Honey or Fire? Democritus and Heraclitus on How to Dispose of the Bodies of the Dead

1 Introduction

The canonical pair constituted by Heraclitus as the weeping philosopher and Democritus as the laughing one is well known and has enjoyed a long afterlife both in literature and in art. In this paper, I intend to focus on a particular doxographical notice bringing together this famous Presocratic duo, whose specific interest consists in the fact that the two are mentioned together not because of their allegedly opposite views on the natural and human world, but regarding a quite peculiar topic: that of funerary practices.

In a fragment of a lost Menippean satire by Varro, we are told that Heraclides Ponticus advised to burn the bodies of the deceased, while Democritus enjoined to preserve them in honey. I shall show that the former view should be attributed to Heraclitus, and not to Heraclides, and that the text at issue should thus be added to the collections of testimonies of the Ephesian. In addition, a parallel passage in Servius and various other reports suggest that the Stoic emphasis on the doctrine of fire and of the conflagration of the world constitutes the backdrop of the attribution to him of the view that the bodies of the dead should be burnt.

As far as Democritus is concerned, I shall maintain that the focus on honey is linked to the legend according to which he was fond of honey and would even have delayed his death thanks to the exhalations of a jar of honey. In this connection, I shall show that these notices all derive from the doxographical-biographical deformation of Democritus’ theory of perception, in the framework of which he intended to provide an account of the reason why honey can taste sweet to certain people and bitter to others.

More generally, I shall argue that the background of the testimony at issue is ultimately Hellenistic, and that the doctrinal and biographical interpretations of both Democritus and Heraclitus put forward in this period play a central role for the clarification of the broader context of the notice. In this sense, the analysis of Varro’s fragment can provide us with notable insights into the mysterious origin of the Presocratic duo Democritus-Heraclitus.

2 Democritus and Heraclitus on Funerary Practices

The key passage is a fragment of a lost Menippean satire by Varro entitled The Swan or On Burial. This fragment has luckily come down to us thanks to the lexicographical work De compendiosa doctrina composed by the Roman grammarian Nonius Marcellus (4th or 5th century AD), who quotes the corresponding passage in order to provide an example of the use of the term vulgus as a masculine.^[1] In his satire, Varro referred to the opinions of Heraclitus and Democritus concerning the best way to dispose of the bodies of the dead: the former would have prescribed burning the corpses, while the latter would have enjoined to preserve them in honey. This last point must ostensibly have given Varro the opportunity to make fun of such a curious opinion, as it is evident from the joke that ensues:

T1. Cycnus, περὶ ταφῆς

quare Heraclitus plus sapit, qui praecepit ut conburerent, quam Democritus, qui ut in melle servarent. quem si vulgus secutus esset, peream si centum denariis calicem mulsi emere possemus.^[2]

Heraclitus Böttiger Lassalle: Heraclides Ponticos codd.

The Swan / On Burial

This is the reason why Heraclitus, who prescribed burning them [i.e. the bodies of the dead], is wiser than Democritus, who (prescribed) preserving them in honey; if the people had followed the latter’s advice, may I die if we could buy a cup of honey-wine for a hundred denarii only!^[3]

Such ironic criticism is, indeed, typical of Varro’s Menippean satires and must have chimed with the overall topic and tone of The Swan.^[4] This seemingly bizarre but intriguing testimony is absent from all editions and translations of the fragments and testimonies of Heraclitus, including the recent collection of Latin texts produced by C. Lévy and L. Saudelli.^[5] The reason for this lies in the fact that in the manuscripts of Nonius we actually find the name of Heraclides Ponticus, and not that of Heraclitus.

Yet, it is difficult to make sense of the prescription to burn the bodies of the deceased in the framework of Heraclides’ philosophy.^[6] In addition, the possibility that the passage in question has been wrongly attributed to Heraclides Ponticus and should actually be handed back to Heraclitus can be supported through two arguments: first, from a textual point of view the confusion between Heraclitus and Heraclides is not only easy to explain but also quite frequent in Antiquity;^[7] second, the relationship obtaining between the thought and the figure of Heraclitus and the – highly symbolic – element of fire is so strong, if not obvious, that it makes the claim that he would have prescribed burning the bodies of the dead appear hardly surprising in itself. The latter argument appears to have already been used by Ferdinand Lassalle, who followed – as we shall see – in Karl August Böttiger’s footsteps in considering our testimony as Heraclitean;^[8] no scholar has, however, proposed a renewed discussion of this question in the last 150 years or so following the publication of Lassalle’s book.

Even though these arguments would, to my mind, suffice to justify the attribution of the tenet at issue to Heraclitus, a transparent proof of the correctness of such an assumption is provided by a further passage, culled from Servius’ commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid, in which the Ephesian’s alleged preference for cremation is unequivocally stated.

3 Heraclitus as an Upholder of Cremation (and Thales of Inhumation)

T2. iam pater Aeneas, iam curvo in litore Tarchon

constituere pyras. huc corpora quisque suorum

more tulere patrum […].^[9]

Now father Aeneas and Tarchon set up pyres on the curving shore; here each army brought its corpses after the manner of their ancestors […].^[10]

T3. 186. more tulere patrum quia apud varias gentes diversa fuerunt genera sepulturae, inde est quod alii obruuntur, alii exuruntur, alii proprias remittuntur ad patrias; alii per diem, ut nunc isti, alii per noctem, ut supra Pallas. et perite has varietates Vergilius posuit: namque Heraclitus qui omnia vult ex igne constare, dicit debere corpora in ignem resolvi. Thales vero qui confirmat omnia ex umore creari, dicit obruenda corpora, ut possint in umorem resolvi.^[11]

“Brought after the manner of their ancestors” because the ways to dispose of the corpses were different among different peoples; for this reason, some are buried, some are burnt, some are sent back to their countries; some (are disposed of) during the day, as in our case, some during the night, as the above-mentioned Pallas. And Virgil has exposed these differences skilfully: for Heraclitus, who maintains that everything consists of fire, says that dead bodies should be dissolved into fire. Conversely Thales, who affirms that all things are made out of moisture, says that dead bodies should be buried so that they can dissolve into moisture.

In commenting upon a passage of book XI of the Aeneid in which Trojans and Latins are said to dispose of the bodies of the deceased, after the battle, more patrum, i.e. “after the manner of their ancestors” (see T2), Servius provides a brief exposition of the funerary customs of different peoples. He is, indeed, convinced that Virgil himself meant to “skilfully” underline the variety of such practises.^[12] Thus, he quotes as examples the alleged opinions of Heraclitus and Thales: the former, maintaining that everything consists of fire, would have argued for the dissolution of bodies into fire, i.e. for cremation; the latter, persuaded that all things are made out of moisture, would have suggested to bury the corpses and would consequently have preferred inhumation.

A specific trait of this text, which is not to be found in T1, is the explicit link established between the tenets of the two Presocratics and their general doctrines concerning the principle of reality, i.e. the elements of fire and water respectively. It is clear that the conceptions attributed to both Heraclitus and Thales ultimately depend on the theoretical application of the Aristotelian axiom according to which everything must resolve into the element from which it derives.^[13] As far as Thales is concerned, several ancient testimonies testify to the productivity of this axiom, in the first place in the framework of the doxographical tradition, even though T3 is the only text that turns the general idea of the dissolution of everything into water into a way more specific funerary prescription.^[14]

The same reasoning also applies to Heraclitus, with respect to whom it should be pointed out that this principle could have led Aristotle to the attribution of a periodic destruction of the universe to the Ephesian.^[15] In addition, the alleged Heraclitean conception according to which everything originates from fire and shall be destroyed into fire is famously one of the key features of the Stoic interpretation of the cosmology of the Presocratic and exerted a considerable influence in Antiquity.^[16] I believe that the reading of Heraclitus developed by the Stoics constitutes, in fact, the historical and exegetical backdrop of the attribution to him of the funerary prescription of cremation.

Crucially, T3 also provides us with a clear parallel to T1 and, thus, with the proof that Varro referred indeed to Heraclitus – and not to Heraclides Ponticus – in his satire.^[17] The hypothesis that the name of the latter philosopher was out of place in T1 goes back to Böttiger, who in 1826 referred to Servius’ passage in order to justify his claim.^[18] The fact that, if one reads “Heraclitus”, the passage turns out to feature the well-known duo formed by Democritus and Heraclitus seems to have played a role in his interpretation, too.^[19] Despite the endorsement on the part of Lassalle, Böttiger’s argument has hitherto been completely neglected by scholarship, with the result that Varro’s text has continued to puzzlingly figure in the editions of Heraclides Ponticus, on the one hand, and to be regrettably absent from the collections of testimonies of Heraclitus, on the other.

Yet, the fact that it is indeed Heraclitus who is mentioned in T1 does not imply that the opinion attributed to him there and in T3 can in any way be deemed to be authentic. Both Böttiger and Lassalle were absolutely convinced of the genuineness of the tenet at issue: the latter described it as the natural consequence of the prominent role that fire plays in the framework of the thought of the Presocratic philosopher and linked it to a dubious Aëtian testimony according to which the Ephesian would have removed rest and standing-still from the world as belonging to the corpses.^[20] The history of the ancient exegesis of Heraclitus points, however, in a different direction and decisively suggests a spurious origin for the alleged tenet of the Ephesian. It can be demonstrated that the opinions attributed both to him and to Democritus derive from particular distortions of their doctrines, and that these creative alterations of their thought can help us locate the genesis of the notices contained in T1 in the Hellenistic period.^[21] Although a detailed demonstration of this point would require a broader discussion of the Hellenistic reception of both philosophers, which cannot be provided here, in what follows I shall attempt to point to a series of sources that are of key importance in this sense and thus to provide a solid textual and theoretical basis for further enquiries.

4 Heraclitus’ Corpse(s) between Reality and Stoic Reinterpretation

Before doing so, it should be underlined that, as far as Heraclitus is concerned, the injunction to burn the bodies of the dead seems to be not only bizarre but also openly contradicted by what we read in the extant fragments of the philosopher from Ephesus. In this connection, the following two points are, to my mind, particularly relevant:

1. Heraclitus’ fragment B96 clearly and explicitly states what follows:

T4. νέκυες γὰρ κοπρίων ἐκβλητότεροι.^[22]

Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung.^[23]

This claim seems to express a harsh and radical criticism of traditional funerary practices tout court, which would hardly tally with the anodyne – and far from uncustomary – prescription to burn the bodies of the deceased.

1. Another fragment of Heraclitus, B36, maintains that the soul’s death is to become water:

T5. ψυχῇσιν θάνατος ὕδωρ γενέσθαι, ὕδατι δὲ θάνατος γῆν γενέσθαι, ἐκ γῆς δὲ ὕδωρ γίνεται, ἐξ ὕδατος δὲ ψυχή.^[24]

For souls it is death to become water, for water it is death to become earth; but out of earth water comes-to-be, and out of the water, soul.^[25]

Despite the difficulties linked to the interpretation of this fragment, it seems safe to claim that the fact that the death of the soul consists in becoming water is not compatible with the alleged necessity of letting the bodies of the dead dissolve into fire expressed in T1 and T3. Thus, we should rather link this view with the ancient interpretations of Heraclitus, and in particular with the Stoic exegesis. While attributing to him the theory of the ἐκπύρωσις, and thus a cosmogony, the Stoics were at the same time able to find, in fragments such as B30, an important confirmation of the centrality of fire in their system:

T6. κόσμον τόνδε […] οὔτε τις θεῶν οὔτε ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν, ἀλλ′ ἦν ἀεὶ καὶ ἔστιν καὶ ἔσται πῦρ ἀείζωον, ἁπτόμενον μέτρα καὶ ἀποσβεννύμενον μέτρα.^[26]

This world-order […] no one of the gods or men has made, but it always was and is and shall be: an ever-living fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures.^[27]

From the point of view of Stoic philosophy, there is no substantial difference between physics and psychology, since both are built upon strictly corporealist principles. The Stoics could thus ascribe to Heraclitus their view of the essential kinship obtaining between the individual soul and the soul of the universe and so also the idea that the human soul, being made of purest fire (that is, πνεῦμα), can reunite with the World Soul after its death.^[28] Against this background, it becomes easier to see how one could have assumed that Heraclitus would have preferred cremation over other funerary practices, too.

It is important to stress that this does not imply that the opinion stated in T1 and T3 derives from a specific Stoic interpretation. The features of this reading that concern psychology and eschatology seem, rather, to show a pretty much exclusive preoccupation with the essence of the soul qua soul, i.e. as divine πνεῦμα, without taking into account the fate of the corpse after death. In the context of an attempt to ascribe to Heraclitus a specific view on how to dispose of the bodies of the dead, it seems however perfectly conceivable to suppose that the interpretatio Stoica of the Ephesian as a whole must have suggested to foreground the idea of a dissolution of the corpses into fire.

One might also wonder if the biographical tradition played a role in this sense. The legend recounting Heraclitus’ alleged dropsy and the desperate manner in which he would have tried – after unsuccessfully consulting the doctors by way of a riddle – to recover from it is well known: he would have buried himself in a cowshed, hoping that the heat produced by the cow-dung would have evaporated the water.^[29] Even though this tradition should, actually, have suggested the attribution to Heraclitus of the prescription of inhuming the bodies (ascribed to Thales in T3) rather than that of burning them, it is possible to identify a radicalisation of the Ephesian’s attempt to “dry out” his body and thus to heal from dropsy both in a curious passage of Tertullian’s Ad martyras and, in shortened form, in a scholium to Lucian’s De parasito:

T7. <nec> minus fecerunt philosophi: Heraclitus, qui se bubulo stercore oblitum exussit; item Empedocles, qui in ignes Aethnaei montis desiluit […].^[30]

Nor did the philosophers do less: e.g. Heraclitus, who, having besmeared himself with cow-dung, consumed himself in fire; or Empedocles, who leaped into the fires of Mount Etna […].

T8. καταπρησθέντας κτλ.^[31]] φαρμάκῳ ὡς Σωκράτης, καταπρησθέντας τὸ σῶμα ὡς Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος, φθινήσαντας ὡς Ἀντισθένης, φυγόντας ὡς **^[32]

“Consumed by fire” etc.] (some philosophers died miserably) “by poison” like Socrates, “with the body consumed by fire” like Heraclitus of Ephesus, “wasted away” like Antisthenes, “exiled” like […].

We may also be reminded of the paradox, recorded in Marcus Aurelius, pointing out that Heraclitus, who allegedly speculated so much about the world-conflagration, would have ended up dying with his insides full of water.^[33] But here, too, his death occurs due to the excess of water caused by dropsy, and not because of fire. While it cannot be excluded that T7 and T8 are the result of a curious blend or confusion of various sources or reminiscences, it seems clear to me that they testify to the interpretative tradition that we find mirrored in T1 and T3. The link with the biographical accounts on the life – and death – of Heraclitus enables us to hark back, in this case too, to the Hellenistic period, where the origins of this tradition are to be found.

5 Democritus’ Love of Honey in the Biographical Tradition

If we now turn to Democritus and his curious preference for the preservation of dead bodies in honey, i.e. for mummification through honey or ‘mellification’, it should be noted that several biographical-doxographical accounts regarding the Abderite testify to his supposed fondness for honey:^[34]

T9. Similar is also the vanity about preserving men’s bodies and promising that they shall come to life again shown by Democritus, who did not come to life again himself.^[35]

T10. It is reported that Democritus of Abdera had decided to kill himself because of his old age, and that he was reducing his food every day. But when the days of the Thesmophoria were imminent and his female relatives asked him to stay alive during the festival, so that they could celebrate it, he was persuaded and ordered that a jar of honey be set down near him. And by consuming only what evaporated from the honey, that man stayed alive long enough, and when the honey was removed after those days he died. Democritus was indeed always fond of honey, and to someone who asked him how it is possible to live healthily, he answered: “If you moisten the inside with honey and the outside with oil.”^[36]

T11. It will be no bad thing if love of inquiry does for us what it did for the learned Democritus. It seems that he was once eating a cucumber, and noticing that it tasted of honey he asked the maidservant where she had bought it. She mentioned a garden, and he got up and told her to take him and show him the place. The woman was surprised and asked him what he wanted. “I have to find out the cause of the sweetness,” he said “and I shall find it out by seeing the place.” The woman smiled and said: “Sit down; I put the cucumber by mistake into a jar that had had honey in it.” “You’ve ruined it,” he said, apparently in anger, “but all the same I shall pursue the inquiry and investigate the cause,” as if the sweetness were inherent and innate to the cucumber.^[37]

While none of these passages can or should be taken at face value, for our purposes it is instructive to attempt to hark back to their origin.^[38] In conformity with a typical modus operandi of the Hellenistic biographies of philosophers, information – that is, anecdotes – about their lives is derived from inferences from and deformations of their philosophical tenets. In the case of Democritus and honey, the accounts at issue have in all likelihood their roots in his theory of perception, which famously revolves around the demonstration of the relativity of perceptual properties and includes honey as one of its chief examples.

6 At the Origin of the Legend: Hellenistic Debates on Perception

Here are the most important passages, the first of which contains a clear reference to honey:

T12. Certainly, from the fact that honey appears bitter to some people and sweet to others, Democritus said that it is neither sweet nor bitter, while Heraclitus (said) that it is both. The same argument holds for the other perceptions and objects of perception.^[39]

T13. For he says: “By convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour, but in reality atoms and void.” ^[40]

It is my view that Democritus’ well-known theory that perceptual properties such as sweet and bitter are relative – exemplified by the different taste that honey may have for different people – lies at the origin both of the accounts that we have just examined (T9–T11) and, through this mediation, of the injunction to preserve the corpses in honey that we find in T1. It should also be noted that here Democritus is coupled with Heraclitus (not only in T12 but also in the broader context of T13, of which the former passage is a sort of short summary), to whom is ascribed the opinion that contrasting perceptual properties do in reality coincide. This interpretatio Sceptica of the Ephesian is built around fragments such as B61, which describes seawater as being at the same time pure and polluted, salutary and deadly:

T14. θάλασσα ὕδωρ καθαρώτατον καὶ μιαρώτατον· ἰχθύσι μὲν πότιμον καὶ σωτήριον, ἀνθρώποις δὲ ἄποτον καὶ ὀλέθριον.^[41]

The sea is the most pure and the most polluted water: for fishes it is drinkable and salutary, but for men it is undrinkable and deadly.^[42]

In the framework of the Sceptical interpretation of his theory of the opposites, Heraclitus is thus discussed together with and opposed to Democritus’ relativistic theory of perception: while the laughing philosopher would have interpreted pairs of opposite perceptual properties as being merely by convention, the weeping one would have maintained that they simultaneously belong by nature to the objects of perception.^[43]

In other words, the fact that the two Presocratic thinkers figured prominently, and were coupled together, in key Hellenistic debates such as that concerning the theory of perception might point to the origin of the famous duo Democritus-Heraclitus: at first, the two were paired in the framework of philosophically engaged discussions on a variety of controversial subjects, such as the nature of perceptual properties, which are well attested to have taken place between different Schools – for instance, as shown by Sextus, between Stoicism and the Sceptical Academy; later on, they came to be viewed as the paradigmatic couple of two thinkers holding radically different opinions – so much so that their appearances were symbolically “fixed” in that of the laughing and of the weeping philosopher. Democritus laughs because everything in the world is produced by haphazard combinations of atoms, with respect to which all human opinions possess a merely relative value. Heraclitus weeps over the misery and foolishness of men, who are uncomprehending of the workings of reality and of how everything will end up being consumed by fire in the world-conflagration.^[44]

One might wonder if the peculiar character traits that define the two philosophers are somehow active in the funerary prescriptions ascribed to them, too. The view that corpses should just be burnt would then suit the ‘pessimistic’ Heraclitus, while the injunction to preserve the bodies of the deceased – in view of a possible coming-to-life-again (see T9) – would chime with Democritus’ ‘optimistic’ attitude. Since we do not know when Democritus and Heraclitus started to laugh and weep respectively, the issue seems, however, difficult to decide.

Finally, it seems apposite to remark that the alternatives displayed in T1 are also found in a remarkable passage of Lucretius’ De natura deorum, in which a series of different ways to dispose of the bodies of the dead is overtly parodied:

T15. nam si in morte malumst malis morsuque ferarum

tractari, non invenio qui non sit acerbum

ignibus impositum calidis torrescere flammis

aut in melle situm suffocari atque rigere

frigore, cum summo gelidi cubat aequore saxi,

urgerive superne obtritum pondere terrae.^[45]

For if after death it is an evil to be mauled by the jaws and teeth of wild beasts, I do not see how it should not be unpleasant to be laid upon the fire and to shrivel in hot flames, or to be packed in honey and stifled, and to be stiff with cold lying upon a slab of cold marble, or to be buried and crushed under the weight of superimposed earth.^[46]

While harshly criticising the position of those who resent the fact that their body might, after death, perish by fire or even by the jaws of wild beasts on the ground that they are not capable of distinguishing themselves from their corpses, which will be cast out (a proiecto corpore, a view that sounds more genuinely Heraclitean – see B96 (= T4) – than the tradition that we are examining),^[47] Lucretius lists various ways of disposing of dead bodies. Among these feature prominently incineration and mellification, i.e. precisely the alternatives ascribed to Democritus and Heraclitus in T1 – and, what is more, exactly in the same order. Thus, this passage provides us with a further important testimony going back to the discussions and classifications of the Hellenistic period.

7 Conclusions

Even though the complicated dossier of the pair Democritus-Heraclitus would require a renewed and significantly more in-depth treatment, it seems reasonable to assume that one would have wanted to ascribe a precise view to them also for topics with which they clearly did not deal in their works, such as practical advice concerning funerary practices. In doing so, whoever accomplished this task heavily relied on the interpretative tradition of the Hellenistic age, encompassing both doctrinal aspects and biographical accounts. For this reason, from the choice of ascribing to Heraclitus the injunction to incinerate the bodies of the dead the heritage of the interpretatio Stoica of the philosophy of the Ephesian is evident, in addition to the possible influence of some of the legends surrounding his death. Likewise, the fact that Democritus is said to have prescribed preserving the corpses in honey is undoubtedly linked to the rich doxographical-biographical material circulating about him and stemming from a series of doctrinal debates on his key ideas, and on his theory of perception in the first place.

The need or the interest to ascribe to Presocratic thinkers such as Democritus and Heraclitus – as well as Thales (see T3) – precise views regarding funerary practices might be due to a later systematisation effort that displays a certain taste for erudition and philosophical curiosities, which we have for instance noted in Servius.^[48] Yet, I hope that my analysis has made it clear that such an effort is firmly rooted in the earlier tradition concerning this remarkable Presocratic duo, going back to significant theoretical and exegetical developments of the Hellenistic age, and that the examination of an apparently bizarre testimony like T1 can help us shed light on the mysterious origins of the inseparable couple constituted by the laughing and the weeping philosopher, who are finally reunited in our reconstruction of Varro’s fragment after a long, unwarranted separation.