Continuity and reaction in an oecumenicla age

PERRAS, AL. racy à A.L. PIERRIS HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY: CONTINUITY AND REACTION IN AN OECUMENICAL AGE The succession of epochs in cultural evolution follows the pattern of natural cycles such as the annual row of seasons or the biological ages of man. It is the orderly and purposeful unfolding of an inner principle, and not the accidental and fortuitous responses to external stimuli, which determines the basic historica] structure of any given unified entity in time. The vaster the field in question is, the more indifferent it is to external influences, the ‘more perfect and unimpeded the realization of its intrinsic law will be; the more spiritual its character, the deeper we may fathom the nature and manifestations of the same constituuve regularity. Both features characterise cultures: the task of analysis should be in this case, therefore, considerably facilitated. The european expansion during the great era of geographical exploration in the modern World did not effect or even occasion any of such mighty, about synchronous, phenomena as renaissance, reformation, the beginnings of quantitative science, the formation of national states; on the contrary, these sprang from principles which will also account for the existence of that spirit and fact of adventurous curiosity. Nor did the subsequent colonization of the World contribute substantially to the direction and achievements of civilization, otherwise than by supplying means for the freer exercize of its drives. Similarly neither the early greek colonial explosion, nor the later alexandrean conquest of the relevant portion of the world had any essential or recognizable bearing on hellenic cultural developments. The greek modalities of life and thought were transplanted into foreign lands, generally with success, and became objects of imitation and affectation, rarely of assimilation — much as it happens nowadays with the american dream. But the resulting universalism was more apparent than real; as

always the oecumenical is an euphemism for the domination of the prevalent. The channels of influence are seldom two-way. The universalization of a culture is proof of its health and vigour. The cultures found in its dynamic field, unable to cope with its overflowing, recede into relative irrelevance; their desperate, often pathetic, attempts at participation in the new order consistent with a modicum of preserved identity, become marginal peculiarities ranging from the picturesque to the grotesque; anxious peripheral self-assertions easily appear as experimental modifications of the central agency of no significant consequence. It would be strangely anomalous if the ebullient feeling of elation accompanying cultural expansions was transformed into, or essentially generated, negative states of whatever sort, heart-searching or self-critical, of doubt or hesitation, contrition or confesion. On the contrary. Universal imperium accelerates catalytically internal processes of self-definition and self-evolution. To act on the cosmic proscenium, in front of the universal collective awe of the World, in absence of opposition and, immensely more significant, of all restriction, calls for an intensification of being sustainable only by the revelatory emergence of its absolute truth, of what is more characteristic, genuine, real and powerful in it. What is latent becomes manifested, the flower comes into fruition, the unripe is fulfilled and a peak of self-awareness is reached which always characterizes the autumnal age of maturity. Oecumenism, paradoxically may be but not inexplicably, instigates within the master culture a movement of return to the roots, as it evokes the necessity of a heightened confirmation of identity and affirmation of genuineness, as it requires direct and secure access to affluent, uncontaminated internal sources of truth, beauty and power. It is never a question of isolationism and closed societies. Simply, cultural expansion entails rather purification of oneself than communication with others. It is a challenge, and a test: to what extent can the constitutive needs of the entire human nature be satisfied under the value system, modes of thought and ways of life inherent in a given culture? External ancient greek history is divided into four periods by three potent events: the defeat of the Persian invasion, Alexander’s conquest of the world and the establishment of Rome's sovereignty. We are here concerned with the second one and the era that followed. It is immaterial that hellenic culture was propagated by the might of macedonian arms; as it is also inessential that the states of new Greece abroad were organized on the pattern of the macedonian kingdom. So long as the nucleus of political existence remained the city with its agricultural environment (well defined in the case of old Greece even by geographical conditions alone), and to the degree that the city preserved its hellenic character (agora, gymnasium, theater, prytaneion, temples, acropolis and a distinctive way of life), it would be of no telling importance how these nuclear focuses, the cities, were related to form higher systems of varying degrees of unity. Loose phyletic affinities or religious amphictyonies; informal deference to a master city; stricter confederancies; democratic or autocratic imperialisms; militaristic monarchies;

all were consistent with the preeminence of the city-structure of society. We should not ignore the role of local communities in Greece up to the Revolution of 1821. It is often assumed without much argument that the loss of independence incurred by the city-states, was a major factor in the formation of hellenistic mentality. But independence is a vague and notoriously relative term. An entity is precisely so much self-determined as its power extends; and this is true irrespective of the nature of the structure to which it belongs. Was Phigaleia more or less independent vis-a-vis Spartan or Macedonian kings, in the archaic or the hellenistic era? Was Thera more or less dependent in the sway of Athenian generals or under Ptolemaean admirals, in the classical or the hellenistic age? The questions, thus formulated, are otiose. The internal strength of a thing defines its position in any external system; provided, of course, we do have an identifiable thing to begin with; which is the crux of the matter. Deprive Thera and Phigaleia of their real existence as individual entities and you are left with nothing to inquire about concerning its dependence or independence; allow them to subsist, and they will fulfill their role however dependent they may be. In recognizing,-defining and understanding the cardinal features of the Hellenistic Age in its spiritual dimension, as exemplified by their conceptual projections and intellectual articulations, we must have recourse to the intrinsic parameters of cultural evolution, to the inner form and law of philosophical development in ancient Greece. We have observed that, quite generally, in an oecumenical age, the very pressure of expansion necessitates a movement of Return to the roots of the universalized, dominant, in-forming culture. In the Hellenistic Era a more specific reason pushing in the same direction was superadded to the abstract tendency. For the classical period was a time of acute confrontation between the old and the new; of unprecedented tension between philosophy and the rest of culture: on the one hand, the basic experiences constitutive of hellenism and their outgrowth in all forms of ordinary and higher life and activity; on the other, the intellectual practice, the conceptual anticulation of a world-view. In Thucydides we see glaringly expressed a feeling of general upheaval. Tragedy, a classical perfection if any, proclaims the insignificance of Man and the worthlessness of his schemes, reasonings and arrangements before the divinely sanctioned ineluctable cosmic order. Comedy invariably ridicules philosophers and philosophies. Aristophanes carefully selects his victim for the devastating attack he lets loose on new learning and novel habits of thought. He hits the target well; some time later, the man of rational searching is condemned to death by popular verdict. Impeachments for impiety against intellectuals are not unfrequent in enlightened Athens. The philosophers are at one time, and for a while, en corps expelled from that city of light, or else they retreat in the face of adverse sentiment and legislation in order to force the issue. An alternative system of higher education based on poetry and rhetoric is instituted by Isocrates with the avowed purpose to counteract philosophical schooling.

There is widespread sense of dissatisfaction, of restlessness, of anxiety in the flourishing age of Greece. Nor is it really incomprehensible or unaccountable. It springs from the feeling that a hybris is being committed. But it is the Aybris of order now that is creative and propagator of anomaly.' Cosmic causality is inherently bipolar: this is a deep experience of the greek soul. But this bipolarity is conjugal. On the one hand the celestial Father, olympian principle of luminosity and beauty, determinacy and form; on the other the terrestrial Mother, chthonic source of dark productivity, profound womb of inexhaustible infinity. Both are required in regular conjunction for the generation of stable offspring, for the creation and maintenance of a harmonious worldwhole, of a Kóckoc. Thought is conceived in the fertile matrix of darkness, but born to light. An idea is initially the illumination of a religious fact, the disclosure of its universal significance, the revelation of a mystery. Penetrating ideas and dark symbols coexist at first in wondrous speculations of Orphic, old or mixed theologians. Reason is but the consistent working out of an interconnected system of purer ideas; its coherence and emphasis on integration helps to bring to light the yet unborn conceptions. Thus its role is strictly obstretic, not genuinely procreative. But in the act, it may be tempted to interfere upon the natural process, and engender notions with minimal contact to the instictive and spontaneous representations of reality in the primal, “mythical” stratum. Such notions are abortions, and their aberrant articulation in a formally coherent system, is mere artificiality. Deductions drawn within such artificiality and their apparent necessity are at bottom simply sophisms, ‘‘mental cramps”. The ailment in the heart of classicism may be thus put succinctly: perfection lies at the brink of an abyss; the optimal state, as Hippocrates pithily observed in relation to bodily conditions, is peculiarly prone to falls. Too much definiteness is just as destructive of harmony as too little; there are two opposite failures against natural order, chaos and artificiality. Classicism was felt to be dangerously positioned, on the verge to err towards the second evil, indeed thus erring in certain fields. The drive behind such self-destructive tendency was rationalism, the requests, that is, of a Reason whose ties to things appeared to be loosened; of a Reason which instead of consisting in the principle of objective coherence in the World as we perceive it, was becoming the organon of a noetic consistency operating in a vacuum of reality. Nothing is more characteristically illustrative of what is at stake, than the two parts of Parmenides’ philosophical poem. It turns out that Aristophanes’ choice of Socrates as the arch-sophist was profound indeed. Enlightment and Rationalism are always intimately connected. Science also of one kind or another is drawn in. And in fact, there gradually prevailed in old Academy an obsession with mathematics and mathematical principles to the detriment of all other topics, even though, as Aristotle observed, it was all the same maintained that the study of numbers and magnitudes was conducted as a subsidiary, and on behalf, of those other subjects. That was pythagoreanism infected by the parmenidean strict rationalism; which effected a sort of scientification of the mathematical symbolism peculiar to the former. It was also an

intermediate step towards the sceptical stand of the Platonic school in the coming age. The inherent impetus towards Return in an expansive age (the inward movement complementary to the outward one in the Stoic róro¿) assumed thus the form of a variegated but persistent general Reaction against the preceding philosophical classicism, and, indeed, of a significant reversion to archaic conceptual modalities. Under such a perspective the overall picture of post-alexandrian thought-habits becomes more coherent and meaningful, and divergent tendencies on the surface prove again and again to stem from the same underlying basic trends. Starting with “father Parmenides”, the expurgated intellectual activity of man, consciousness purified of all intermixture with unreflective representations of reality, was elevated to the position of ultimate arbiter of truth. It is a fact that such over-reaching reason could not be maintained as absolute criterion of reality. With Plato begins the laborious endeavour to reconstitute the shattered edifice of the preclassical mentality within the orbit of the rationalistic principle. Considerable damage and distortion has been suffered meanwhile under the initial impact of that eleatico-socratic inroad of agressive, puristic, demythologized thinking. Much has to be left out in the new construction, consequently. Yet the inalienable Greek factors operated slowly but persistently within the new framework, extending it so that it could cover as much of the initial datum as possible. Such a gigantic inflation of Reason labouring to contain without remainder the full wealth of reality as experienced in a culture, would finally reign in Neoplatonism. But this was to be in the declining, hibernal years of the ancient World. Hellenistic philosophy reacted directly and forcibly; it stroke to the roots. Intellectual Reason (tó voetv) was dethroned from its isolated preeminence. There is in man a natural faculty of validly apprehending reality as he encounters it, through sensations, perceptions, conceptions, imaginations and affections. Whether in the apprehensions themselves there reside the marks and signs of perfect or defective adequacy to the reality grasped (as in the Stoic kataAnnatixai yavraciaı and the opposite); or whether by the side of évdpyeta there is need of comparison with other perceptions, particular or general, for an assured estimate of the reality involved (as in the Epicurean pavtactixai ¿mPolai, with their mpoopévov, Exipaptupovpevov, ávtiuaptupoúnevov, Sotatbuevov); in effect both sects championed a healthy acceptance of the general validity of Man-toWorld natural correlations; they rehabilitated implicit faith in human responses to external stimuli, and took once more normal, critical experience as cornerstone of theory. The recherché naivety in the audaciously proclaimed Epicurean doctrine of perceptual innocence (Sun’s real size just about its apparent); as well as the sophisticated intransigence of the Stoic lucubrations on representations that command safe assent (Sphaerus deceived about faked pomegranates replied that he assented not to that they are pomegranates, but to that it is plausible that they are pomegranates); both stem from the deep experience that there is a single

World of which we are part; that it is the one we sense and feel and grasp by means of our entire comprehensive apparatus; that it is intrinsically knowable in the given obvious way since it is impossible that a part should be systematically deceived as to the “signs” received from the rest of the whole. The Stoics set, ex professo, great store on unperversed common notions, the spontaneously formed ideas or conceptions of reality in all minds of sound constitution and healthy condition, without meditation, reflection, bias or corrective examination of a philosophical nature. It is evident that such common notions (just as epicurean commonsensical understanding) express primarily fundamental experiences, basic world-attitudes, of the people and culture in question, and are Jess involved with actual universal acceptance. In the Garden, ordinary conceptual apparatus and ordinary thinking provide the inviolable guidelines and firm foundation of philosophical inquiry, and Reason is in essence just the capacity and function of EmAoyiouôc, of comparing, contrasting and connecting naturally evoked sensual and mental apperceptions; and there is little more left for logic to perform, than to unravel conceptual perplexities due to nothing more important or objective than multiple significations of expressions (ë61ouoi AéEewv), normally easily comprehensible. Epicurus, with Everyman, laughs at the tykexaAvuévos and such like sophisms: generally, totam dialecticam et contemnit et inridet. Similarly, Stoicism defends cuvijera. The adequate analysis of the varying and intricate usages of words is revelled upon by the Stoics in their hairsplittingly accurate distinctions of shades of meaning; one is repeatedly reminded of ordinarylanguage-philosophy practices and informal-logic systematizations. Thus logic, in its stricter acceptation (apart from the Theory of Knowledge and Meaning), that formidable edge of every rationalistic revolution, is reduced by the Epicureans to the barest elements, and with a chiefly negative and subsidiary task set to it. The Stoics shared initially the same cavalier attitude towards it, but Chrysippus elaborated a thoroughly and immensely articulate system conceived as coming closer to the natural processes of thought than dialectical and Aristotelian formalism. Firstly, it was a theory of a certain incorporeal kind of entity (Azxtá), and thus a proper part, and not an organon of philosophy. Secondly, it meticulously observed the first order facts of thought and language (cuvrjbera), in all their nuances, while organizing them in a coherent whole of strict connectedness; to save all the phenomena in a given field as they appear, when incorporating them in an absolutely unified system, a vast complexity of structure is required (notable examples are the Ptolemaic system in Astronomy, the Herodianus grammatical corpus, Galen's integrated theory of Medicine). Thirdly, Logic was put side by side with Grammar and Rhetoric; they are all concerned with the expression of Reality in thought and language. And fourthly, most importantly, Reason as expressed reality is founded on Reason as a metaphysical principle, as a physical] potency, as reality itself. What more drastic safeguards of its validity could we possess, but also of its naturalness? Puristic parmenidean Reason threatened the integrity of the Greek experience as a total phenomenon. It was rendered innocuous by being inoculated onto

nature. We came automatically back to the world of archaic, presocratic philosophy, with Reason the flower of mythico-symbolic speculation. Functionally, it consists in the principle of coherence, and thus, conceived metaphysically and organically, is made (as spermatic Reason, as universal semen), the Law of all reality in its concatenated cohesion. This presupposes the dominance of the biological model in the derivation of Reality. And indeed Greek dualism and orphico-pythagorean speculations on it, are recaptured in the Stoic theory of first Principles and Cosmogony. Pure activity and Sheer Passivity are conceptual equivalents of the aboriginal pair of Olympian Malehood and Chthonic Femineity, just as the Pythagorean [lépac and “Anetpov were. Their conjugation interpreted as thorough interpermeation constitutes the primal reality, the heracleitean fire, whose eternally recurring lighting and extinguishing causes the cosmic cycles of World-creation and World-destruction. This fire is made the seed of the World, like the pythagorean One. The elements are produced in ionic fashion by transformation the one from the other. The harmonious World is weaved out of their orderly intermixture. The divine Breath as Spirit pervades everything, sustaining it into its appropriate existence. Virtually the entire band of relevant presocratic ideas and beliefs parade before oure eyes in this schema of basic Stoic physics. The Pythagorean construal of the primeval Greek dualism led to the understanding of kevóv (and together with it of yòpa and xpóvoc, the, so to speak, empty receptacles of things and movements) as äreıpov. By contrast, the finite and determinate was conceived as the fullness of being and, in an archaically conditioned context, as the plenitude of corporeality. Taking this pleroma of existence as a thoroughly unified whole we have Stoicism; considering it broken into particles we discover Epicureanism. That cosmic body of the former is impregnated with life and might, is instinct with divinity; the physical atoms of the latter are freed from the mathematical encumbrances burdening the classical partless minimals. In the spring-time of the Greek world, in its prime of youth, in a blooming and spirited age, a highly this-wordly life-experience, full of vigour and immediacy, well-content and joyous, accepted the World and things in it as ensouled body, as divine presence; it glorified intense life in it as a precious gift. Nothing perhaps is more significant’ in the twin leading hellenistic Schools than their emphasis on the corporeality of being; for the inalienable true mark of being is its ability to act, its capacity to suffer, while the incorporeal is unable to fill either role in the least. Two are essential notes of Godhead for the archaic mentality: Power and Blessedness. Gods are the mighty potencies that weave the cosmic fabric; their archetypal perfection in their respective fields on the other hand, ensures to them undisturbed serenity and inherent happiness. Depending on whether the former or the latter feature predominates, the divinity assumes a more pronounced chthonic or olympian aspect respectively. The prototype of power resides in immanent causality: nature always works from within, organically; it is only arti-

sanship that works from without, mechanically. We thus obtain the Stoic idea of godhead.? Blessedness on the other hand, although basically secured by perfection itself, nonetheless, and in the face of a triple restraint, needs some measure of aloofness in order to be preserved unruffled. For there are first the awsome decrees of dark fate to which even gods (even the homeric Zeus) have to yield. Then there are secondly the often contrasting requirements of other gods, other perfections and other blissfulnesses to be cared for and upheld. Finally, cosmic realities exist, crucially chthonic, that are pollution to the olympian immortals, who turn their resplendent eyes away from them, unable to participate, unable to succour, too. This operative facet of the greek, deeply religious experience, a certain distancing complementary to the divine in-being, was seized upon by Epicurus and absolutized. His gods are the homeric Olympians improved, as he thought. They are blessed spectres of beauty and joy, living unconcerned and untroubled in happiness everlasting. Both positive hellenistic sects accepted fullheartedly the given actual religion and endorsed its practices. This was no mere stance; we saw that they really sought to express genuine demands of archaic Greek religious experience. It is also significant that they both resolutely turned against what we may call astralism: the idea that the celestial regions are of a radically different character than the sublunar realm; and that they are somehow closely associated in nature to divinity. The belief, of an oriental ultimately origination, was, curiously enough, excessively elaborated in the classical times (recall the fifth-element theory); it was indeed associated to the mathematization of reality propagated by later mathematical Pythagoreanism and to the implicit belief that the more mathematical a field, the higher it stands in the scale of existence. Astronomy as physical mathematics was paradeigmatic in this respect. Hellenistic philosophy reverted to old-type explanations of the celestial phenomena, which made them similar to the atmosphaeric ones; all were ueréwpa: the peril to the unity of the World was averted. Epicurus even spoke of avépanodwdeic dotpodoywv tezvitetat the “artisanship of astronomers fit for slaves”, and roundly condemned the use of organs in settling scientific questions. It seems that he considered the matter as not only one of truth, but of interest as well; astronomy is a threat to Hellenism — and to philosophy, since only Greeks can properly philosophize. And in general, the Garden set a determined face against all science, all fashionable naıdeia of the age, all presumed knowledge that detracts from the simplicity, genuineness and truth of untwisted experience in a natural condition and setting. Epicurus’ paradeigmatic case of a myth meant pejoratively is the essential presupposition of science: the reduction of a field of similar phenomena to a single explanation, the renunciation of multiple causality. The Stoa would, on the other hand, restructure science on a large scale consonantly to principles in tune and with affinity to the archaic mentality; a striking example, outside the strictly philosophical disciplines, is provided by the pneumatic school in Medicine; another offers Pergamene philology with its decided anti-alexandrine stand, where, characteristically, against the formal order imposed on grammar, lan-

guage and literature by the peripatetically inspired scholars of the Egyptian capital (ávaloyia), it espoused in effect the principle of natural growth (av@padia). There is a deep felt convinction in the Greek soul that man is meant for a divine status; and that tangible realities of this status are achievable in this life. Thus in Homer men are like Gods in their natural perfections of body and mind; extent of power and immortality alone elevating the former far above the latter. The wise man in both Stoicism and Epicureanism does not cede even to Zeus preeminence regarding blessedness of life; the difference being one of duration. In Orthodoxy, the true ascetic may here and now, as angel on earth, physically contemplate the uncreated triunic lightnings, the eternal divine activity in itself. Three versions of one experience. Furthermore: happiness must be, it was felt, a necessary entailment of perfection. In archaic times, specifically, wisdom, and a harmonious life of ease, accomplishments and their unimpeded exercise, delight and satisfaction, endowments of natural perfection and their enjoyment in oneself and others within the strict bounds of a close-tied human environment — were for the Greek mind quintessential constituents of happiness. But the advent of classical enlightment finally undermined the foundations upon which the possibility of their fulfilIment depended. The spontaneous, original unity of the required and necessary elements was disrupted. The wise, the beautiful, the good could no longer be normally, so to speak, happy by right, nor could the man of gratification in excellence be automatically blessed and contented. On the contrary. Such as by natural advantage, human industry and divine grace moved along paths of archaic virtue, would certainly meet increased tribulation, hindrance and rebuff, attrition and frustration. To save the reality or idea of the initial combinations, radical and perhaps desperate measures were needed. The Ethics of the two rival, positive sects provided them. The fantastic imperviousness of the Stoic wise men, or the secure, accumulated possession of pleasure — fountain heads on the part of the Epicurean one, was the answer. The perfection that ensures and safegrounds happiness is, for both schools, really wisdom. Without it man is irretrievably condemned to a life of imfathomable misery and wretchedness, compared to which the condition of the irrational animals appears innocent and paradisaic. We once more plunge into the world of archaic experience. To penetrate the secrets of the cosmic nexus to whatever degree permissible, to recognize the working of the several hidden potencies in each particular case, and to correctly identify them according to their involvement in it, are achievements of the apprehensive faculty of soul with a paramount practical bearing. The ability to see through appearances into the divine laws of the World is a theoretical excellence in man, but also enables us to move circumspectly in life, so as not to infringe upon the unalterable decrees. Morality is a question of prudence; there is no sin but error (4udptnpa), no probity but success and achievement (katép@wpa). Prudence, on the other hand, is but applied wisdom. Real knowledge is the royal road to happiness. Epicureanism utilized even the corresponding litterary vehicle of the archaic mentality, gnomology

i.e. teaching by precepts and aphorisms. The excellence of the soul was not yet rigidly separated into theoretical and practical compartments, nor into artistic and moral sections. The unity of wisdom as mental perfection presupposed the unity of mind. This unity was disrupted in classical times by the bi- or three-partite theory of soul. Chrysippus’ monumental attempt to hold fast by the archaic, religious and poetical understanding of the mental principle in man, of the psychic apprehensive and passive faculties, is one of the most telling moments in hellenistic philosophy; it is a veritable tour de force that raised, expectedly, violent opposition. The rational and irrational parts or faculties of the soul are identical. What is affected by passions, what desires and wills, is the same with what perceives, conceives, thinks; the principal part of the soul (tó nyeuovixèôv) possesses the characteristic functions of representation (pavtacia), assent (ovykatéBeoic), impulse (Spy), reason (Aöyoc). Passion is excessive reaction to a situation, that would not objectively correlate to it, and thus an error. As there is no psychic state or movement without assent, the error is, or involves, one of assent, and thus of judgement. Passion is a deformed Aóyoc, so to speak a faulty judgement, a miscarriage of the rational principle in us: not an inability to overcome the irrational, but a failure to be itself disposed commensurately to the obtaining situation, at bottom a diagnostic error, a deficiency in the pneumatic cardinal tone. Matter as absolute passivity is incapable of causing or occasioning evil according to the Stoics. For the archaic consciousness, the content of cosmic lawfulness is determined by the nature and character of the gods and their pregnant natural symbolism. But divinity is full of opposition, —opposition conjugate, fertile, complementary or balancing in the cosmic scale— yet replete with fatal consequences for man as partia] existence. Man is aware that he may well escape unscathed from the world-creative antagonism of the divine forces, but he can also succumb to their violent fury. This the archaic Greek accepts, joyfully in the beginning, wearily afterwards. In the initial exhilaration there is an implicit sense ofparticipation; in the latter fatigue there predominates the feeling of detachment. These attitudes, apparelleled in a reflective dress, present themselves as Stoic and Epicurean dispositions respectively. They are the evident projections in the moral sphere of the corresponding conceptions in theology; power and involvement versus bliss and disengagement. The reflective character of a late age emerges clearly in the requirement of a criterion in action such as that in theoretical knowledge. The role of practical criterion is played by the hellenistic theories of the End (téA0c) of life. For the Stoic, cohesion is the ultimate law of reality; as in physics and rational thought, so in action and ethics. The more integrated a system, the more natural it must be; for in an artificial organization, however elaborate and cunning, nature is bound to break through somewhere as anomaly and incoherence. Thus life organically unified and congruous must therefore be a natural life. The end (téA0c) is tò SpoAoyoupévac Cijv, which entails really 6poAoyovpévwg ty quoet Cv.

And this implies living in harmony with the cosmic Law, and so collaborating in the fashioning of the world, while it simultaneously refers to the fulfillment of the inner drives of one’s own nature and to its perfection. The criterion leads normally just to where it is meant to lead; it is not so much employed in deciding a question as in justifying a given solution; yet it rounds up and tightens salient factors of this solution. In the Garden, too, the adopted criterion-tékoc, pleasure, operated upon by thought, conducted to the ideal of a life of ease and contentment, of relaxation and satisfaction smooth and stable, of tranquil relishing of the greek felicities, such as an archaic man of undév dyav and rav pétpov ápiorov and yv@dı cavtov and Ad@e Biaoag would envisage; with a cardinal difference: that Epicurean theory of reality should render such a life impregnable to outside assaults of fortune or man. With the resurgence of the archaicizing tendencies in hellenistic thought-currents, classical philosophies recede into the background and assume a conspicuously negative and secondary role. We can thus understand the remarkable eclipse of Aristotelianism: Peripatos is now chiefly occupied with physiognostical studies and much given to litterary or scholarly pursuits; its adherents seem reluctant to move on the grand philosophical scene. The disappearance of Aristotle’s library with his commentaries has later to be invoked in explanation of the astounding neglect. As to the Academy, its transformation in the course of a few decades presents one of the more curious phenomena in the history of Ideas. How can a School of combined abstruse speculation, mythical and poetical tenor, and dialectical expertise, appear satisfied with a merely sceptical position, however eloquently and dexterously sustained, and restrict itself to a criticism of positive, especially Stoic, doctrine much in the way of those socratically conditioned Megarian or Eretrian obstructors of Aristotle, —much constitute a singular «mystery, unless we assume that it was unable to cope with the much stronger injection of archaic naturalism which was imperatively requested. It should be however noted that academic or pyrrhonian scepticism in final effect substituted the power of custom over that of reason, and in this way indirectly subserved the way of perennial and original greek experiences and beliefs. Old academic transcendentalism clashed with the robust sense of reality, first hand or evoked, and the paramount demand for immanent idealism so characteristic of Hellenism (cf notes excursus II). Aristotelianism, on the other hand, though detailed and operational in its analysis of the nature of things, including man’s world, was conducted with an apparatus and in a manner considerd much too formal and rationalistic. The leading and active drives, however, operated now differently and led elsewhere. Hellenistic thought appears resolved to revitalize itself by drinking once more from the pristine springs where philosophy was born and first grew; it shows being more congenial to, more at home with, the archaic world; it manifestly wants to come closer to Nature, to be thoroughly reborn in her embrace. It continued the development of what was common stock to the preceding periods, but reacted decisively against the classical enterprize to restructure Hellenism

according to emancipated Reason, in an intellectual spirit and with an otherwordly orientation. But that reaction wanted to suppress rather than to sublate; while in fact it furthered attitudes of enlightment, and extensively employed the new rationality, whose effects it deplored, rejected and combated. A contradiction thus worked at its very heart. Compared to the wealth and wholeness of throbbing life in archaic world-feeling, and of the tragic struggle of classical consciousness to maintain and, if possible, enhance the integrity of human lifeforms, both positive hellenistic alternatives appear strained, one-sided, and, what is anathema to them, rather artificial. Between cool, elaborate simplicity and pathetic, single-minded preciosity, they well reflect and illustrate the general cultural climate of the period. Paradoxicalness and provocativeness in them by the side of declared faith in common notions and common sense, are signs of irritation and frustration, even if upheld as tokens of robust digestion. They may even degenerate to mere postures, That the work of hellenistic thought could only be done with affectation and mannerism, laboured dexterity and effete sophistication, contrived simplicity and bizarre realism —is the predicament of a post-classical era. That it was also done without convincing overall naturalness and integration was its fatal final fault. What was highlighted-is preciously important and genuinely Greek. Yet the victory of hellenistic thought was pyrrhic. Already at the end of the period, and within its own bosom, the classical momentum is resumed, and will bring to light in time systems of vast articulation under the principle of inflated Reason. But once the original unity is broken, there seems to remain only the choice between strong parts or weak wholes, between stiffness and resignation. Could it be that even the Stoic stance was ironically, in historical perspective, a fight against fate? NOTES 1. EXCURSUS I: ON THE HYBRIS OF LIMITATION AND ORDER Greek Dualism was founded on a World-experience that can be fundamentally encapsulated in the view that there are two ultimate principles of reality; that they correspond to the cosmic antithesis of Heaven and Earth, to the biological opposition between Male and Female, to the religious differentation of the Olympian from the Chthonic, to the archetypal contrasted poles of dark Root and luminous Bloom; and finally, that these principles, although contraries in themselves, must cooperate in reciprocal adaptation and consequent indisoluble and stable communion in order for the World as we find it to exist. This last aspect of Dualism was signified by the Mystery of the Sacred Marriage (“lepdz Fános) and revealed. according to the Stoics. in the doctrine of the neccssary co-existence and thorough mutual co-extension and inter-penetration (tantamount to a perennial coition) of the active with the passive first principles. (Cf. Chrysippus SVF Il 1071-1075). The inseparable conjugation of Limitation and Infinity constitutive of the Universe as a stable and orderly Whole, is expressed in a cosmic Law of Harmony, whereby the necessary collaboration of the two principles is achieved without detriment to their just respective prerogatives; on the contrary, their distinct appropriate jurisdiction must precisely remain intact if their total intermingling is going to be maximally operative and effective. That Law of harmonious convergence and confluence is often violated by uncotrollable, overwhelming outbursts of the chaotic dynamism of Infinity. But

there is also an opposite transgression on the part of excessive and, thus, artificial limitation; this is the Hybris of Order. In the Classical Age, three major tendencies (with more or less degree of realization according to the particular case) may be identified as illustrating and testifying to the commission of such an Hybris (Cf. A.L. Pierris, First Principles etc. 2nd volume). They are: first, the mathematization of Philosophy; second, an increased patriarchalization of basic stances and sentiments, accompanied by some equivalent undervaluation as to the contribution of the second, maternal principle; and thirdiy. the substitution of an antagonistic bi-polarity of existence in the place of the archaic conjugational Dualism: the adoption of an adversative, instead of a collaborative duality of first principles. A. SYMBOLIC AND MATHEMATICAL PYTHAGOREANISM: EARLY HISTORY The progressive scientification of Pythagoreanism led eventually in Old Academy to that mathematization of Metaphysics (as the general theory of Reality) of which Aristotle pungently complains, Meraph. 992432: GAA yéyove tà nadrjkata toig viv y piAocopia, paoxôvrov GAwv ya pw aura Sei rpayuateveodai. The type of metaphysical interpretation meant is succinctly described by Theophrastus Meraph. 6a23 sqq: viv 5" of ye noAkoi péypt tivds EADdvtes Katanavovtal, Kabanep Kai of tó Ev xai tiv döpıatov Sudda nowobvtes: roùs yap dpiBuods yevvijoavies Kai ra Enineda Kai rá odpata ozedóv Tal napakeinovcıv Anv doov éparrôuevor Kai rocoëro póvov Snlobvtes, Gu ta piv and tic dopiotov Suddoc, ciov tén0¢ Kai xevóv Kai Gxeipov, ta 5” and tav dp:@pòv Kai toù Evög, ciov yugi) Kai GAA" drra — ypévov 8° Gua Kai obpavôv Kai Etepa by nAciw: tot 5° oùpavob répi Kai tüv Aowndv oùdepiav En noroüvran pveiav. This mathematization did not characterise early Pythagoreanism; v. A.L. Pierris op. cit. pp. 133 sqq., esp. nn. 52, 55, 57, 58. It is significant that Orphic writings are insistently ascribed to early Pythagoreans like Kerkops and Brontinus. Of considerable weight were also in the beginning medicinophysiological speculations in natural philosophy, as with Democedes and Alcmaeon. No doubt prominent were also curiosities and inquiries into the nature and properties of numbers and magnitudes; but the emphasis was squarely laid on mathematical symbolism (cf. A.L. Pierris op. cit. nn. 57, 53, 52. Cf. the extreme position of Proclus In Eucl. p. 22. 9 Friedlein = FV 44B 19); and the cosmological applications were startling and differently oriented, as one may observe e.g., in-Petron's theory of 183 Worlds disposed along the sides of a hyper-cosmic equilateral triangle (FV 16). The testified distinction and opposition between äxovauarikoi and paBnparixoi among the Pythagoreans is revealing in this connexion, and confirms the resistance offered by the older generation of them to the novel spirit of stricter mathematical handling of philosophical questions practised by the younger generation. (This, 1 think, must be the message to be drawn from the reputed, but otherwise naive, difference in the attitude and type of instruction adopted by Pythagoras in teaching men in their maturity and in their prime youth respectively, offering his wisdom symbolically to the former, scientifically to the latter. lamblichus, De Vita Pyth. p. 51.18 - 52.2 Deubner; id. De Communi math. scientia, p. 77. 7-18 Festa. It is explicitly stated that such difference of presentation originated the divergence of the two sects). The dxovopatixoi maintained that they alone were the true heirs of genuine Pythagoreanism, discrediting the others as non-pythagoreans; while the naßnparıkoi, acknowledging the pyghagorean pedigree of their opponents, proclaimed their superior knowledge of reality an esoteric construal of the founder's meanings. lamblichus De Comm. math. scientia p. 76.16 sqq: Avo 8° toti tic “Iradixfig piaogogpiac sión. xadovpivng Se FuBayopixijg. Sto yap hv yévn Kai rüv peraxerpilonévov aúriv, of piv axovopatixoi, of Se pe@npatixoi. tobtav Sè of pév dkoucpatixoi @uoXoyouvto Mudayéperor elvar ind tav Et£pwv, robe Sè pabnpatixods odto1 oby duolóyouv, oùte trv npaypateiav adrüv elvaı Tubayépou, ahaa "Innäcov... of dé repi rá pabrjuara tav TTudayopelov todtous te ÖnoAoyouaı ceiver MuBayoprious, kai abtoi paatv Ett päkkov, xai & Aéyouaty abroi din@fi elvas (The similar text in lamblichus de Vita Pyth. p. 46.23 sqq. Deubner, must be corrected accordingly to 46.26 toutwvi $e of piv dxovoyatixol... 47.1 tods Sì uaënuarikoëc etc. The transmitted text pa@npatikoi... ükouspartıkoüg may not be merely scribal error. Immediately before this account of the two sects there is talk of a division between genuine followers of Pythagoras and exoteric imitators. voùc uëv (of those approved, tHv tyxpidéviwv p. 46.3) yvroious elvar Eveatiicato, tobs SÈ InAwräs

tovtav SnAododaı EvouoBétnoe, p. 46.16-7, the former possessing the entire plenitude of the pythagorean symbolic lore (including tà titmtata dxpodpata 46.7), the rest being content with less potent wisdom, and relaxed.participation to the rigours of the community 46.18-2). Despite the fact that this division is distinguished from the one in question (xat’ äAAov 32 ad tpönov, 46.23), it is understandable that in after times one would think by analogy the “mathematicians” as being involved in more intimate knowledge of reality and pythagorean secrets than the “symbolists”. But who can doubt that the situation was exactly the reverse initially?) Hippasus was considered as the founder or, at any rate, the de facto originator of the mathematical sect; Iamblichus de Comm. math. scientia p. 76.20-22 Festa; de Vita Pyth. 47.1-3 Deubner. He was accused of divulging to the non-initiated multitude (i.e. of publicizing) important mathematical discoveries in the field of incommensurable (irrational) magnitudes and of the regular solids, and indeed with a view to appropriating them, as a result of which he encountered the visitation of divine anger and human opprobrium alike, being cast away as a dead body from the original pythagorean community (v. the texts in FV 18A4 taken together). Hippasus was further involved as a pioneer in studies on proportion (A15) and on natural harmonics (A12-4). It is clear that the pa@npatixoi were a splinter party of mathematizing pythagoreans, which grew in importance with the passage of time, and finally predominated in intellectual circles as exponents of true pythagoreanism. The schism begun with, or rather was occasioned by, Hippasus. That Iamblichus registers him with the leading axovopatixoi (de anima apud Stobaens Eci. 1 49, 32 p. 364.8 Wachsmuth; in Nicom. arithm. p. 10. 20 Pistelli; cf. Syrianus in Arist. Metaph. Comm. p. 902231 Usener) rests probably (unless it consists in a mere late error of deduction) on a clever move by some “mathematicians” to discredit the acousmatics by associating them to the traitorous, secret-breaking and even plagiarizing (v. lamblichus de Vita Pyth. 52.5-6 Deubner = de comm. math. scientia 77,21-3 Festa) Hippasus: the splinter group that has now become the mainstream of classical pythagoreanism projects back the contemporary situation by making of the old faithful majority a heretical sect. What was needed was a complete refashioning of the Hippasus case. After all Hippasus by the side of his mathematical inquiries and preoccupations was markedly involved in a natural philosophy approximating ionian monistic element —- puciodoyic (FV 18A1 and 7-8), as well as in orphic mysticism (A3). His fault was the emphasis which he purposefully or indirectly laid on mathematical science; and this is exactly what the éxovopatixoi, as the old pythagorean orthodoxy, indicts him for: the research field and method of the “mathematicians” was not pythagorean, but hippasian; oùdé thy npayuareíav aürüv eivaı flu8ayépou, 424° "Innacov (lamblichus De comm. math. scientia p. 76.21-2F = de vita Pyth. 47.2-3D). But according to the reshaped account, Hippasus was guilty precisely of the opposite crime: by cultivating and propagating mathematical inquiries, he wanted to give the impression that such occupation and its fruits was his own contribution, while it all really was, it is alleged, due to Pythagoras himself (lamblichus de comm. math. scientia 77.21-3 F = de vita Pyth. 52.5-6D). In this version Hippasus was condemned for violating secrecy and plagiarizing, not for instigating or occasioning a different direction in the School: he was not a heretic, as with the former and original account, but a renegade. And who else could have made this transformation but the mathematical sect, whose interests it furthered? The new version was taken over by neopythagorean circles, and thus found its way into Iamblichus, together with the disclosing, and otherwise frustrating, piece of alleged information regarding the relationship of Hippasus with the acousmatics. This latter intelli-. gence is indeed embedded in a context of decidedly neopythagorean construals of pythagoreanism (FV 18All). The importance of the mathematical sect originated with Hippasus was enhanced more and more as mathematical science progressed. A marked development occured with the contributions of Hippocrates Chian and Theodorus the Cyrenean in the second half of the V" century. lamblichus de comm. math. scientia p. 77.24 - 78.1 F: Entówxe Sè tá pa@rpara, inci LEnvéxSnoav Sicc0i mpodyovte póldicta, Ozódwpós te 6 Kupnvaiog xai *Irroxpárns è Xiog. Cf. Proclus In primum Euclidis Comm. p. 66.4-8 Friedlein, drawing from Eudemus’ History of Geometry (Simplicius in Phys. 60.22). It is not accidental that in the next generation the predominance of the mathematising orientation is established more picturesquely by Eurytus, but solidly and permanently in all probability by Archytas. (Cf. FV 47B1 p. 432.7-9: tabra yap tá paBripata doxoüvrı fipev ddeAped, Mepi yap aderped rá

tú Övrog npwtiota duo cldea tav ávactpopáv Exeı, i.e. number and magnitude). Philolaus appears to stand on the verge of the changing orthodoxy (cf. A.L. Pierris op.cit. n. 52, p. 155). It is revealing that Archytas, Eurytus and Philolaus were considered to be imitators of the true pythagoreans and not genuine followers of Pythagoras, according to the before mentioned distinction between yvñotoi {or Mludayópero1) and CnAwrai (or Hubayopiotai}; v. Tamblichus de vita pyth. 46.3 sqq. and 143.7 -10 Deubner. The report on those three eminent mathematizers came from Diodorus Aspendius, who was admitted to the closed community by Aresas a successor of Pythagoras in the leadership of the School (op. cit. 143.2-7 D.). Evidently therefore the Schoo! Orthodoxy was persistently acousmatic, even in the days of affliction following the downfall of the pythagorean political domination in Great Greece. Hippasus was, significantly, prominently involved in the attack against the stricter regime (op. cit. p. 138, 23). In later pythagoreanism (cf. FV 46A4 on Opsimus and Lysis), just as in the Old Academy, the mathematizing tendency held full sway, without ever of course dissociating itself completely from the symbolic moment. B. PATRIACHALISM AND MATERNAL CONTRIBUTION IN PROCREATION Aeschylus construed Orestes’ fate on the grandest cosmic scale as a singular manifestation of the contrasting claims and jurisdictions between Erinnys and Apollo, between terrible chthonicity and resplendent olympianhood. The former espoused the cause of maternal rights based on consanguinity (tó Spatpov attaching son to mother, but absent from the husband-wife relationship; Eumenides 604-8; 211 sqq, 653-6), while the latter upheld paternal prerogatives in the propagation and affiliation of the offspring, in words astounding and overbearing (ibid. 658-61): oùk Zot prtnp À xexAnpévn téxvou toxetc, TPOPÖG SE KÜHATOG veoondpou' tixter 0” 6 Bpwioxkwv, Y 5° ünep Eévw Eévn Eawoev Epvog, dici pr) Pidyn Beds. (The same notion in Euripides, Orestes 552-6; cf. id. Inc. Fab. Fragm. 1064 Nauck”, where the predominance of the father in the affection and honour of the issue is asserted. Neither Aeschylus nor Euripides really shared in this view. For example Aeschylus in the very Eumenides forcefully advocated the necessity of a careful blending in society of the two cosmic parameters, olympian and chthonic). That true parenthoud consists really in fathership, whereas the mother provides basically the congenial, safe and nutritive environment for the development of the deposited paternal secretion into full being pre- and postnatally (thus reducing maternity into nursehood), was a provocative and alien idea in the Greek world. The popular sentiment was squarely against it, as may be gathered from the insistence of accounts (especially in Peloponnesus) relating to the perpetuation of Orestes" madness and his unmitigated persecution by the grim Erinnys, irrespective of apollonianly sanctioned purifications and judicial acquittals. Turning hostile hands against one's mother was a horror greater than the evil of the equivalent deed respecting the father (Aristophanes, Nubes, 1424-6 Bekker = 1443-5). To the euripidean phrase: äveu Sè natpög téxvov ob« ein not’ dv (from the above mentioned passage in Orestes, 554), somebody replied angrily: dvev SÈ untpéc, d xa@app” Eüpıriön; (sch. ad. loc. I p. 157.23-4 Schwartz; cf. Eustathius, Comm. in Odyss. 1498.57-60). Euripides had probably in mind the Aeschylean argument based on the birth of Athena without the probably (normal collaboration of a female partner, but the reaction is significant of the prevailing mentality, even if the anecdote is esoteric. The sentiment in the euripidean verse was corrected by the suppletion of its necessary) adjunct: ävev Sè untpög ob5é auAkafr téxvou (Clemens Alex. Strom. II, 142, 3 = Menander Fr. 1085 CAF III p. 264). The single parenthood of the father and the sheer nursehood of the mother was a specifically egyptian belief; Diodorus I, 80, 4: xa@éAou yap úre pad: tov natépa póvov altıov elvor tiig yevécews, mv Sè pnrépa tpoyñv Kai yépav rapéyeoBor 14 Bpéper. This was joined characteristical-

ly by the equally foreign idea that the fructiferous trees are male, ibid.: Kai tav dtvöpwv äppeva piv KaAovor tá xapropópa, Oñiea Se tà pr) pépovra tods xaproúc, ¿vevriws roïç "EAAnor. Indeed, the Greek conception as to the latter subject is quite the reverse, Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. III, 6:. oxcôdv Soa xaloücıv dppeva tHv ôpoyevüv Gxapna (cf. Plinius Nat. Hist. XVI $111). There was, naturally, a biological dimension in the controversy whose first litterary appearance we mark in Eumenides. The physiological question was whether the female contributed to the coriception otherwise than by supplying the appropriate place and conditions for the development of the embryon, that is whether there was feminine semen involved as well in procreation. Pythagorean medicine significantly affirmed the latter position (Alcmaion 24A13 and 14 = Censorinus de die Natali V 4 and VI, 4. From Alcmaeon we may safely extrapolate to Democedes and the Crotoniate medicine). Indeed Pythagoras himself is reported to have assumed the emission of semen by the female (Plutarchean Epit. V, 5, 1 = Diels Dox. Gr. p. 418.5 sqq). Reports of a contrary pythagorean doctrine (Anonymous Alexandri, Diog. Laertius VIII, 28 = Thesleff, The Pythagorean Texts of the Hellenistic Period, p. 235. 16 sqq; Metopos apud Stobaeus Flor I, 64 p. 21.20 sqq. Meineke = Thesleff op. cit. p. 119.14 sqq.) stem evidently from hellenistic neopythagoreanism. The hippocratic corpus testifies to the universal acceptation of the view in the medical world. (Cf. e.g. De gen. IV, 1; V, 1; VI, 1 etc.; De morbis IV, 1 etc.; De regim. I, 27, 1-2: où yap tó and tod dvipds pévov anoxpıdiv alEınov totiv, GARA Kai tó Gnd vic yuvarxós etc.; passim.). From the IV century, : Diocles from Carystus may be mentioned (Plutarchean Epit. V, 9, | = Diels Dox. Gr. 421.8 sqq.). Medical pucioAoyia maintained vigourously the natural equilibrium between male and female in procreation without detriment to the nature and privileges of either. A forceful argument against true parenthood for the feminine partner was based on its function as appropriate receptable and nurse for the deposited male sperm; a reasoning strenghened by the parallelism of animal generation to plant propagation especially by sowing seeds in the Earth. To counteract this line of though there is developed in de natura pueri XXII-XXVII and de morbis IV, 3 a botanical theory which ascribes to Earth heightened dynamic contribution not only in the development of plants, but in their identity. The Earth possesses multifarious potencies adapted to the multitude of possible forms of plant life; it is this power of the Earth to supply in proper measure what exactly is needed for the existence and development of each specific plant (that is, its own peculiar creative constitutive juice) which renders possible the evolution of an oak-tree out of an oak-seed. For without that power the seed could not grow into the corresponding plant but would either weither away or be transformed in accordance with the productive potencies of the earth into which it was sown: Eye: yap de ñ yñ Ev touty ôuvémac navroiag Kai dvapiBpous. “Oxdaa yap tv avr pista, nücıv ixudda napéyer dpoinv Exácto, oinv Kai abtd 16 pudpevov Ewut® dpoinv Kata ovyyevis Eyer, Kal Edel Exactov Und Tis yüg tpoprv, oiôv nep xai adró tati: ...ci yap py tobro obras elyev, odx div tyivero ta pudpeva Spoia totic: orépyooiv (de morbis IV, 3, 1). The female principle preserves the fertile multi-dynamism, the infinity of power, pertaining to the second member of the aboriginal Pair in archaic lopicomythical speculations. Philosophy followed initially suit to the universal sentiment of Hellenism. Parmenides (moving along the pythagorean circuit in his doxastic theory of the World) adopted the notion of feminine sperm (FV 28B16 esp. v. 1 in Caelius Aurelianus’ translation): femina virque simul Veneris cum germina miscent; v. A54c = Censorinus de die natali VI, 5; cf. A54a = Plutarchean Epit. V, 11, 2). So did Empedocles (v. Aristotle, De gener. anim. 722b6-17; Censorinus De die natali V, 4; VI, 6-7; cf. Plutarchean Epit. V, 11, 1; 4; cf. Hippocratic de regim. 1, 28; cf. Comm. in De gener. anim. p. 166.24 sqq.; 27.4 sq. Hayduck etc. = J. Bollack, Empedocle Il Frg. 642; 652). With Hippon, in the age of Anaxagoras, we have definite testimony to the relative derogation of the female role in conception: there is indeed, according to his view, feminine seed, but it is unproductive as it falis outside the uterus (this was based on erroneons anatomical observation, to the effect that the spermatic conduits in woman lead not to the womb but to the bladder); the woman’s contribution lies not in any properly uterine liquids with procreative power, but in the nurturing faculty of the womb (Plutarchean Epit. V, 5, 3: 7, 7 = FV 38A13 and 14). Diogenes Apolloniates denied the existence of female semen altogether (Censorinus de die nat. V, 4 = FV A27); the woman lacks according to him both the necessary causal factor (i.e. the inherent male warmth) and the

required anatomical formations (that is, involuted passages conducting to the appropriate generative organ) which can transform pure blood in the spermatic quintessense, the frothy, spirited Auid which gives name and substance to venereality (dppodioia FV A24; v. the detailed description of the system of veins by Diogenes in Aristotle, Hist anim. T.2. 511b30 sqq. = FV B6, where the properly spermatic ducts, the oxeppatitibes préfpes, are suppased to exist in men, while another distinct pair of more externally located veins lead to testicles and uterus alike correspondingly (512b!-8, where Bekker's punctuation is evidently the right onc). The demand for correct anatomical foundation of any propounded theory of animal procreation was emphatically reiterated. and exercised considerable influence, in the course of the development of Greek Medicine. Thus. Herophilus' detailed anatomy of the female organ (apud Galen IV 596 sqq. Kühn), taken over by Soranus (CMG IV 9. 14 sqa.), by holding that the conduits from the ovary in the woman, analogous to the male spermatic pores, led finally to the bladder, and thus emptied their content outside the womb, conditioned the assumption that feminine semen could play no role in generation, an idea forcefully repudiated by Galen since, as he insists, the feminine spermatic passages possess a definitely uterine outlet (cf. IV, 594 sq: 188; 536; 593 Kühn), It is disputable, and a major issue of interpretation. whether Anaxagoras shared the older view or upheld the novel theory. Cencorinus is explicit (de die natuli V, 48 = FV 59A107b): illud quoque ambiguam facit inter auctores opinionem, utrumne ex patris tantummodo semine partus nascatur, ut Diogenes et Hippon Stoicique scripserunt. an etiam ex matris, quod Anaxagorae et Alcmaconi nec non Parmenidi, Empedoclique et Epicuro visum est. Censorinus’ source(s) seems very sure of the matter: the theory ascribed to Anaxagoras as to the cause of greater or lesser similarity of the offspring to father or mother presupposes the two-sperm view (Censoriuns VI, 8 = FV 59A111b): Anaxagoras autem eius parentis faciem referre liberos indicavit, qui seminis amplius contulisset (Lactantius, de Opificio Dei Liber, XII, mentions the same view drawing on Varro, who followed in all probability Stoic syncretizing sources; thus the ascription uf this theory to the Stoics, too, in Plutarchean Epit. Y, 11, 3-4, is brought into sound reckoning). This conception corresponds to the simpler version of the general idea according to which the similarities and dissimilarities of the issue depend on the combinations and prevalencies effected by the intermingling in the uterus of the male and female semens. A simple and a more sophisticated construal of the idea are recorded by Aristotic, De gener. anim. À, 76926-b3. The latter account (769a28 sqq.) accepts the two-sperm theory. conceiving of each sex’ generative fluid as ravonepuia (all-seeds-mixture in potency of the fully-fledged multifarious actuality) - a characteristically Anaxagorean expression and conception. In view of these testimonies and clues the problematic aristotelian statement in De gener. anim. A, 763b30 sqq. should be interpreted accordingly. Aristotle there divides the theories as to the origin of the difference in sexes into two groups, the one holding the preexistence of the distinction in the spermatic Nuid itself, the other maintaining the subsequent genesis of the differentiation in the womb as a result of differing uterine conditions or relationships; the former view is thus referred to, 763b30-764al: paci yap oi pév Ev toig onéppaaty civar tabrnv rv évavriwoiv £000s. olov "Avalayöpas xai Erepor tüv puaroldóywv: yiyveodai te yap Ex tod äppevos tó onépue. rò Sé BñAu napézety tov rórov, Kai civar tò pèv dppev Ex tüv SeSudv TO HE OijAu Ex rüv dptotepay, kai tig borépag rà pèv dppeva Ev toi degtoic civar ta SE @rjica tv toig áprorepois. Clearly the three specific dactrines mentioned relate severally to Erepoı tüv puatokóywv gencrically, and not specifically to Anaxagoras simultaneously. The former of these suits demonstrably Diogenes Apolloniates. (Cf. M. Wellmann, Spuren Demokrits von Abdera in Corpus Hippocraticum, Archeion 11, 1929, p. 315). Hippon (or Hipponax) and, principally, Diogenes Apolloniates emerge thus as the first philosophical exponents of the novel idea, of egyptian growth originally, regarding the irrelevance, impotence or virtual non-existence of female semen in conception. Both philosophers have lived in Athens, and must have passed as modernists (cf. the Cratinean burlesque on Hippon FV A2, and his association with Diagoras from Melos and Theodorus from Cyrene. the “atheists”, by Clemens FV A8; 9; B2; Diogenes is reported to have narrowly escaped condemnation, evidently because of unorthodox interpretations of matters natural and divine: Al). In poetry the corresponding view regarding the real parenthood of the father alone alrcady appears within profound setting and under glorious attire in the Aesch+lean Oresteia (458 BC; v. Test. 654-b, TrGF 3 Radt). Maybe the occasion

for such drastic alteration in the traditional fundamental conception of male-female roles in procreation was the increased traffic and communication between Egypt and Athens which culminated in the disastrous anti-Persian Egyptian expedition (460-455 B.C.). But what really was taking place was the beginning of a hybris committed by the purer Olympian spirit (of order, harmony, glittering beauty and flowering excellence against root chthonicity. against irresistible might and being-productivity, against the sacred prerogatives of awsome Night and the horrendous majesty of fertile Darkness. The aeschylean warning in Eumenides, addressed to theself-awareness of blooming perfection, was indeed directed at the essential core of the development. C. TRANSFORMATIONS OF DUALISM In the transition from the early Greek conjugational dualism of complementarity between selfcentered and self-satisfied harmony on the one hand, and insatiable, ever-driving power in perpetual, teeming agitation on the other, between the closeness of luminous order and the openess of dark fertility; between stability and expansiveness, towards a zoroastrian type of adversative, irreconcilable dualism between hostile armies in unceasing war under the leadership of two arch-foes (Plutarch characteristicaliy comes closest to it, and indeed with reference to Zoroastrianism; cf. De {side et Osiride 369A - 370C; v. esp. 371A; De animae procr. 1014B. He utilized, however, the triple aristotelean division among form, matter and privation to rescue matter from intrinsic evil, and projected it back onto the platonic Timaeus); there lies the intermediate step where the supreme contrariety is construed as that between form-holding-together-existence and dynamic formlessness, between finitude and infinity. Tl&pag and "Aneıpov, as the early pythagorean principles of reality, represent that step (Cf. A.L. Pierris op. cit. pp. 132-4; n. 52). Within it, furthermore, there was operating another ‘derivative transformation along the general direction. The second principle, just as it moved from the {1) primeval, chaotic, procreative power of the Chthonic Female to the (2) potent inexhaustibility of the ”Axeıpov, so it continued, thence, to the (3) fecund ground of open possibilities rising up, so to speak, into disorderly never ending realizations, and, finally, under stricter mathematizing regime, to (4) a field of indefinite variation. While correspondingly, the first principle proceeded from the (1) form-imposing, law-enforcing, light-bearing celestial Male to the (2) irresistible shaping determinateness of the Tlépac, then to the (3) omnipotent, creative seal of actuality, ending with the (4) function of an operator of harmonious quantification. These correlative series of conceptual experiences were crystallized into four successive World-views, with a chronological rpwBüotepov in the last two phases indicative of a rigorous reaction against the victory of the mathematical School over the symbolo-accousmatic in pythagoreanism: (1) logico-mythical religious speculation as in orphism; (2) early pythagoreanism; (3) Aristotle; (4) late classical pythagoreanism of the “mathematizers”, Plato and Old Academy. What is in effect taking place in these series of modifications is a gradual derogation in the importance of the second principle as cosmic parameter. It was thus rendered possible to substitute for a dualistic analysis of existence, of all being and perfection in being, an opposition between superior and inferior forms of reality, between the perfect (the single, determinate normality) and the defective (the infinitely variagated, and thus indefinite in itself, failure from the norm), between the good and the bad. Dualism is given a decisively transcendental turn. The complementarity of equilevelled principles becomes subjugation and subordination of realms of reality. The good as perfection of substance maximally functional is definitely one and the same in each given case; the inferiority, defectiveness, uselessness which constitutes badness in the Greek world-experience is intrincically unstable, changeable, variagated, defined only as a spectrum of variation from the good, as more and less. (The criterion of uäAkov xai itrov, and related variations in intension or extension, as expressions for the Infinite is explicitly stated by Plato, Philebus 24e-25a, with reference to the Pythagorean doctrine of his age). The contrariety between Mépas and “Ancipov has been reduced virtually to the opposition between * AyaBôv kai Kaxóv. Thus Aristotle speaks of the ouotoıyia tüv dyadav (Eth. Nicom. A, 1096b6) or the suctoryia tod xa2.0d (Metaph. 1093 b13); he considers as pythagorean the doctrine that goodness belongs to (or falls under) finitude, just as badness to infinity (Eth. Nicom. B, 1106b29). More generally, Aristotle's teleological type of thinking induced him to ascribe the intro-

duction of the efficient cause in early philosophy (with, typically, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists) to the requirement of answering the question as to the Why of the well-being (eb kai KaAdc) or the opposite, besides accounting for the mere existence of things by invoking material cause(s). V. Metaph. 984b8 sqq., esp. 984b20-2 oi pév obv oütwg drokaufüvovtec (like Anaxagoras) Gua tod Kalas tiv aitiav dpyrv elvas tüv Svtwy Edeoav, Kai tiv toiabtnv Sev à xivyots bnépyer toic olor: and 984b32-985a 10: Enci Se Kai tavavtia toig dyaBoig ivévra Epaiveto Ev ti pooet, Kai où udvov taEtc kai tò kalöv GAAG xai Arafia Kai 16 aioypòv... obtws dA À 0g tig pràiav ciorveyxe Kai veixoc, Exdrepov Ékatépov aïriov rovrwy etc. (An unfair interpretation of Empedocles, soon reduced to difficulties which are innocently weighted on him by Aristotle 985221-29). The xaAobpevor Mudayoperor are mentioned just afterwards, since they are thought to consider number as both material and formal-efficient cause of reality (986a15-17). He also imputed on Plato the view which makes the two ultimate principles causes of well-being and unwell-being respectively; Metaphys. 988 a 14: Ext Sì mv tod ed Kai tod xax@g aitiav toic otoryeiorg üntöwxev (sc. Plato) Exatépots Exarépav. The transmutation of the primal duality of cosmogonical principles from the Male - Female speculative archetype, via the Hépag — “Aneipov conjugal antithesis, into the Norm - Abnormality (or Perfection - Defect) separative contrariety, and thus into the Good - Bad unbridgeable opposition, was instinct with further portentous consequences. For two very different polarities govern the basic experiences underlying alternative value-systems; they may be referred to as Iranian and Greek respectively. The former consists in the hostility between Good and Evil; the latter in the hierarchy between perfect and imperfect, might and impotency. Initially, pythagorean dualism could have been connected neither to the one nor to the other. Evil is damnation; imperfection is defect; no such principles as Perdition or Default exist in the archaic system. Equally absent from the realm of the first causes is etexrnal War of unmarriable powers; or, alternatively, unperturbed dominance of excellence over indigence. What we do have is the creative opposition of complementary principles whose fusion forms the World and sustains every single being in it. The “Axeipov possesses the positive existence of the iranian Evil without its depravity; it also is, in a sense, Want itself, but without the powerlessness and helplessness of the imperfection in the homeric acceptation of the meaning: it is plenary, albeit chaotic, dynamism of inexhaustible productivity. When the fermenting drives of culture-formation subside down in calmer equilibrium at a classical age, there grows a certain impatience with the illimitable expansiveness of the second principle, and a consequent tendency to feel and construe the unruly, disorderly but intensive field of dynamic fertility as more of a hindrance than a necessary factor in the cosmic harmony. Then is the time ripe for the reemergence of the second principle, from the imposed degradation in power, as a mighty force degraded now in value. And this was what happened maybe under persian influence, but according to an inner law of development, in high classicism. Plato exhibits the metamorphosis of the Ilépag — “Anetpov antithesis in the Norm — Deviation opposition, and also the simultaneous operation of the two contradictory construals of the chief value — contrariety as Good — Evil and as Well — Unwell. (The Norm -Deviation opposition as basic dualism in the Philebus sense is essentially connected with the understanding of the second Principle as more —and-less. The recognition that pGAAov Kai Arrov in all its varieties is the intrinsic character of Infinitude must be considered specifically Platonic on the strength of ample and definitive aristotelian testimony, which makes clear that Plato introduced the duplicity of Infinity, as it were an internal indeterminate dualism within the second Principle: Metaph. 987025, rd Sè ávti rob dreipou de Evdc dudda rorñoa (sc. tov Miáteova), tó $” änzıpov Ex peyádov xai pixpod, ror’ tdov, Physica Y, 203a15; 206b27; Metaph. 988a25; cf. Phys. 137417: Metaph. 987620; 988ail; cf. Phys. A, 209b33; this is the origin of the notion that Dyad is the other” nature (second principle) Metaph. 987b33; 988a13; 1083a12; Physica 192all; 4 rod avicou Suds, tod peydAov pixpod, Metaph. 108767; 10; and so the Indefinite Dyad e.g. Metaph. 108lal4. — The incoherence between the greek and zoroastrian platonic construals of the aboriginal Dualism was emphatically noted in antiquity, already by Eudemus apud Plutarch De animae procreat. 1015D: GAAG peta NOAAGV GAdwv Kai Evdnuos dyvoricas xateipoveverm tod MAdtwvos, tig obx ed tiv moXidxig bx" adrod pntépa Kai t10mvnv rpoonyopevopévny altiav xaxóv Kal épyrñv éropaivov- The theory. of the ten principles according to the Table of Syzygies (Aristotle Metaph. 986222

sqq.) represents the final stage in the development of original pythagoreanism towards the Platonic position, as is also evident from the inclusion of the * AyaBôv - Kaxóv contrariety in it. Cf. A.L. Pierris op. cit. 133-4, nn. 52-3. The Table is a systematization of the alemaconean empirical dualism by reduction to principles, and answers nicely the exigencies of a philolaic view regarding the nepoivovra and dxeipa. 2. EXCURSUS Il: IMMANENCE, DUALISM AND THEODICY The immanent casuality of divinity in cosmic processes, both at the initia cosmogonica and at the developed state of World-51axósuno:s and the absolute immanence of Divinity in the material substance of the World, is a characteristic Stoic doctrine recapturing speculatively the immediacy of the divine presence and manifestation (Empávera) in the World according to archaic experience. Diogenes Laertius VII 134: (two principles, tó moroùv and t6 néoyov) tó piv obv ndcyov civar tiv &norov obsiav, tiv DANY tó SÈ norobv tóv Zv abri Aöyov, tov Ozóv. robrov yap didiov dvra Sra ndong abrijc Snproupyeiv Exaora. 1 88 (Chalcidius Comm. in Tim. 290 Mullach): coniunctam tamen esse (sc. nv npornv DAnv) semper et inseparabiliter cohacrere alicui qualitati. Cumque tam sine ortu sit quam sine interitu, quia neque de non existente subsistit neque consumetur in nihilum, non deesse ei spiritum ac vigorem ex acternitate, qui moveat eam rationabiliter totam interdum, nonnumquam pro portione etc. SVF I] 1168: xıvei 5” ayriv (sc. iv DAnv) 6 Adyos évundpywv xai oynpaticer. 1 306: xai de toic ind tic Zroäg Edokev è Beds Kai 16 nointikdv aitiov év tH GAN civar. Cf. 11 307, 308 (áyópictov fs Ding t6 morobv aitiov). If 310 (= Alexander Aphrod. de mixtione p. 224.32 Bruns = p. 138 Todd): aituacarto 6° dv tig cbAdyws abtüv ÉvraüBa rob Adyou yevópevos kai to Suo ápyás tiv navtov Aéyovtac elvat bnv te Kai Ocdv, dv tòv piv norobvia elvas tH Bè nácyovcav, pepiyOar rij Din Aéyerv tov Oedv, did ndong aurijs Sirjxovra rai oxnuarilovra aúrrv, Kai poppobrra xai xooporociobria tosto tH tporw. II 318: 6 yap cuvay adri (sc. ti Bin) tóvos Kai 51° diwy xeywpnxws naang TE NOLÖTNTOZ Kai Tv mepi aùrijv aimios Hy oikovomav. 187 (= Dox. Gr. p. 457): 814 tavtng Bè (sc. rg Ans) SraBeiv tov tod navrós 2óyov, Sv Evioi cipappevnv Kad.obow, oldv nep kai év ry yov tó oréppa (Cf. Chalcidius in Tim. Comm. 294). 1 533: quem (sc. spiritum) permeatorem universitatis aflırmat (sc. Cleanthes). Cf. II 1036; 1037; 1041: 1042; 1043; 1044; 1045; 1046. — That the divine efficient cause permeating the entire universe is present and working in the smallest and vilest parts of it is a characteristic Stoic doctrine. SVF il 1048 (= lexander Aphr. de mixtione p. 226.24 Bruns = p. 142 Todd): núc 5° oùx dvétia tic Briac npoz.veus 16 te tov Beòv did mdong rijs Úroxerpévos näcıv UÀng Keywpnkévar deyew Kai péverv Ev aùrti], Önoig nor’ dv y, Kai 16 nponyovpevov Eyew Epyov, tó dei 11 yevváv te Kai Sianidcoeww tov tE abrijs yevkoßaı Suvapivwv, kai noreiv tov Gedv ônmoupyôv oxwArikwv TE kai Eunidwv, atexvac Goncp KoponAdGov tiva 1H HAG oyodalovta Kai näv 16 Suvapevov LE abtot yevécda: tobto norovvta; Cf. 11 1037 (Zrwixoi SE nveüna — sc. tov Ocdv paciv — Sifjkov kai bia tov eideyOdv); 1038; 1039; 1040; 1056; 926 (xai adrôv tov Beóv ia te TOV pcpov kai dd tod GAov Ev radon Kaxia yıvöpevov). This idea well expresses deep chthonic religious experience, manifested in Pampho’s orphic hymnal poetry, Philostratus Heroicus p. 301.7 (693 Olearius): Zev xbdiote péyiote Oedv, cidupéve Kénpw undein te Kai innein Kai fpurovein. That God permeates the World completely, that Godhead is absent from nothing existent, that Divinity acts from within Being and with thoroughly immanent causality, renders the artiranship model in World-Formation totally inappropriate; instead natural generation and growth in plants and animals becomes the paradeigm case of potent production; the Seed-model becomes paramount. SVF 11 323a (Galenus de qual. icorp. XIX p. 478 Kühn): oùdé yap noinTnv civa:, paca, kaßdrep rivà yeiporéyvny, tov Aia, LA" Giov di" 6Ang rc Gang SteAnAvOdra naviwv Snurovpyòv yeyovévar. II 1044 (= Alexander Aphr. de mixtione p. 225.18 Bruns = p. 140 Todd): 16 un Gpoiws toïç quoci yıropkvorg yivsaßar ta Kata tés réyves. Ta piv yap and tig pbocws anoteiicpata obK tminodijs. GAAG 1" SAwv cidonorcitai te Kai dranddrrerar, Kai tà Evdov adri yAapupwrata negi-

Aotexvnran, tà Sì Tv teyvdv Siapepoppuwrat, dg Eni tüv Avdpıdvrwv Eyer ta yap Evdov tobtwv ásiúricota. Ata 51) roro Épnoav tiv piv yivopévwv Kata teyvnv ¿foBev elvas Kai Keywpiopévov tó notobv, ¿ni dé tüv yivopévav púcer év ti ÚAy elvas try Ölvanıv tiv poppobadv te Kal yevvóoav aúrá. Cf. II 1135 (Calen de usu partium XVII, 1) esp.: 16 SuamAdtten pédrov Otroby TEYVIKÖG fitor 7' EEwBev adrod yaverv ñ 81’ Glow roù Giankatropévou StednAvGévar xp. (The passage stems from a Stoic critique of atomism). There can scarcely be found any more characteristic illustration of the pregnant reverse of atti tudes in Stoicism as against classical Philosophy. The Stoic position is a conscious condemnation of the Platonic model and of its curious Aristotelian application even in biological procreation (de gener. anim. A, 730 b19-32: even the seed is there considered as a tool, and the artificer’s framing is held superior to moulding by actual external contact precisely by virtue of the former's indirectness of action on what is produced through an instrument; textaiveodaı versus nhattetv. Stocism explicitly rejected the strange notion that semen is an implement; Galen in SVF Il 743). The active principle (spiritual tóvos) is actually in matter; it spermatically comprises the entire form of the corresponding being, and causes its total development and full blooming —all at once. We have to do clearly with an altogether different conceptual comprehension of reality than that provided by the aristotelian framework. To derive the Stoic Prinzipienlehre from Peripatos (cf. H. Siebeck, Die Umbildung der peripatetischen Naturphilosophie in die der Stoiker, in Untersuchungen zur Philosophie der Griechen 1888° pp. 181 sqg; followed by Zeller Philos. der. Gr. HI 1, 367 sq.; 371 sq. and then becoming a kind of accepted vulgate) is admittedly absurd. But to invoke instead old-academic origination for the Stoic theory is utterly preposterous (cf. for an exposition summing up previous discussions in the same spirit, H.J. Krämer, Zur Vorgeschichte der stoischen Prinzipienlehre, in Platonismus und Hellenistische Philosophie 1971, pp. 112 sqq. - 131). Platonic transcendentalism (of the good, at least, principle, of ideas, of ideal numbers, of mathematicals) presents what Stoic metaphysics is most against. Old-academic mathematization of reality is equally repugnant to it, as well as the malignity, nefariousness or depravity of the second principle and its identification, as material substrate, with space. On the other hand it finds appropriate affiliations in archaic thought and presocratic philosophies such as the Heracleitean and, in combination, early Pythagoreanism. Modern interpretations of the Stoic theory of principles which would correlate it to classical philosophy, are really deliberate of ‘unintentional variations on Antiochus’ position, with the difference that they regularly assume a much more marked divergence between old-academic and aristotelian classicism than that which he would admit. The treatment of the question regarding the origin, explanation and (whatever) justification of the existence of defect, unnaturalness, contravention of the cosmic Law and Evil, conspicuously reveals fundamental standpoints in each philosophical! theory. The determined anti-classicism of Hellenistic Philosophy can be penetratingly observed in the opposition of the Stoic Theology to Platonic and Aristotelian Theodicy. Complete immanence of Divinity in the World seems to render God both unable to overcome adverse reality and somehow participant in cosmic defect, polluted by the miasma of imperfect existence. Metaphysical Dualism (especially as interpreted transcedentally) was set by Plato to explain the reality of Evil, of what appears untoward in the World. The second principle exists initially (whether in the temporal or the merely causal acceptation of the term) in a state of chaotic agitation. Since it is construed as pure passive receptivity in its extreme version, namely empty spatial extension, that disorderly excitement cannot proceed out of it in itself. The idea is formed of an indiscriminate co-manifestation of all archetypal being-determinations (tà Övtwg Gvta), which, as it consists in diverse powers diversely weighted exemplifying themselves in that omnirescipient matrix, causes an unstable situation of inherent disequilibrium. This condition of irregular shaking so to speak, produces in its turn convulsive movements among the reflected images of reality which thus cannot assume normal shape and cogregate into stable formations of appearances (52D-53A). God then supervenes and creates the orderly Cosmos by combining commensurately the different factors, adjusting harmoniously the different trends, and imposing determinate beingness on what is Meeting and indefinite, to the extent possible in the nature of things. The way of ordering is mathematical: space is articulated through elementary triangles into regular solids, and thus the elements are constituted out

of whose combinations the sensible World is constructed (53B sqq; cf. 27D sqq.) — The scheme is replete with difficulties. 1) The Svtwe Sv in its entirety must be sufficient by itself to safeguard its stable total manifestation as appearance in space. 2) And what besides can be divinity as a third something distinct from the original principles of dualism? 3) If divinity belongs somehow, as it does for Plato, to the first principle, whose apex is Godness itself, then the second principle, as contrary, would be intrinsically evil, constituting itself the cause and origin of material disorder, malfunction and chaotic movement and change. — The force of this inescapable conclusion must have been felt immediately upon the first platonic elaboration of the doctrine of Goodness as First Principle. It occassioned no doubt the Speusippean reaction, which, closely aligning itself to early pythagoreanism, denied that there was a question of good or bad in first realities; this was additionally connected to an evolutionary built up in the process of reality — formation, on the spermatic pattern, but mathematically construed (Speusippus Frgs. 42-52 Taran). It all fits well into the pythagorean context of the classical period. Eudemus' sharp criticism of the platonic inconsistency has been noted and quoted supra Excursus Î — The plutarchean response to Eudemus' challenge and the corresponding solution of the entire knot is characteristic. Disorder, lawlessness, tumulthousness, disproportion and measurelessness are not (as they cannot be) due to matter-space, nor, of course, to the world of true and divine being, but to a distinct psychic principle of unruly movement, of rebellious anarchy, which Plato had intimated in Legg. 896d-e (cf. 898c). V. Plutarch De animae procreat. in Timaeo 1015D-E; 1014D-1015D; v. esp. 1014E-F: of Sè tiv tv Tıpaio Aeyopivnv avayxny Ev de dif nepi tó paAAov Kai nrrov bAAcivews Kai bnepfoañc dperpiav kai dnerpiav 1 BIN mpootiBévres GAAG pi TH Wye, nod Brjcovra tó triv DAnv dei Ev Gpopgov Kai doynpatiotov br’ abtod Atyeola: (Tim. 50e) xai rdong Svvdpews olxeiag Epnuov... où yap oldv re tò Exorov Kai dpydv EE aurod rai dpperèg altiav Kaxoi Kai dpyrjv bnoridcodaı tov MAdtwve kai xodetv dnetpiav aicypav Kai xaxonoıöv, abdız 5’ avayxny 20A14 16 Ged duonaxoücav rai épnviébovoav etc. And concisely, 1015B: Zrei rv y” övrov obte tó dyadóv obte t6 drorov eixög Ecriv obolav Kaxod Kai yéveotv napaoyeiv. Plutarch elaborated the theory of Triadism in his De Iside et Osiride 369A sqq; 369C; 371A-B; 372E sqq; 376F-377A; cf. 380C. But it all amounts to a super-imposition of two dualisms one upon the other: one Greek in its platonic version (matter - receptacie v. real being); one zoroastrian (good v. evil). In effect we have the aristotelian triple scheme substrate-form-privation, with the last parameter fortified into positive power of upheaval. — The machination was hardly satisfactory. Numenius (Fr. 52 des Places} straightforwardly ascribes to matter the origin of all noxiety, as a pythagorean as well as platonic contention. Chalcidius Comm. in Tim. CCXCIV Mullach (Fr. 52.37 des Places): Deum quippe esse - ut etiam Platoni videtur - initium et causam bonorum, silvam malorum; CCXCV Mull. (52.64 sqq.): Platonemque idem Numenius laudat, quod duas mundi animas autumnet, unam beneficentissimam, malignam alteram, scilicet silvam, quae, licet incodite fluctuet, tamen, quia intimo proprioque motu movetur, vivat et anima convegetetur necesse est lege eorum omnium quae genuino motu moventur etc. CCXCVI Mu. (52.76 sqq.): igitur iuxta Platonem mundo bona sua dei tanquam patris liberalitate collata sunt, mala vero matris silvae vitio cohaeserunt. Cf. 52.87 sqq. V. CCXCVII. Cf. also the entire Chalcidian exposition CCXCIII-CCCXVI Mull. — This is a more natural and consistent interpretation of the platonic position. But the problems facing it are formidable as Aristotle was keen to observe; cf. Robin, La théorie Platonicienne des Idées et des Nombres d'après Aristote $$ 269-71. Neither the Plutarchean attempt to face the grave problems besetting the Platonic position, nor the original Aristotelian Triadism, were deeply satisfactory as substantial answers. (On the latter, cf. my comments A.L. Pierris First Principles etc. in the present edition.) Speusippus negated the very heart of the knot, namely the identity of the First Principle with Goodness. Stoicism reverted to the primeval experience as solid foundation for its elaborations: everything comes from the Gods, divinity lies at the root of all existence. It could not be otherwise: matter consisting in absolute passivity, no insubordination, intransigence or obstruction may be ascribed to it. Besides, as there subsisted no external factor that might influence the development of the one primal Being (the necessary coalescence of Spirit and Substance) everything must proceed according to the inherent divine Law. SVF II 1168 (= Plutarch de comm. not. 1076C): aúvroi $e rdv Kaxdv dpyrjv dyabdv Svra tov Bedv no1odciv. Où yap à y° DAn 16 kaxóv LE Eaurfig raptoynkev Gxoiog yáp ton Kai néoaç ôouc Séxeras

Stagopas bro tod Kıvoövrog aúzmv Kai oynpatifevtes Eoye: kivei d' adtriv 6 Adyos Evurápywv Koi oynpatiter, pre xiveiv cautyy nte ognpatiter nepuxviav. "Qot' avayxn tó Kaxdy, el pÈv Su obSév, Ex tot un Övrog, ci Sè did triv kivoüodnv ápymv, EK tod Beod yeyovós Unapyerw etc. And the argument concludes (1076F): puprdxig yap jv tmenéotepov aodeveia Kai dSuvapig tod Aids ixPBralóneva tà pépy no ópúv Gtona napa tv Exeivou play Kai Bovinow, 7 wit’ dxpaciav civat prjre Kaxoupyiav ng oùk Ecriv 6 Zeig aïrioç. Cf. Chalcidius In Tim. CEXCII Mullach ad fin. --The absolute compliance of matter to the activity of the divine spirit follows from its total passivity. 11 1107 (= Cicero de nat. deor. 111 92): vos enim ipsi dicere soletis nihil esse, quod deus efficere non possit, et quidem sine labore ullo... materiam enim rerum, ex qua et in qua omnia sint, totam esse flexibilem et commutabilem, ut nihil sit, quod non ex ea quamvis subito fingi convertique possit; eius autem universae fictricem et moderatricem divinam esse providentiam; Aanc igitur, quocumque se moveat, efficere posse, quicquid velit. Cf. II 1213. TI 318: nadnrhv Sè (tv obciav-BAnv) Kai tmidextiv maodv tiv TOD nouodvros Evepyeidv de dv Exeivo now} Kai petaBaAdy. The other side, so to speak, of the absolute passivity and yielding of matter provides the absolute activity and effectiveness of divinity. God's operations are unopposable; in this consists their fatality. Cf. 11 932: ipsam Dei summi voluntatem, cuius potestas insuperabiliter per cuncta porrigitur, appellare fatum. Nothing can obstruct or impede the divine, cosmic Nature; II 935: taig pév Kata pépog pices Kai xıyrjasoıv évorijuara noAAG yiveodaı Kai xwàdvpata, Ti dé rüv öAwv undév. 11 937 p. 269. 22: Tic yap xowñs púcems eig xavta diatewvovcyes, Serjcet nav 10 Snwoobv yivópevov... Kat’ Exeivnv yeveéoOar rai tóv Exeivng Adyov Kata tó ÉEñs áxodútos did rô unt’ EEwdev eivar tó Evotnoduevov ri oixovopía, HÜTE TÜV pepòv pndev Exeiv Saws xivnrjoera: i cyrjoer üAlug <> Kara tiv kownv qÜoiv. — This is why the World must be the best possible one (Stoic theodicy). II 1150 (= Philo de prov. II, 74): quae (sc. providentia), ut dicit Chrysippus et Cleanthes, nihil praetermisit pertinentium ad certiorem utilioremque dispensationem. quod si aliter melius esset dispensari res mundi, eo modo sumpsisset compositionem, quatenus nihil occureret ad impediendum deum. Cf. II 928. In fact, this is necessarily both the best conceivable and the only really possible World. — What of defect, imperfection or evil exists in the World, affects only the smaller parts, and is the concomitant of superior fullness, perfection and goodness. 11 1170 (= Gellius Noct. Att, VII, 1, 7): Sed cum multa inquit (sc. Chrysippus), atque magna gigneret (sc. natura) pareretque aptissima et utilissima, alia quoque simul adgnata sunt incommoda his ipsis quae faciebat cohaerentia, eaque neque per naturam, sed per sequellas quasdam necessarias facta dicit, quod ipse appellat xata napaxoAoußnciv (an example is then given). It is utopian nonsense to fancy that there could be only good in the World without any badness, II 1169; 1181. /t is sufficient that the total arrangement is of an unameliorable perfection. Moreover there is always some usefulness in what appears adverse and inimical even if its point and utility remain for the time being unknown, [1 1172; cf. 1176; 1184. And so, in general, it is neither possible nor beneficial that badness should be totally extinguished in the World, TI 1182 (Plutarch, de Stoic. repugn. 1051a): Kaxiav SÉ noi (sc. Chrysippus) xa8óAov ëpur obte Suvaróv tot ovr’ Exeı xaddg dpBrjvar. — That Galen speaks of the inescapability of the noxônpia ris ÚAns (11, 1136, de usu partium V, 4 (III, 354 Könv = 1.260.8 Helmreich), or of matter's impermissiveness and obstruction (1 cuyzwopovang de tig ding), II 1139 = op. cit. XIV, 1 (IV, 142 Kühn = II, 285.9 Helmreich), does not evidently pertain to Stoicism, but stems from his Platonism. A.L. PIERRIS PATRAS ROM", oa À ELLE ON Loue À €, Piera Satis week.

EPPATA 145 28 read: man 30 read: safeguards 31 read: unfathomable 26 read: must in place of: much 31 read: sway in place of: 21 read: A.L. Pierris, way Origin and Nature of early Pythagorean Cosmogony, Boudouris sophy, 147 148 P- P- (ed.) Athens du 40 read: and i. 15 read: PATRIARCHALISM l. 43 erase: probably 45 erase: ) 1. 22 read: receptacle 1. 31 read: wither erase: Pythagorean Philo- 1992. in place of an ( ( 150 1. 152 1. 42 read: artisanship 153 1. 30 read: or in place of: