¹ If an antithesis is presented to a well-trained audience they will probably predict it. Cleobulus' maxim is an example. When he says εὐποροῦντα μὴ ὑπερήϕανον εἶναι, ἀποροῦντα μὴ ταπεινοῦσθαι (‘being lucky don't be arrogant, being unlucky don't be humble’), the second clause is predictable because it is constructed in opposition to the first (Cleobulus, Apophthegmata ex collectione Demetrii Phalerei, ap. Stob. 1.19).

² Solon's maxims give an example of breaking expectation. First he advises: ὃ ἂν <μὴ> ἴδηις, μὴ λέγε (‘What you didn't see, don't say’) and then, when people should expect a piece of advice exhorting them to ‘say what you saw’ he advises the contrary: εἰδὼς σίγα (‘having seen keep quiet’, Solon, Apophthegmata [n. 1], 2.17–18).

³ For instance, maxims of the seven wise men have different forms attributed to different authors as well. A more predictable version of Solon's advice quoted above is attributed to Thales: Δεῖ τὰ μὲν εἰκότα λέγειν, τὰ δὲ ἀμήχανα σιωπᾶν (‘You shall speak about the visible things, but keep quiet about the impossible ones’, Thales, Apophthegmata (ap. auctores diversos) 5.4).

⁴ More precisely the Greek text reads: οὔτε τις θεῶν οὔτε ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν, ἀλλ' ἦν ἀεὶ καὶ ἔστιν καὶ ἔσται (‘neither gods nor men made it, but it always was, is and will be’). As will be seen, the fact that these formulae are used in an adapted way could confirm an attempt to make them fit with the description of the world sought by the author.

⁵ The most ancient extant criticism of Heraclitus' style appears in Arist. Rh. 1407b14 where B1 is quoted as an example of an unclear text because of the ambiguity generated by an epic formula used in an inverted way. Heraclitus says ἐόντος ἀεὶ instead of ἀεὶ ἐόντος (‘ever being’) presenting a situation in which the ‘ever’ could be linked to ‘being’ or to the sequence of the fragment ‘men becoming ignorant’.

⁶ There are several explanations of Heraclitus' obscurity. Plato, for instance, offers one hypothesis when he says that ‘the creation of another language is required by those who accept such thought [he is referring to the ‘everything flows'] because now we have no words to describe their hypothesis’ (Pl. Tht. 183a–b). Theophrastus attributed Heraclitus' obscure style to his melancholia (see Diog. Laert. 9.5). His style is personal enough to invite an ad hominem argument but, as will be seen, Plato's position seems more plausible. Heraclitus' style would be an attempt to express his presumably new world view in a new way.

⁷ The philosopher attacks not only the majority of men as a group (B1, B2, B17, B29, B56, B57, B104) but also particular authors both from tradition and from among his contemporaries (B40: Hesiod, Pythagoras, Hecataeus and Xenophanes; B42: Homer and Archilochus; B56: Homer; and B57: Hesiod). B104, in saying that ‘they are persuaded by popular singers and take the multitude as a teacher, not knowing that most of them are bad and only a few are good’, serves as a paradigm for the circularity of a process in which the authors base their thoughts upon traditional opinions and then teach them to the majority of men (i.e. the reinforcement of tradition).

⁸ Diog. Laert. 9.6 furnishes an example of such an attitude when he says: ‘he (Heraclitus) deposited his book in the temple of Artemis and, according to some, he chose to make his writings the most obscure in such a way that only those capable enough would approach it’.

⁹ This is a fragment as important as it is difficult. The Greek text is: τοῦ δὲ λόγου τοῦδ' ἐόντος ἀεὶ ἀξύνετοι γίνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον· γινομένων γὰρ πάντων κατὰ τὸν λόγον τόνδε ἀπείροισιν ἐοίκασι, πειρώμενοι καὶ ἐπέων καὶ ἔργων τοιούτων, ὁκοίων ἐγὼ διηγεῦμαι κατὰ ϕύσιν διαιρέων ἕκαστον καὶ ϕράζων ὅκως ἔχει. τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους λανθάνει ὁκόσα ἐγερθέντες ποιοῦσιν, ὅκωσπερ ὁκόσα εὕδοντες ἐπιλανθάνονται. The partial translations I provide are almost paraphrases to convey the way that the text has been read. Together B1, B2 and B50 can be analysed as a group of fragments dealing with the logos. B2 reads: διὸ δεῖ ἕπεσθαι τῶι <ξυνῶι>, τουτέστι τῶι> κοινῶι· ξυνὸς γὰρ ὁ κοινός. <τοῦ λόγου δ’ ἐόντος ξυνοῦ ζώουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ ὡς ἰδίαν ἔχοντες ϕρόνησιν; and Β50: οὐκ ἐμοῦ, ἀλλὰ τοῦ λόγου ἀκούσαντας ὁμολογεῖν σοϕόν ἐστιν ἓν πάντα εἶναι.

¹⁰ Thus Heraclitus' text would claim the authority not of its author but of the common logos. For this reason his assertions could, and should, be verified by each person, following the common logos. Against this position, there are scholars who explain this separation through divine inspiration, of which Heraclitus would be just a vehicle; e.g. Miller, L., ‘The logos of Heraclitus: updating the report’, HThR 74.2 (1981), 161–176Google Scholar, at 170 writes: ‘There is nothing to prevent Heraclitus from distinguishing his own discourse from the inspired and revelatory Truth vouchsafed to him. Likewise, the priestess at Delphi presumably could have distinguished her ordinary discourse from the prophetic words uttered through her by the inspiration of the oracle’. In spite of these beliefs common to his time, Heraclitus' relation to the discourse seems to be more conscious, as is shown in the next section.

¹¹ Naddaf, G., The Greek Concept of Nature (New York, 2005), 14–15Google Scholar takes B1, which he calls ‘the first Pre-Socratic occurrence of phusis’, as an example of the fundamental meaning of nature: ‘In this fragment (B1), the fundamental meaning of phusis – the nature of a thing as it is realized with all of its properties from beginning to end, or the whole process of growth of a thing from birth to maturity – is not in doubt.’ Thus the nature of a thing is its coming to being in a sense that includes its generation, existence and its coming to an end.

¹² In the Cratylus Plato discusses several possibilities of an imitative relation between language and reality. In 439a Socrates, while arguing with Cratylus, a ‘Heraclitean’, says: ‘if it is possible to learn from the things themselves or from their names, which would offer a better and clearer lesson? To learn from the image and the truth that it imitates, even if it is a good image, or to learn from the truth itself?’ The defence of the imitation seems to be made by Socrates only to refute Cratylus, although it entails a purpose for an imitative text similar to the one I suppose to be that of Heraclitus. His text imitates nature in order to teach men how to see nature in a way that allows them to see nature directly once the lesson is learned.

¹³ This distinction is especially useful in historiographical investigation; e.g. Hdt. 1.183.3 makes a clear distinction between the situations that Herodotus saw and those he just heard about: ‘I myself didn't see those things, but I say what was told to me by the Chaldeans’; likewise the episode between Candaules and Gyges (1.8), where the former does not think it enough to tell his servant how beautiful his wife is: he wants him to see her with his own eyes to present an enactment of this belief.

¹⁴ The presentation of three elements shows that the relation between opposites is not limited to two. On the other hand, apart from the number of things in question, their relation seems to occur always between two opposites. There is vapour that changes to water, water that changes to earth and vice versa, always respecting the duality of the opposition. This situation will be treated more precisely later.

¹⁵ B51 has two disputed words that are relevant to the present investigation. Some versions have παλίντονος (reciprocal stretching), the Homeric epithet for the bow (cf. Hom. Il. 8.266), where others have παλίντροπος (reciprocal tuning) as in Parmenides B6.9. Both of them characterize reciprocity, while the first relates better to the bow and the second to the lyre. It is hard to find a reason to choose one or the other but the sense in both cases seems to be that of a metaphor for a reciprocal movement or tension. The other question is between ὁμολογέω (agree) and the correction συμϕέρω (reunite). The correction is justified by the symmetry between διαϕέρω (disunite) and συμϕέρω that occurs in another fragment, B10. But as the agreement of opposites suffices for the understanding of B51, it seems better to keep the manuscript's reading. Graham, D.W., ‘Representation and knowledge in a world of change’, in Piccone, E.H. (ed.), Nuevos Ensayos Sobre Heráclito, Actas del Segundo Symposium Heracliteum (Mexico City, 2009), 75–92Google Scholar, at 78 noticed that B51's word order represents its meaning: ‘“heôutôi” stands between the opposite terms, “being at variance” and “agrees” … It is an apo koinou expression that can be constructed with either. They share it, and it stands between them in a tug of war, or equally, a bond of unity.’ The importance of the word order will be treated later.

¹⁶ It is important to emphasize that this harmony does not constitute a homogeneous whole in which the opposition ceases to be. If that were the case, the change and/or tension between them would also cease, a situation that disagrees with the way that Heraclitus sees the cosmos. Guthrie, W.K.C., History of Greek Philosophy I: The Earlier Presocratics and The Pythagoreans (Cambridge, 1962)Google Scholar, 437 offers a definition of Heraclitean harmony in opposition to the Pythagorean one that is the one accepted here: ‘Heraclitus with his “stricter Muse” asserted that any harmony between contrasting elements necessarily and always involved a tension or strife between the opposites of which it was composed. The tension is never resolved.’

¹⁷ The view of a reciprocal rectilinear movement defended here is in accordance with the interpretation of Kirk, G.S., ‘Natural change in Heraclitus’, Mind NS 60 (1951), 35–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 39: ‘Indeed, if as he (Heraclitus) maintained there is a single Logos or formula of things, this Logos must explain meteorological and cosmological changes as well as the reciprocity between opposites in categories such as life-death and war-peace … The cosmos (in the sense of an ordered whole) is a fire which turns into sea and into earth and then back again. This is a reciprocal and not a cyclical movement.’

¹⁸ An explicit relation of B60 to a cosmic model depends on consideration of what Diogenes Laertius (among several other ancient commentators) says: ‘changing is the way up and down and the cosmos comes to be in accordance with it’ (Diog. Laert. 9.1.8). For a more careful examination of B60 as a model for change in Heraclitus, see Vieira, C., ‘Um modelo para mudança em Heráclito’, CODEX 2.2 (2010), 118–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ On the other hand, there is one fragment that could be seen as defending a cyclical model: B103, saying that the beginning and the limit are the same on a circumference (ξυνὸν γὰρ ἀρχὴ καὶ πέρας ἐπὶ κύκλου περιϕερείας), presents the connection between two points of a circle as a proof for the union of opposites. But this fragment could be stating (as Porphyry who quotes it suggests) that every point on a circumference can be a beginning or an end. Thus it would confirm the reading that follows, the point of which is to argue for a reciprocal change within limits but with no fixed point to begin or end, instead of unifying the beginning and the end in an homogenous harmony of the Pythagorean type.

²⁰ ‘Element’ here simply refers to a mass that takes part in the cosmic process; it does not imply an Aristotelian comprehension of it as an unchangeable element.

²¹ While this formalization of rhetorical strategies post-dates Heraclitus and therefore must be used cautiously, as an observable aspect of the text it helps interpretation without obstructing an effort to understand its use in a less well-defined way. Dealing with oppositions already implies antithesis and, if there are changes between those oppositions, they can easily arouse a chiastic structure in which the first and the last term will necessarily be the same, as in ring composition. Thus the three techniques can occur together in a very incidental way, even though Heraclitus' use hardly seems to be unconscious.

²² It is worth noting that the repetition of each element twice, presenting a structure A B, B C : C B, B A instead of only A B C : C B A, suggests the relation between the three elements to be one enacted in pairs in such a way as to allow them to enact the process of change between opposites that pervades all things.

²³ Mouraviev, S.N., Heraclitea III.3.A. Recensio: fragmenta. De sermone tenebrosi praefatio (Sankt Augustin, 2002), 417–421Google Scholar provides the following definitions for the narrative techniques that are discussed in this article: ‘Antithesis: A couple of terms with opposed meanings, coordinated or appearing in identical positions on grammatical or logical symmetric structures. Chiasmus: Symmetric scheme in the form of ABC … (D) … CBA. Minimal number of elements: two (ABA); central pivot: not obligatory (ABBA, ABCCBA). Ring composition: Scheme in the form A … – … A. Parallelism: Scheme in the form ABC … : ABC … Minimal number of' elements: two (AB : AB).’

²⁴ To confirm this interpretation it is worth noting that in B107 while dealing with the barbarian souls of men Heraclitus also uses a plural to refer to this group of individuated things.

²⁵ Betegh, G., ‘On the physical aspect of Heraclitus' psychology’, Phronesis 52 (2007), 3–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 9: ‘The first phase refers to the process through which souls conceived as individuated things lose their identities and cease to exist as they dissolve in an unindividuated stuff, water. The second phase in contrast refers to a process in which some part of water is transformed into another stuff, earth. But what about the singular psychê with which the fragment ends? I would maintain that at the end of the sentence psychê is used as a mass term, much like water and earth, and not as a singular count noun standing for a class of things, souls.’ Betegh accepts the variation as meaningful but he does not give the variation enough weight so as to alter a belief in the ring composition.

²⁶ Kahn, C.H., The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (Cambridge, 2001)Google Scholar, 238 also sees a ring composition: ‘In another example of ring composition CII (B36) ends where it began, with the word psychê. The shift from the plural (psychai) to the singular prevents the repetition from being too mechanical … The plural form at the beginning suggests the soul or life-breath of individual men … But the singular form points to psychê as a constituent of the natural order, like earth or water.’ As Kahn notes, the number variation not only avoids the prevention of a mechanical repetition but also entails a meaningful differentiation serious enough to break the ring composition.

²⁷ The mirrored presentation of the terms in B36 seems adequate to describe a relation of three processes of change. First, one in which the soul becomes water, water becomes earth and back again. Second, one in which, by analogy with the previous one, vapour becomes water, water becomes earth and back again. Thus the soul might suffer alterations in its temperature and material states without dying, that is, without becoming vapour (cf. the analysis of B126 which refers to B117–18) as the elements in the world might also suffer alteration without becoming an individualized soul. However, as souls and vapour are both part of the cosmos, they suffer a process of change not only within themselves but between themselves as well. So a third process of change arises in which the changing soul becomes a changing stuff, vapour. It will be argued below that this situation could be an example of the process described in B62 in which a mortal becoming immortal can become an immortal becoming mortal.

²⁸ The text of B126 with the four adjectives in the neuter without an article follows Dilcher, R., ‘On the wording of Heraclitus, fragment 126’, CQ NS 44.1 (1994), 276–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who based his reading on the MS Cod. Cantabr.

²⁹ Because throughout this article the inflexion is considered to be an important trait, the citation maintains the cases in which the terms are presented.

³⁰ Heraclitus is using a qualitative change as an example of his general formula. His union of opposites does not depend on the distinction between different types of existence like qualities, elements, substances or anything else. Apart from that, the union is proven by the generalization of the fact that everything that exists in every manner is changing into its opposite.

³¹ One can suppose a conscious variation in the vocabulary because the verb used, νοτίζω, generates the adjective νότιος, α, ον (moist). This would make possible a perfect, both morphological and semantic, chiasmus: νοτιὰ αὐαίνεται, αὐὰ νοτίζεται. Kirk, G.S., Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments (Cambridge, 1975)Google Scholar, 152 makes a case for the symmetry of the first chiasmus but not the asymmetry of the second one: ‘the retention of the same root, when noun is changed into verb and vice versa, in the first part of clauses if not in the last (where the variation must be purely artistic), shows that an exact balance between each side of the process was involved’.

³² To stress the reading one can compare B67, ὁ θεὸς ἡμέρη εὐϕρόνη χειμὼν θέρος πόλεμος εἰρήνη κόρος λιμός ἀλλοιοῦται δὲ ὅκωσπερ <πῦρ> <ὃ> ὁπόταν συμμιγῆι θυώμασιν ὀνομάζεται καθ΄ ἡδονὴν ἑκάστου, in which after saying that ‘god is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, profusion and famine’, he says that ‘each one names it according to his taste’.

³³ The fragments used are the following: B30 κόσμον τόνδε, τὸν αὐτὸν ἁπάντων, οὔτε τις θεῶν οὔτε ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν, ἀλλ’ ἦν ἀεὶ καὶ ἔστιν καὶ ἔσται πῦρ ἀείζωον, ἁπτόμενον μέτρα καὶ ἀποσβεννύμενον μέτρα (‘This world order, the same of all, no god nor human being has created but it ever was, is and will be an everlasting fire, lighting in measures and quenching in measures’); B31a πυρὸς τροπαὶ πρῶτον θάλασσα, θαλάσσης δὲ τὸ μὲν ἥμισυ γῆ, τὸ δὲ ἥμισυ πρηστήρ (‘Formations of fire: first sea, and from sea a half of earth, and the other of burner’); B31b θάλασσα διαχέεται, καὶ μετρέεται εἰς τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον, ὁκοῖος πρόσθεν ἦν (‘The sea is dissolved and measured in the same measure in which it was at first’).

³⁴ This view of the cosmos reduces qualitative and substantial changes such as from hot to cold or water to earth to quantitative ones because on another level they are all fire formations differentiated by its lighting or quenching, which is what seems to be described in B30.

³⁵ There are other examples that will not be analysed here such as B5 (purify with blood), B19 (talk and listen), B58 (doctors and diseases), B79 (immature man and man) and B119 (habit and genius).

³⁶ In the first study of ring composition in Greece, W. van Otterlo demonstrated rings within the presence of rings in the Iliad. In doing the same with his bow composition Heraclitus once again uses a traditional formula in a particular way: see Douglas, M., Thinking in Circles: An Essay on Ring Composition (London, 2007)Google Scholar, 18: ‘Otterlo was interested in the variety of circular structures in the Iliad. The Iliad has rings with only one “member”, and rings with two or three “members” … his classification of structures is chiefly concerned with the relations of the minor rings to the major ring in which they are enclosed’. In B20 the connection of the inner bow demonstrated through the ambiguity of the word elucidates the outer bow.

³⁷ This time there is no need to use a different inflexion of the same word to show the opposition between the referents since the context guides the reading.

³⁸ Cf. LSJ s.v. μόρος = μοίρα, I. fate, destiny, doom. II. doom, death.

³⁹ As a thought experiment one can apply this situation to the ones examined before – the change of water to vapour in the outer bow and the change of hot to cold in the inner one. If the water gets hot until it turns to vapour there is not generation of more heat but rather the death of water.

⁴⁰ e.g. Marcovich, M., Heraclitus: Greek Text with Short Commentary (Sankt Augustin, 2001)Google Scholar, 248 writes: ‘I suggest reading hypar in lieu of Clement's hypnos because (1) hypnos is semantically unsatisfactory … (2) elsewhere Clement is interested in the commonplace hypnos-thanatos.’

⁴¹ See e.g. the dream passages in Homer, such as Penelope's dream that an eagle (Odysseus) slaughters twenty geese (the suitors) (Od. 19.535–55), or when Athena appears in dreams to tell Penelope about the condition of her son and of her husband (Od. 4.795–840), or to tell Nausicaa about her matrimonial situation (Od. 6.20–46).

⁴² Cf. motive (2) given by Marcovich (n. 40) and also Pl. Ap. 40d where Socrates explains death with the analogy of sleep: ‘if (in death) there is no perception at all, but it is like a dream in which the sleeper neither dreams nor sees anything, death would be an amazing gain’.

⁴³ At this point in the interpretation, ‘death’ and ‘sleep’ could even characterize a ring composition but, as will be seen, to Heraclitus they do not seem to make for a homogeneous whole.

⁴⁴ Heraclitus would be opposed to the conception featured in Il. 23.66–110, where the vision of Patroclus' soul (psychê) in a dream causes Achilles to believe that death is after all not the end. For Heraclitus death is the end of a soul, even if it survives as stuff; see below.

⁴⁵ Cf. the definition in LSJ (n. 38).

⁴⁶ Probably ‘bigger’ is qualitative rather than quantitative, since B24 suggests that death in battle is more worthy.

⁴⁷ As will be seen on B62 the possibility of a conscious afterlife for the soul does not seem to be represented in Heraclitus' thought. Yet a bigger destiny for a soul can be that of becoming fire, the primordial element. If, after dying in battle (B24), a man has a hot soul (B136), this can mean that it will become fire sooner than a moist soul of a death by disease. Thus a bigger death would entail a bigger destiny also in the afterlife but not in the way men expected it (B27). But this reading depends on a few unstated assumptions as a careful examination of the fragments indicated in brackets reveals. This examination is beyong the scope of this article.

⁴⁸ The Greek word order has ‘dying’ as the last term.

⁴⁹ Cf. Smyth, H., Greek Grammar for Colleges (New York, 1920)Google Scholar, 354, §1554: ‘[internal object] here the object is already contained (or implied) in the verb … The object stands in apposition to the result of the verbal action’.

⁵⁰ To reinforce the probability of a reference to the soul in B62 there is the spurious B77b, a fragment of almost identical content to B62, ζῆν ἡμᾶς τὸν ἐκείνων θάνατον καὶ ζῆν ἐκείνας τὸν ἡμέτερον θάνατον (‘we live their [souls in B77a?] death and they live our death’) which Porphyry quotes to illuminate the soul as described in B77a.

⁵¹ If one believes in ekpyrôsis (the world ending consumed by fire), as a Heraclitean theory it can be argued that vapour as an element will also die. But the fact that the death of vapour is nothing but a quantitative change of fire is enough to prove vapour to be a ‘mortal’ living the death of an ‘immortal’, fire. Thus the above explanation is still valid with only one difference, the decreasing of one level until the basic constituent of the world is reached – fire, as the immortal-mortal.

⁵² I thank Elizabeth Irwin who has been exceptionally helpful in reading and commenting on my text.