Fragments

What survives of Heraclitus

Heraclitus wrote one book and it is lost. These 14 lines reached us only because other writers copied them into works of their own, usually while arguing about something else.

This account holds forever, but men fail to comprehend it, both before hearing it and once they have heard.
DK 22 B1, Wording likely his
Saved by
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians VII.132 (c. 200 CE)
A sceptic surveying what earlier thinkers had claimed about the criterion of truth. He copied out the opening of the book as evidence in an argument that no such criterion exists.
Probably the first sentence of the lost book. It survives because a philosopher who disagreed with it needed to quote it accurately.
Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow.
DK 22 B12, Wording likely his
Saved by
Arius Didymus, quoted in turn by Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel XV.20.2 (c. 315 CE)
Arius Didymus was compiling opinions about the soul; three centuries later Eusebius quoted that compilation while arguing that Greek philosophy pointed beyond itself. The line reaches us at two removes.
The river image in the wording closest to Heraclitus himself. Note what it does not say: the river stays, the waters change.
It is not possible to step twice into the same river.
DK 22 B91, Wording disputed
Saved by
Plutarch, On the E at Delphi 392b (c. 100 CE)
Plutarch was writing about the letter E carved at Delphi and turned to Heraclitus to argue that mortal things never hold still long enough to be said to exist.
The famous version, and the least secure. Plutarch is paraphrasing to make a point about flux; B12 is likely closer to what was written.
War is the father of all and the king of all: some it reveals as gods, others as men; some it makes slaves, others free.
DK 22 B53, Wording likely his
Saved by
Hippolytus of Rome, Refutation of All Heresies IX.9.4 (c. 222 CE)
Hippolytus was trying to destroy the reputation of a heretic named Noetus by showing his theology had been lifted from a pagan Greek. To make the charge stick he quoted Heraclitus at length and accurately.
One of a block of fragments we owe entirely to a hostile witness. His contempt is the reason the wording was preserved rather than summarised.
The hidden harmony is stronger than the visible one.
DK 22 B54, Wording likely his
Saved by
Hippolytus of Rome, Refutation of All Heresies IX.9.5 (c. 222 CE)
Quoted in the same attack on Noetus, a line later in the same passage.
The way up and the way down are one and the same.
DK 22 B60, Wording likely his
Saved by
Hippolytus of Rome, Refutation of All Heresies IX.10.4 (c. 222 CE)
Cited as evidence that Heraclitus held opposites to be identical, which was exactly the doctrine Hippolytus wanted to pin on his heretic.
Immortals are mortal, mortals immortal: each lives the other's death and dies the other's life.
DK 22 B62, Wording likely his
Saved by
Hippolytus of Rome, Refutation of All Heresies IX.10.6 (c. 222 CE)
Produced as the clearest proof of the identity of opposites, and so the most damning parallel to the heresy under attack.
The lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals, but gives a sign.
DK 22 B93, Wording likely his
Saved by
Plutarch, On the Oracles at Delphi 404d (c. 100 CE)
Plutarch was a priest at Delphi, arguing about why the god had stopped answering in verse. He reached for a line written six centuries earlier about how that god communicates at all.
Preserved by someone who worked at the shrine it describes.
I searched myself.
DK 22 B101, Wording likely his
Saved by
Plutarch, Against Colotes 1118c (c. 100 CE)
Quoted while defending earlier philosophers against an Epicurean who had mocked them, as proof that enquiry could begin from the self.
Two words in Greek. Also reported by Diogenes Laertius, which is why it is considered secure.
A man's character is his guiding spirit.
DK 22 B119, Wording likely his
Saved by
Stobaeus, Anthology IV.40.23 (c. 450 CE)
Stobaeus was assembling an anthology of instructive passages for the education of his son. The line survives because it looked useful to a father.
Usually rendered 'character is destiny', which reads more fatalistically than the Greek: the daimon is what a person's own disposition amounts to.
Nature loves to hide.
DK 22 B123, Wording likely his
Saved by
Themistius, Orations 5.69b (c. 360 CE)
A court orator used it in a speech, nine centuries after it was written, as a compact way of saying that truth does not present itself.
Much learning does not teach understanding.
DK 22 B40, Wording likely his
Saved by
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers IX.1 (c. 230 CE)
A biographer needed a line to establish his subject's famous contempt for other people's erudition, and quoted the insult itself.
In the full fragment the line continues by naming Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hecataeus as the men it has failed to teach.
This world-order, the same for all, no god and no man made; it always was and is and will be: an ever-living fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures.
DK 22 B30, Wording likely his
Saved by
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies V.104.1 (c. 200 CE)
Clement was arguing that Greek thinkers had glimpsed in fragments what scripture set out whole. To show the glimpse he had to reproduce it.
The longest surviving sentence, and the one that most clearly denies the world was created.
You would not find the limits of the soul by travelling, even if you walked every road: so deep is its measure.
DK 22 B45, Wording likely his
Saved by
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers IX.7 (c. 230 CE)
Included in the biographical sketch as a specimen of the obscurity that earned him the nickname the Riddler.

Back to Heraclitus