Fragments of the Philosophical Poets

Such is the condition of the Empedoclean fragments, which are excellently explained and arranged in light of the very extensive records of the doxographers.

Regarding our selection of poets, it should be noted briefly: we have accepted the Eleatics and Empedocles as the marrow of this poetry. To these we have prefixed the Astrologies of Thales and Cleostratus, because from these studies Ionic philosophy arose, even though the authorship of Thales itself is doubtful. Other poems of that century, such as those of Hesiod and Orpheus, are reserved for other parts of this Corpus. I have kept the poetry of the Sophists no less at a distance than the poetic ventures of Socrates—heaven help us—as well as those of Plato, Aristotle, and Diogenes, which will have to be distributed among the elegiac, lyric, and tragic poets, such as the hymn of Cleanthes and other things of that kind. Nevertheless, I have accepted Scythinus and Menecrates because they pertain to the philosophy of Heraclitus, just as the Silli of Timon pertain to that of Xenophanes. In general, his most witty verses contribute so much to the correct description and judgment of the philosophers that they are not unjustly counted in this circle. Timon also carried with him Crates, who was slightly earlier, and Demetrius, who was slightly later; the latter I have placed first in this section.

One thing remains that requires either explanation or excuse: the dialect. If I had approved of the common method, which I see Kaibel also followed with caution, I would have revised the language of the philosophers, who use elegiac or epic verse, according to the norm of the epic dialect. Thus, everyone who collected the poetry of the philosophers before me, from Henri Estienne, the glory of France, down to that man who disgraced the German name among foreigners with his infamous collection of fragments, all of them covered the fragments with a Homeric coloring without any hesitation. I did not wish to follow their example. For the poems of Homer have suffered the hands of Alexandrian grammarians comparing and standardizing the various editions of those who came before. It is evident from the various readings of copies, such as the Platonizing and Zenodotean ones, that there was a much greater diversity of dialect in them previously. Therefore, for someone who strives to restore the dialect to this norm when the original witnesses of the fragments are mostly lacking, and to paint everything with the same brush, it is to be feared that he might simultaneously obliterate and cover the delicate traces of a peculiar language, especially the Italian and Sicilian ones. I have provided some examples of this kind in the notes, and I have defended this method entirely in my Parmenides (Berlin 1897, p. 27) and in the Rheinisches Museum (vol. LVI, p. 35 sq.). Indeed, from the poems of unearthed inscriptions, and especially from the ancient examples of Solon and Bacchylides that have been found, we have learned to doubt the constancy of dialect among poets more strongly than before. Perhaps what now seems arbitrary may one day be understood to be otherwise. For my part, I did not wish to bring any prejudice into this controversy.