Ocellus Lucanus: On the Nature of the Universe

...which you might interpret as being about the nature of the universe, or its generation; if one chooses to pursue either sense, I shall indicate, in explaining the title itself in Text 1, that sharp arguments of singular erudition always lie hidden there.

Name of the author.

The name of the author remains to be explained, which has provided the chief occasion for these prolegomena, since all philosophers, indeed truth itself, ascribe this work to Ocellus Lucanus; but doubt seems to overwhelm this [truth] not slightly, and the very antiquity of the time seems to cast darkness upon it, because that which has hitherto been believed to be the parent of truth seems to pursue it in this work with stepmotherly hatred. To be sure, we know that Ocellus Lucanus wrote a book On Laws,
Fragment of Ocellus' On Laws. B. 1. c. 10.

highly esteemed by Archytas and Plato: Stobaeus, in his Physical Eclogues, presents a very small fragment of this most perfect work under the name of the same Ocellus, which, moved by the affinity of the subject matter, I have placed at the end of the political part, so that the weight of Stobaeus' testimony—who always surveyed the monuments of ancient wisdom not cursorily but with the greatest zeal—may not allow one to doubt that it proceeded from Ocellus: and yet we see it was written in the Doric dialect, of which not even the slightest traces are seen in this work; therefore it might seem necessary to doubt not lightly the author of this work On the Nature of the Universe,
Ocellus seems to have written in Doric.

all the more because it is a matter of doubt to no one that Ocellus Lucanus was a Pythagorean, and that the Doric phrasing was familiar to this sect, even by the precept of Pythagoras himself, as the surviving writings of the ancient Pythagoreans clearly demonstrate: wherefore, whether we look at the other work of Ocellus, or the dialect common to the Pythagoreans (as Nogarola likewise observed in his notes to Text 1), or certain passages of this work to be observed by us shortly, which Stobaeus likewise reports as having been written in Doric, it will happen that anyone may rightly suspect whether Ocellus Lucanus truly wrote this golden work which now goes forth. Nevertheless, from here [I shall provide] rather certain [arguments], by which for that work...