Melissus' Way of Seeming?

Abstract

At Praeparatio Evangelica, 1.7.16 Eusebius observes that most of the Greek philosophers believed that the world was a product of chance. He continues: bo6E,s xa; T&s npMs &XXiAXoVs BL6Krnyets xvi 6LaqcpuvCas, . . . &so6 rdv rXoIXr&p6ou ( TpXOV TWLaT(V i To?0 iTatp6v'ros hxa%Ol ('I shall now present, from the miscellany of Plutarch, their opinions and their differences and controversies'). There follow doxai of twelve thinkers, namely Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Democritus, Epicurus, Aristippus of Cyrene, Empedocles, Metrodorus of Chios and Diogenes of Apollonia in that order. While the Stromateis may well be a compilation of the second century A.D., it has generally been considered unlikely that Plutarch was in any way connected with them.' As Diels demonstrated in his seminal Doxographi Graect'2 two strata can be detected in the work. The earliest, comprising all the material with the exception of that on Epicurus and Aristippus, derives ultimately from doxographical material in the works of Theophrastus. The second consists of summaries, based upon post-Theophrastean doxography, of views of Epicurus and Aristippus. The doxai of Epicurus were intruded, in defiance of chronology, immediately after those of Democritus because both Democritus and Epicurus were famous atomists. The opinions of Aristippus were tagged to those of Epicurus, again with disregard for chronology, because the two thinkers shared the view that hedone, pleasure, was the supreme good.3 The order of thinkers in the first, Theophrastean, stratum, is Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Democritus, Empedocles, Metrodorus and Diogenes. It seems clear that the unknown epitomator responsible for this assemblage intended that the order of thinkers should be chronological. Why else should he reflect in his distjllation Theophrastus' statements that Anaximander was associated with Thales and Parmenides with Xenophanes?$ To our critical gaze, however, two chronological anomalies are in evidence. First, few would be prepared to agree, tout court, that the work of Democritus was prior to that of Empedocles. An inversion, from our perspective, certainly, but not a particularly disturbing one. Empedocles and Democritus both responded, in their different ways, to the critique of Elea, they were partly contemporary and there was much ancient confusion as to Democritus' precise dates.5 Far more remarkable is the precedence of the indubitably fourth century figure Metrodorus6 over Diogenes of Apollonia who flourished around the third quarter of the fifth.7 Yet stranger are the doxai for which Metrodorus is held responsible. I go on to cite them in full.