The author deals with the lost works of Empedocles, an often neglected subject, in the frame of the discussion concerning the number of the poems and their main features. He reviews the traces of the Passage of Xerxes, of the Medical Discourse, and of the Proem to Apollo among the fragments and witnesses, taking his cue from textual aspects and dealing with the contents, the significance of each of these writings in Empedocles’ culture and thought and their multifarious relationships with (...) his times. As to the Passage, he tries to reconcile the contrasting interpretations so far proposed (historical or religious poem). Concerning B111, the only relic from the Medical Discourse, he explains why its contents are incompatible with the Physical Poem and the Purifications. He analyzes the Proem to Apollo in several perspectives (text, witnesses, contents also from the epistemological point of view, literary genre). He assigns fragments 131–134 and 142 to the Proem, drawing one of his arguments from the comparison with the third Homeric Hymn to Apollo, and also suggesting a relationship with an intellectual cult of the sun. Formal features help to ascribe each fragment to the relevant poem. Close similarities between fragments do not necessarily mean that they come from the same writing: Empedocles is wont to allude to one poem of his while composing another. The author concludes that the striving for a reductio ad unum of the Acragantine’s output, also evident in the attempt by a number of scholars to make only one poem out of the Περὶ φύσεως and the Καθαρμοί, has often led researchers to take for granted that none of the fragments preserved might belong to the lost works. (shrink)

Modern logicians have complained that Aristotelian logic lacks a distinction between predication and assertion, and that predication, according to the Aristotelians, implies assertion. The present paper addresses the question of whether this criticism can be levelled against Aristotle’s logic. Based on a careful study of the De interpretatione, the paper shows that even if Aristotle defines what he calls simple assertion in terms of predication, he does not confound predication and assertion. That is because, first, he does not understand compound (...) assertion in terms of predication, and secondly, he acknowledges non-assertive predicative thoughts that are truth-evaluable. Therefore, the implications of Aristotle’s ‘predication theory of assertion’ are not as devastating as the critics believe. (shrink)

Pherecydes’ pseudepigraphic letter to Thales (Diog. Laert. I 122) is of uncertain date. It revolves around the idea that the book of Pherecydes should be interpreted allegorically. The aim of this paper is twofold: on the one hand, to contextualise the composition of the epistle through the examination of ancient witnesses who focus on Pherecydes’ obscurity; on the other hand, it shows to what extent Numenius, Celsus and Porphyry’s allegoric interpretation has misled some authoritative modern reconstruction of Pherecydes’ doctrines, as (...) it is today generally agreed that he taught the immortality of the human soul and cycle of reincarnation. (shrink)

The article investigates how Diogenes of Oenoanda in his huge 2nd cent. AD Epicurean wall inscription deals with the control of fear. It argues for restoring the fragmentary title of Diogenes’ Ethics–treatise with “feelings [of soul] and [body]”. In this way the importance given in Ethics to the evaluation of our feelings according to the Epicurean doctrine is reflected in the title. Diogenes in his introduction to the whole inscription lists up the control of irrational fears in the first place (...) of achievements of Epicureanism. The analysis of the relevant passages on his Ethics results in assigning fr. 47 III–IV and NF 137 to a subsection dealing with fear of pain from diseases which on the inscription must have followed fr. 48. Fear from gods is abundantly discussed in the recently combined Theological Physics Sequence. The article argues, that this topic was not treated once more in Ethics. Indeed, the “unclear fear” mentioned in fr. 35 refers, as a comparison with Epic. Ep. Hdt. 81–82 and Phld. De Dis I shows, not to some sort of feeling triggered by wrong tales on gods, but to an irrational fear of death. (shrink)

The article investigates how Diogenes of Oenoanda in his huge 2ndcent. AD Epicurean wall inscription deals with the control of fear. It argues for restoring the fragmentary title of Diogenes’Ethics–treatise with “feelings [of soul] and [body]”. In this way the importance given inEthicsto the evaluation of our feelings according to the Epicurean doctrine is reflected in the title. Diogenes in his introduction to the whole inscription lists up the control of irrational fears in the first place of achievements of Epicureanism. (...) The analysis of the relevant passages on hisEthicsresults in assigning fr. 47 III–IV and NF 137 to a subsection dealing with fear of pain from diseases which on the inscription must have followed fr. 48. Fear from gods is abundantly discussed in the recently combinedTheological Physics Sequence. The article argues, that this topic was not treated once more inEthics. Indeed, the “unclear fear” mentioned in fr. 35 (Ethics) refers, as a comparison with Epic.Ep. Hdt. 81–82 and Phld.De DisI shows, not to some sort of feeling triggered by wrong tales on gods, but to an irrational fear of death. (shrink)