the sort. At this date, spheres would not have served to explain anything that could not be explained more simply without them.

Footnote 473:

On the concentric spheres of Eudoxos, see Dreyer, _Planetary Systems_,
chap. iv. It is unfortunate that the account of Plato’s astronomy
given in this work is wholly inadequate, owing to the writer’s
excessive reliance on Boeckh, who was led by evidence now generally
regarded as untrustworthy to attribute all the astronomy of the
Academy to their predecessors, and especially to Philolaos.

We are next told that these “crowns” encircle one another or are folded over one another, and that they are made of the rare and the dense element. We also learn that between them are “mixed crowns” made up of light and darkness. Now it is to be observed, in the first place, that light and darkness are exactly the same thing as the rare and the dense, and it looks as if there was some confusion here. It may be doubted whether these statements are based on anything else than fr. 12, which might certainly be interpreted to mean that between the crowns of fire there were crowns of night with a portion of fire in them. That may be right; but I think it is rather more natural to understand the passage as saying that the narrower circles are surrounded by wider circles of night, each with its portion of fire rushing in the midst of it. These last words would then be a simple repetition of the statement that the narrower circles are filled with unmixed fire,[474] and we should have a fairly exact reproduction of the planetary system of Anaximander. It is, however, possible, though I think less likely, that Parmenides represented the space between the circles as occupied by similar rings in which the fire and darkness were mixed instead of having the fire enclosed in the darkness.

Footnote 474:

Such a repetition (παλινδρομία) is characteristic of all Greek style,
but the repetition at the end of the period generally adds a new touch
to the statement at the opening. The new touch is here given in the
word ἵεται. I do not press this interpretation, but it seems to me
much the simplest.

[Sidenote: The goddess.]

94. “In the middle of those,” says Parmenides, “is the goddess who steers the course of all things.” Aetios, that is, Theophrastos, explains this to mean in the middle of the mixed crowns, while Simplicius declares that it means in the middle of all the crowns, that is to say, in the centre of the world.[475] It is not very likely that either of them had anything better to go upon than the words of Parmenides just quoted, and these are ambiguous. Simplicius, as is clear from the language he uses, identified this goddess with the Pythagorean Hestia or central fire, while Theophrastos could not do this, because he knew and stated that Parmenides held the earth to be round and in the centre of the world.[476] In this very passage we are told that what is in the middle of all the crowns is solid. The data furnished by Theophrastos, in fact, exclude the identification of the goddess with the central fire altogether. We cannot say that what is in the middle of _all_ the crowns is solid, and that under it there is again a fiery crown.[477] Nor does it seem fitting to relegate a goddess to the middle of a solid spherical earth. We must try to find a place for her elsewhere.

Footnote 475:

Simpl. _Phys._ p. 34, 14 (R. P. 125 b).

Footnote 476:

Diog. ix. 21 (R. P. 126 a).

Footnote 477:

I do not discuss the interpretation of περὶ ὃ πάλιν πυρώδης which
Diels gave in _Parmenides Lehrgedicht_, p. 104, and which is adopted
in R. P. 162 a, as it is now virtually retracted. In the second
edition of his _Vorsokratiker_ (p. 111) he reads καὶ τὸ μεσαίτατον
πασῶν στερεόν, <ὑφ’ ᾧ> πάλιν πυρώδης [sc. στεφάνη]. That is a flat
contradiction. It is of interest to observe that Mr. Adam also gets
into the interior of the earth in his interpretation of the Myth of
Er. It is instructive, too, because it shows that we are really
dealing with the same order of ideas. The most heroic attempt to save
the central fire for Pythagoras was my own hypothesis of an annular
earth (1st ed. p. 203). This has met with well-deserved ridicule; but
all the same it is the only possible solution on these lines. We shall
see in Chap. VII. that the central fire belongs to the later
development of Pythagoreanism.

We are further told by Aetios that this goddess was called Ananke and the “Holder of Lots.”[478] We know already that she steers the course of all things, that is, that she regulates the motions of the celestial crowns. Simplicius adds, unfortunately without quoting the actual words, that she sends souls at one time from the light to the unseen world, at another from the unseen world to the light.[479] It would be difficult to describe more exactly what the goddess does in the Myth of Er, and so here once more we seem to be on Pythagorean ground. It is to be noticed further that in fr. 10 we read how Ananke took the heavens and compelled them to hold fast the fixed courses of the stars, and that in fr. 12 we are told that she is the beginner of all pairing and birth. Lastly, in fr. 13 we hear that she created Eros first of all the gods. Modern parallels are dangerous, but it is not really going much beyond what is written to say that this Eros is the Will to Live, which leads to successive rebirths of the soul. So we shall find that in Empedokles it is an ancient oracle or decree of Ananke that causes the gods to fall and become incarnate in a cycle of births.[480]

Footnote 478:

R. P. 126, where Fülleborn’s ingenious emendation κλῃδοῦχον for
κληροῦχον is tacitly adopted. This is based upon the view that Aetios
(or Theophrastos) was thinking of the goddess that keeps the keys in
the Proem (fr. 1, 14). I now think that the κλῆροι of the Myth of Er
are the true explanation of the name. Philo uses the term κληροῦχος
θεός.

Footnote 479:

Simpl. _Phys._ p. 39, 19, καὶ τὰς ψυχὰς πέμπειν ποτὲ μὲν ἐκ τοῦ
ἐμφανοῦς εἰς τὸ ἀειδές (_i.e._ ἀιδές), ποτὲ δὲ ἀνάπαλίν φησιν. We
should probably connect this with the statement of Diog. ix. 22 (R. P.
127) that men arose from the sun (reading ἡλίου with the MSS. for the
conjecture ἰλύος in the Basel edition).

Footnote 480:

Empedokles, fr. 115.

We should, then, be more certain of the place which this goddess occupies in the universe if we could be quite sure where Ananke is in the Myth of Er. Without, however, raising that vexed question, we may lay down with some confidence that, according to Theophrastos, she occupied a position midway between the earth and the heavens. Whether we believe in the “mixed crowns” or not makes no difference in this respect; for the statement of Aetios that she was in the middle of the mixed crowns undoubtedly implies that she was in that region. Now she is identified with one of the crowns in a somewhat confused passage of Cicero,[481] and we have seen above (p. 69) that the whole theory of wheels or crowns was probably suggested by the Milky Way. It seems to me, therefore, that we must think of the Milky Way as a crown intermediate between the crowns of the Sun and the Moon, and this agrees very well with the prominent way in which it is mentioned in fr. 11. It is better not to be too positive about the other details of the system, though it is interesting to notice that according to some it was Pythagoras, and according to others Parmenides, who discovered the identity of the evening and morning star. That fits in exactly with our general view.[482]

Footnote 481:

Cicero, _de nat. D._ i. 11, 28: “Nam Parmenides quidem commenticium
quiddam coronae simile efficit (στεφάνην appellat), continente ardore
lucis orbem, qui cingat caelum, quem appellat deum.” We may connect
with this the statement of Aetios, ii. 20, 8, τὸν ἥλιον καὶ τὴν
σελήνην ἐκ τοῦ γαλαξίου κύκλου ἀποκριθῆναι.

Footnote 482:

Diog. ix. 23, καὶ δοκεῖ (Παρμενίδης) πρῶτος πεφωρακέναι τὸν αὐτὸν
εἶναι Ἕσπερον καὶ Φωσφόρον, ὥς φησι Φαβωρῖνος ἐν πέμπτῳ
Ἀπομνημονευμάτων· οἱ δὲ Πυθαγόραν. If, as Achilles says, the poet
Ibykos of Rhegion had anticipated Parmenides in announcing this
discovery, that is to be explained by the fact that Rhegion had become
the chief seat of the Pythagorean school.

Besides all this, it is quite certain that Parmenides went on to describe how the other gods were born and how they fell, an idea which we know to be Orphic, and which may well have been Pythagorean. We shall come to it again in Empedokles. In Plato’s _Symposium_, Agathon couples Parmenides with Hesiod as a narrator of ancient deeds of violence committed by the gods.[483] If Parmenides was expounding the Pythagorean theology, all this is just what we should expect; but it seems hopeless to explain it on any of the other theories which have been advanced on the purpose of the Way of Belief. Such things do not follow naturally from the ordinary view of the world, and we have no reason to suppose that Herakleitos expounded his views of the upward and downward path of the soul in this form. He certainly did hold that the guardian spirits entered into human bodies; but the whole point of his theory was that he gave a naturalistic rather than a theological account of the process. Still less can we think it probable that Parmenides made up these stories himself in order to show what the popular view of the world really implied if properly formulated. We must ask, I think, that any theory on the subject shall account for what was evidently no inconsiderable portion of the poem.

Footnote 483:

Plato, _Symp._ 195 c 1. It is implied that these παλαιὰ πράγματα were
πολλὰ καὶ βίαια, including such things as ἐκτομαί and δεσμοί. The
Epicurean criticism of all this is partially preserved in Philodemos,
_de pietate_, p. 68, Gomperz; and Cicero, _de nat. D._ i. 28 (_Dox._
p. 534; R. P. 126 b).

[Sidenote: Physiology.]

95. In describing the views of his contemporaries, Parmenides was obliged, as we see from the fragments, to say a good deal about physiological matters. Like everything else, man was composed of the warm and the cold, and death was caused by the removal of the warm. Some curious views with regard to generation were also stated. In the first place, males came from the right side and females from the left. Women had more of the warm and men of the cold, a view which we shall find Empedokles contradicting.[484] It is just the proportion of the warm and cold in men that determines the character of their thought, so that even corpses, from which the warm has been removed, retain a perception of what is cold and dark.[485] These fragments of information do not tell us much when taken by themselves; but they connect themselves in a most interesting way with the history of medicine, and point to the fact that one of its leading schools stood in close relation with the Pythagorean Society. Even before the days of Pythagoras, we know that Kroton was famous for its doctors. A Krotoniate, Demokedes, was court physician to the Persian king, and married Milo the Pythagorean’s daughter.[486] We also know the name of a very distinguished medical writer who lived at Kroton in the days between Pythagoras and Parmenides, and the few facts we are told about him enable us to regard the physiological views described by Parmenides not as isolated curiosities, but as landmarks by means of which we can trace the origin and growth of one of the most influential of medical theories, that which explains health as a balance of opposites.

Footnote 484:

For all this, see R. P. 127 a, with Arist. _de Part. An._ Β, 2. 648 a
28; _de Gen. An._ Δ, 1. 765 b 19.

Footnote 485:

Theophr. _de sens._ 3, 4 (R. P. 129).

Footnote 486:

Herod. iii. 131, 137.

[Sidenote: Alkmaion of Kroton.]

96. Aristotle tells us that Alkmaion of Kroton[487] was a young man in the old age of Pythagoras. He does not actually say, as later writers do, that he was a Pythagorean, though he points out that he seems either to have derived his theory of opposites from the Pythagoreans or they theirs from him.[488] In any case, he was intimately connected with the society, as is proved by one of the scanty fragments of his book. It began as follows: “Alkmaion of Kroton, son of Peirithous, spoke these words to Brotinos and Leon and Bathyllos. As to things invisible and things mortal, the gods have certainty; but, so far as men may infer ...”[489] The quotation unfortunately ends in this abrupt way, but we learn two things from it. In the first place, Alkmaion possessed that reserve which marks all the best Greek medical writers; and in the second place, he dedicated his work to the heads of the Pythagorean Society.[490]

Footnote 487:

On Alkmaion, see especially Wachtler, _De Alcmaeone Crotoniata_
(Leipzig, 1896).

Footnote 488:

Arist. _Met._ Α, 5. 986 a 27 (R. P. 66). In a 30 Diels reads, with
great probability, ἐγένετο τὴν ἡλικίαν <νέος> ἐπὶ γέροντι Πυθαγόρᾳ.
Cf. Iambl. _V. Pyth._ 104, where Alkmaion is mentioned among the
συγχρονίσαντες καὶ μαθητεύσαντες τῷ Πυθαγόρᾳ πρεσβύτῃ νέοι.

Footnote 489:

Ἀλκμαίων Κρωτωνιήτης τάδε ἔλεξε Πειρίθου υἱὸς Βροτίνῳ καὶ Λέοντι καὶ
Βαθύλλῳ· περὶ τῶν ἀφανέων, περὶ τῶν θνητῶν, σαφήνειαν μὲν θεοὶ ἔχοντι,
ὡς δὲ ἀνθρώποις τεκμαίρεσθαι καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς. The fact that this is not
written in conventional Doric, like the forged Pythagorean books, is a
strong proof of genuineness.

Footnote 490:

Brotinos (not Brontinos) is variously described as the son-in-law or
father-in-law of Pythagoras. Leon is one of the Metapontines in the
catalogue of Iamblichos (Diels, _Vors._ p. 268), and Bathyllos is
presumably the Poseidoniate Bathylaos also mentioned there.

Alkmaion’s chief importance in the history of philosophy really lies in the fact that he is the founder of empirical psychology.[491] It is certain that he regarded the brain as the common sensorium, an important discovery which Hippokrates and Plato adopted from him, though Empedokles, Aristotle, and the Stoics reverted to the more primitive view that the heart performs this function. There is no reason to doubt that he made this discovery by anatomical means. We have some authority for saying that he practised dissection, and, though the nerves were not yet recognised as such, it was known that there were certain “passages” which might be prevented from communicating sensations to the brain by lesions.[492] He also distinguished between sensation and understanding, though we have no means of knowing exactly where he drew the line between them. His theories of the special senses are of great interest. We find in him already, what is characteristic of Greek theories of vision as a whole, the attempt to combine the view of vision as an act proceeding from the eye with that which attributes it to an image reflected in the eye. He knew the importance of air for the sense of hearing, though he called it the void, a thoroughly Pythagorean touch. With regard to the other senses, our information is more scanty, but sufficient to show that he treated the subject systematically.[493]

Footnote 491:

Everything bearing on the early history of this subject is brought
together and discussed in Prof. Beare’s _Greek Theories of Elementary
Cognition_, to which I must refer the reader for all details.

Footnote 492:

Theophr. _de sens._ 26 (Beare, p. 252, n. 1). Our authority for the
dissections of Alkmaion is only Chalcidius, but he gets his
information on such matters from far older sources. The πόροι and the
inference from lesions are vouched for by Theophrastos.

Footnote 493:

The details will be found in Beare, pp. 11 sqq. (vision), pp. 93 sqq.
(hearing), pp. 131 sqq. (smell), pp. 180 sqq. (touch), pp. 160 sqq.
(taste).

His astronomy seems surprisingly crude for one who stood in close relations with the Pythagoreans. We are told that he adopted Anaximenes’ theory of the sun and Herakleitos’s explanation of eclipses.[494] It is all the more remarkable that he is credited with originating the idea, which it required all Plato’s authority to get accepted later, that the planets have an orbital motion in the opposite direction to the diurnal revolution of the heavens.[495] This, if true, probably stood in close connexion with his saying that soul was immortal because it resembled immortal things, and was always in motion like the heavenly bodies.[496] He seems, in fact, to be the real author of the curious view which Plato put into the mouth of the Pythagorean Timaios, that the soul has circles revolving just as the heavens and the planets do. This too seems to be the explanation of his further statement that man dies because he cannot join the beginning to the end.[497] The orbits of the heavenly bodies always come full circle, but the circles in the head may fail to complete themselves. This new version of the parallelism between the microcosm and the macrocosm would be perfectly natural for Alkmaion, though it is, of course, no more than a playful fancy to Plato.

Footnote 494:

Aet. ii. 22, 4, πλατὺν εἶναι τὸν ἥλιον; 29, 3, κατὰ τὴν τοῦ
σκαφοειδοῦς στροφὴν καὶ τὰς περικλίσεις (ἐκλείπειν τὴν σελήνην).

Footnote 495:

Aet. ii. 16, 2, (τῶν μαθηματικῶν τινες) τοὺς πλανήτας τοῖς ἀπλάνεσιν
ἀπὸ δυσμῶν ἐπ’ ἀνατολὰς ἀντιφέρεσθαι. τούτῳ δὲ συνομολογεῖ καὶ
Ἀλκμαίων.

Footnote 496:

Arist. _de An._ Α, 2. 405 a 30 (R. P. 66 c).

Footnote 497:

Arist. _Probl._ 17, 3. 916 a 33, τοὺς ἀνθρώπους φησὶν Ἀλκμαίων διὰ
τοῦτο ἀπόλλυσθαι, ὅτι οὐ δύνανται τὴν ἀρχὴν τῷ τέλει προσάψαι.

Alkmaion’s theory of health as “isonomy” is at once that which most clearly connects him with earlier inquirers like Anaximander, and also that which had the greatest influence on the subsequent development of philosophy. He observed, to begin with, that “most things human were two,” and by this he meant that man was made up of the hot and the cold, the moist and the dry, and the rest of the opposites.[498] Disease was just the “monarchy” of any one of these—the same thing that Anaximander had called “injustice”—while health was the establishment in the body of a free government with equal laws.[499] This was the leading doctrine of the Sicilian school of medicine which came into existence not long after, and we shall have to consider in the sequel its influence on the development of Pythagoreanism. Taken along with the theory of “pores,”[500] it is of the greatest importance for later science.

Footnote 498:

Arist. _Met._ Α, 5. 986 a 27 (R. P. 66).

Footnote 499:

Aet. v. 30, 1, Ἀλκμαίων τῆς μὲν ὑγιείας εἶναι συνεκτικὴν τὴν ἰσονομίαν
τῶν δυνάμεων, ὑγροῦ, ξηροῦ, ψυχροῦ, θερμοῦ, πικροῦ, γλυκέος, καὶ τῶν
λοιπῶν, τὴν δ’ ἐν αὐτοῖς μοναρχίαν νόσου ποιητικήν· φθοροποιὸν γὰρ
ἐκατέρου μοναρχίαν.

Footnote 500:

My colleague, Dr. Fraser Harris, points out to me that Alkmaion’s
πόροι may have been a better guess than he knew. The nerve-fibres,
when magnified 1000 diameters, “sometimes appear to have a clear
centre, as if the fibrils were tubular.”—Schäfer, _Essentials of
Physiology_ (7th edition), p. 132.