Hippolytus

Footnotes

^[57] Aristoxenus is mentioned by Cicero in his Tusculan Questions, book i. chap. xviii., as having broached a theory in psychology, which may have suggested, in modern times, to David Hartley his hypothesis of sensation being the result of nerval vibrations. Cicero says of Aristoxenus, “that he was so charmed with his own harmonies, that he sought to transfer them into investigations concerning our corporeal and spiritual nature.”

^[58] Zaratas is another form of the name Zoroaster.

^[59] Or, “is a nature according to musical harmony” (preceding note); or, “The cosmical system is nature and a musical harmony.”

^[60] Zaratas, or Zoroaster, is employed as a sort of generic denomination for philosopher by the Orientals, who, whatever portions of Asia they inhabit, mostly ascribe their speculative systems to a Zoroaster. No less than six individuals bearing this name are spoken of. Arnobius (Contr. Gentes., i. 52) mentions four—(1) a Chaldean, (2) Bactrian, (3) Pamphylian, (4) Armenian. Pliny mentions a fifth as a native of Proconnesus ( Nat. Hist.., xxx. 1), while Apuleius (Florida, ii. 15) a sixth Zoroaster, a native of Babylon, and contemporary with Pythagoras, the one evidently alluded to by Hippolytus. (See translator’s Treatise on Metaphysics, chap. ii.)

^[61] Or, “that it was hot and cold,” or “hot of moist.”

^[62] Or it might be rendered, “a process of arrangement.” The Abbe Cruice (in his edition of Hippolytus, Paris, 1860) suggests a different reading, which would make the words translate thus, “when the earth was an undigested and solid mass.”

^[63] [See book vi. cap. xxii., infra, and note. But Clement gives another explanation. See vol. ii. p. 385, this series.]

^[64] Or, “Zametus.”

^[65] Or, “leading them down into cells, made them,” etc.; or, “made his disciples observe silence,” etc.

Chapter III.—Empedocles; His Twofold Cause; Tenet of Transmigration.

^[66] Or, “and beast,” more in keeping with the sense of the name; or “a lamb” has been suggested in the Gottingen edition of Hippolytus.

^[67] Or, “traveller into the sea;” or, “mute ones from the sea;” or, “from the sea a glittering fish.”

^[68] Or, “being the instructor of this (philosopher).”

Chapter IV.—Heraclitus; His Universal Dogmatism; His Theory of Flux; Other Systems.

^[69] Proclus, in his commentary on Plato’s Timæus, uses almost the same words: “but Heraclitus, in asserting his own universal knowledge, makes out all the rest of mankind ignorant.”

^[70] Or, “and among these, Socrates a moral philosopher, and Aristotle a logician, originated systems.”

Chapter V.—Anaximander; His Theory of the Infinite; His Astronomic Opinions; His Physics.

^[71] Or, “men.”

^[72] Or, “moist.”

^[73] Or, “congealed snow.”

^[74] That is, Antipodes. Diogenes Laertius was of the opinion that Plato first indicated by name the Antipodes.

^[75] Or, “727 times,” an improbable reading.

^[76] “In moisture” is properly added, as Plutarch, in his De Placitis, v. xix., remarks that “Anaximander affirms that primary animals were produced in moisture.”

^[77] This word seems requisite to the sense of the passage.

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