Table Of ContentThe Milesians: Thales
Traditio Praesocratica
Zeugnisse frühgriechischer Philosophie
und ihres Fortlebens
Textual evidence on early Greek philosophy
and its continuation
Volume 1
The Milesians: Thales
Edited by
Georg Wöhrle
Translation and additional material by
Richard McKirahan
With collaboration of
Ahmed Alwishah
With an introduction by
Georg Wöhrle and Gotthard Strohmaier
ISBN 978-3-11-031510-3
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-031525-7
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-038199-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at
http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boson
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Preface
The purpose of this volume is to present all the known testimonia on Thales
in the original languages (Greek, Latin, Arabic and Persian) with a facing
English translation. The collection of testimonia is that of Georg Wöhrle
(TP 1, 2009) supplemented by 23 additional testimonia that have emerged
since then. The new testimonia (Th 40a, Th 40b, Th 65a, Th 482a, Th 508a,
Th 512a, Th 520a, Th 520b, Th 520c, Th 526a, Th 529a, Th 529b, Th 557a,
Th 557b, Th 557c, Th 563a, Th 563b, Th 564a, Th 564b, Th 569a, Th 569b,
Th 569c and Th 569d) are integrated into Prof. Wöhrle’s collection in chro-
nological order. I have translated the original text (not Prof. Wöhrle’s trans-
lation). Where my understanding of the text differs from Prof. Wöhrle’s, I
print his translation in a footnote. Primarily responsible for the translation
of the Arabic material is my colleague Ahmed Alwishah of Pitzer College,
who labored mightily with me to find renderings that are faithful to the
Arabic and that make sense in the context of the reception tra dition of Tha-
les. My colleague Arash Khazeni of Pomona College played a similar role
in translating the Persian fragment. The Introduction by Prof. Wöhrle and
Prof. Strohmaier was translated by Merryl Rebello on behalf of De Gruyter
and reviewed by the original authors and by myself.
The present volume also incorporates some other changes from the 2009
volume. Texts and translations now have indications of line numbers (which
are reflected in the indexes as well). The indexes are fuller. The headings for
some of the similia are different. Indications of the contents of many of the
testimonia are given above the translation. There are some minor changes on
p.23 of Prof. Wöhrle’s Introduction to reflect the new material included in
the current volume. I have also made numerous small changes for purposes
of consistency.
I want to express my sincere thanks to De Gruyter for inviting me to con-
tribute to the Traditio Praesocratica series in this way. Also to Pomona Col-
lege for its generous support during the time I was engaged on this project.
In addition I wish to record my debts of gratitude to Professor Wöhrle
for his assistance on points of translation and his many useful suggestions
VI Preface
throughout the process of editing this volume, to Elvira Basel for her help
in translating German, to Prof. Sabine Vogt, Dr. Serena Pirrotta and Johanna
Wange of De Gruyter for their wonderful collaboration during the entire
period of work on this project, and most of all to my family, Voula Tsouna
and Eleni McKirahan for their patience and understanding.
Richard McKirahan
Athens, July 2014
Contents
Introduction (by Georg Wöhrle and Gotthard Strohmaier) . . . 1
Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Appendix/End material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
Textual Editions of the Greek and Latin Authors . . . . . . 549
Textual Editions of the Arabic and Persian Authors . . . . . 571
Literature on Greek and Latin Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . 575
Literature on Arabic and Persian Authors . . . . . . . . . . 581
Concordance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587
Catalogue on Testimonia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589
Alphabetical Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611
Subject index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617
Index of Names, Places and Peoples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621
Greek – English Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643
Latin – English Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 661
Persian – English Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 673
Arabic – English Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 675
English – Greek/Latin Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683
English – Persian Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 701
English – Arabic Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703
Introduction*
1. General remarks (Georg Wöhrle)
More than is the case for any other era in the history of European philo-
sophy, our information about the Presocratics1 is subject to interpretation,
and thus to the changing interests of those who have transmitted the texts.
Most if not all of the texts have come down to us indirectly, and – as is the
case with the “Thales” testimonies presented in this volume – are initially
based on the kind of hearsay which even someone as early as Aristotle had
to rely upon. First of all, modern scholarship was, of course, interested in
getting as close as possible to the original thoughts of these protagonists
of ancient Greek wisdom. The greater amount of a text’s original wording
survives, the more successful such an endeavour can be. In some cases, we
can even get a rough idea of the contents and meaning of a particular book,
poem or collection. However, and as a matter of course, even the trans-
mission of verbatim quotes has to face the same problems that attend any
other textual tradition that extends over a period of hundreds or thousands
of years, ranging from mechanical errors occurring during the process of
transcription and extending to contradictory interpretations due to the con-
texts in which the texts are reported. In order to advance to the authentic
core of the ancient text by separating original passages from others that have
been – whether by mistake, through misunderstanding or even as a result of
deliberate forgery – added to the text, philology has undertaken the effort to
trace the history of the textual tradition and reveal its filiation. Even so, and
justified as these attempts at reconstruction may be, they cannot transcend
the horizon of their own age. They themselves are products of their own
time and of the methodology prevalent during that era. Especially now that
the certainty of the ‘author’ has been abandoned in favour of understanding
* Introduction translated by Merryl Rebello
1 On the origin of the term “Vorsokratiker” (Presocratics), Eduard Zeller’s role in
establishing it, and its problematic nature, see the introductory remarks of Gemelli
Marciano in her new edition of the Presocratics, Düsseldorf 2007, 373–85.
2 Introduction
texts as complex and coherent conjunctions of signs whose reference struc-
ture is more or less open, it is time to shift the focus from re-reconstruction
to the genesis of construction, i.e. to trace the process of reception – in cases
where the textual remains allow us to do so. In facing this task, one should
at least attempt to identify the immediate contexts in which this reception
was framed.
The new edition at hand is based on a fundamentally different approach
from the ‘old’ Diels/Kranz edition. In his preface to the first edition of
1903, Hermann Diels acknowledged that an arbitrary selection of fragments
inevitably results in inhibiting and patronising both teachers and students,
which is why he sought to provide as complete a collection of fragments as
possible, while at the same time he included relevant biographical and do-
xographical material. Nonetheless, the available material was subjected to a
process of rigorous selection, since it was Diels’ objective to “trace the deve-
lopment of Greek thought in statu nascendi [Diels’ emphasis] by reference
to original documents” (ibid.). Consequently, he says the following with
regard to the second edition (1906): “Selecting the material took me more
time and effort than if I had sent the entirety of my material to the printer.
However, I believe that I have provided a service not only to beginners by
limiting the texts to the relevant and original ones [my emphasis]. It was
my intention to only carry the wheat into the barn while leaving the chaff
outside, even at the risk of leaving some good grain behind here and there.”
Let it be understood that it is not my purpose to criticise Diels’ procedure.
His merits are not in question, and I assume he was familiar with most of the
material in the present volume (except perhaps for the Syro-Arabic materi-
als) – that were the ‘chaff’ in his metaphor. He was a child of his times, as we
are children of our times, as well. By making this reconstructive selection,
Diels set the standard against which, ultimately, thinkers like Thales, Ana-
ximander, Anaximenes and others were to be measured. Occasionally, a new
fragment has been added which may have modified this standard slightly,
but whenever someone speaks of or writes about a Presocratic author, they
still usually have in mind the image of the author as it was sketched out by
Hermann Diels.
Thus, the objective of the present work is not – once again – to present a
collection which may offer some ‘new’ elements or others, but which ulti-
mately aims at reconstructing authentic thoughts and works. Rather than
that, this edition – in accordance with the title of this new series: Traditio
Praesocratica – seeks to document the history of (the adaptive) reception as
