Cleombrotus cites Empedocles in Plutarch’s De defectu: A Question of Method in Interpreting fr. 24 DK
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Jean-Claude Picot
Abstract
The present article is meant to illustrate a method of analyzing an ambiguous citation with the help not only of its context, but also of literary parallels presumably known to the cited author. In an earlier article in this journal (Along a Mountain Path with Empedocles (31 B 24 D.-K), «Elenchos», XXXIII (2012) pp. 5- 20), we concluded that Empedocles’ fr. 24 rules out the method, employed by other poets, of “attaching speech-summits to speech-summits” (κορυφὰς ἑτέρας ἑτέρηισι προσάπτων μύθων) - fitting climactic points one to another - and instead favors the method of following a single path of discourse to the argument’s end (τελέειν ἀτραπὸν μίαν). In a subsequent issue of «Elenchos», XXXIII (2012) pp. 301-34) Denis O’Brien disputed our conclusions, suggesting instead that Empedocles was merely advising himself to make his way through the “speechsummits” without losing sight of the “single path” and its conclusion. The κορυφαί, then, would be not climaxes of disconnected discourses, but only topics - chapter heads - of a single discourse. The present article argues that this view not only underrates the ironic force of the plural koruphai applied to muthon; it also disregards the real function of prosapton, which elsewhere signifies a joining through physical contact rather than the figurative “passing by” that O’Brien suggests. Fr. 24 is not, as O’Brien supposes, Empedocles’ advice to himself; it is a critique aimed at rival poets who heap arguments one upon another in an absurd and ridiculous fashion, as if heaping Pelion upon Ossa. Cleombrotus’ citation of Empedocles, then, was an allusion not to the main points of his own discourse, but to the danger of being side-tracked into entirely new topics, a danger that Philip’s digression had just posed. Finally, we may have confirmation of this negative view of the “summits” in Aristophanes’ allusion to Empedocles’ “single path” at Clouds 76.
© 2018 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
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- CRITERI REDAZIONALI DELLA RIVISTA
- ELENCHOS
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelei
- SOMMARIO
- STUDI E SAGGI
- Les avatars d’une démone: à propos de Parménide fr. 28B13
- Sobre el pensiamento y la expresión de la experiencia sensoperceptual en Platón, Philebus 38b-39d (Parte I)
- Aristote, Métaphysique Η 5: La génération des contraires et la matière
- Métaphysique Η 6: Unité de l’ousia, unité de l’eidos
- DISCUSSIONI, NOTE E RASSEGNE
- Cleombrotus cites Empedocles in Plutarch’s De defectu: A Question of Method in Interpreting fr. 24 DK
- Mortal Combat: Plato, Critias 107b4
- La nuova edizione di Diogene Laerzio
- CRITERI REDAZIONALI DELLA RIVISTA
- ELENCHOS
