This passage shows that the Apolloniate was somewhat later in date than the statement in Laertios Diogenes[1] that he was contemporary with Anaxagoras would lead us to suppose, and the fact that his views are satirised in the Clouds of Aristophanes points in the same direction.[2]
187.Writings. Simplicius affirms that Diogenes wrote several works, though he allows that only one survived till his own day, namely, the Περὶ φύσεως.[3] This statement is based upon references in the surviving work itself, and is not to be lightly rejected. In particular, it is very credible that he wrote a tract Against the Sophists, that is to say, the pluralist cosmologists of the day.[4] That he wrote a Meteorology and a book called The Nature of Man is also quite probable. This would be a physiological or medical treatise, and perhaps the famous fragment about the veins comes from it.[5]
188.The Fragments. The work of Diogenes seems to have been preserved in the Academy; practically all the fairly extensive fragments which we still have are derived from Simplicius. I give them as they are arranged by Diels:
(1) In the beginning any discourse, it seems to me that one should make one's starting-point something indisputable, and one's expression simple and dignified. R. P. 207.
(2) My view is, to sum it all up, that all things are differentiations of the same thing, and are the same thing. And this is obvious; for, if the things which are now in this world—earth, and water, and air and fire, and the other things which we see
- ↑ Diog. ix. 57 (R. P. 206). The statement of Antisthenes, the writer of Successions, that he had "heard" Anaximenes is due to the usual confusion. He was doubtless, like Anaxagoras, "an associate of the philosophy of Anaximenes." Cf. Chap. VI. § 122.
- ↑ Aristoph. Clouds, 227 sqq., where Sokrates speaks of "mixing his subtle thought with the kindred air," and especially the words ἡ γῆ βίᾳ|ἕλκει πρὸς αὑτὴν τὴν ἰκμάδα τῆς φροντίδος. For the ἱκμάς, see Beare, p. 259.
- ↑ Simpl. Phys. p. 151, 24 (R. P. 207 a).
- ↑ Simplicius says Πρὸς φυσιολόγους, but he adds that Diogenes called them σοφισταί, which is the older word. This is, so far, in favour of the genuineness of the work.
- ↑ Diels gives this as fr. 6 (Vors. 51 s 6). I have omitted it, as it really belongs to the history of Medicine.
