Book reviews

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Daniel W. Graham, ed. and trans. The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics. Parts 1 and 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. xvii + 1020 pp. Cloth, $180; paper, $99. It has been nearly 30 years since Malcolm Schofield revised and updated the first edition of the venerable translation of fragments of the Presocratic philosophers by J. E. Raven and G. S. Kirk, originally compiled in 1957 in the wake of the sixth and final edition of Diels-Kranzs (DK) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin 195152). And in the time since Kirk-Raven-Schofields second edition of The Presocratic Philosophers (KRS), in 1983, several translations of selected portions of the collected fragments of early Greek philosophy into English have appeared: Jonathan Barnes Early Greek Philosophy (London 1987), drawn from his revised edition of The Presocratic Philosophers (London 1982), Robin Waterfields The First Philosophers (Oxford 2000), and Richard McKirahans Philosophy Before Socrates (Indianapolis, Ind. 2011). Students of Presocratic philosophy and the early intellectual history of Greece have profited immensely from the contributions made by KRS, Barnes, Waterfield, and McKira han. Yet none of these volumes, despite their intellectual courage, philosophical acumen, and deep learning, could provide what Diels and Kranz had given German audiences in the middle of the twentieth century: a bilingual translation of the complete fragments of and selected testimonia concerning those important intellectual antecedents of Plato (including the Sophists). On the eve of Professor Schofields retirement, then, Daniel W. Graham has produced a two-volume translation and commentary on the complete fragments and selected testimonies of the major Presocratics. It should be mentioned that this is not an easy or even enviable project. Presocratic studies has undergone a renaissance of sorts since the last edition of KRS in 1983, and new critical editions and translations into English of individual figures (J. Leshers Xenophanes of Colophon [Toronto 1992]; C. A. Huffmans editions of Philolaus of Croton [Cambridge 1993] and Archytas of Tarentum [Cambridge 2005]; the editions of Anaxagoras by P. Curd [Toronto 2007] and D. Sider [Sankt Augustin 2005]; C.C.W. Taylors The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus [Toronto 1999]; G.J. Pendricks Antiphon the Sophist [Cambridge 2002]); new editions of papyrus discoveries (A. Martin and O. Primavesis LEmpdocle de Strasbourg [Berlin 1999], incorporated into B. Inwoods The Poem of Empedocles [Toronto 2001] and the long-awaited official text of The Derveni Papyrus by T. Kouremenos, G. Parssoglou, and K. Tsantsanoglou [Firenze 2006]); and major critical studies
American Journal of Philology 134 (2013) 149166 2013 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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of Presocratic philosophers and/or philosophy (too numerous to name here) have significantly modified the landscape of the study of early Greek philosophy. In the midst of this renaissance, one has seen the critical approaches used to evaluate Presocratic thought develop into a perfect storm, with a barrage of new approaches concerning historiography, interpretation, reception, and contextualization, now considered legitimate in the assessment and evaluation of those thorny and often obscure fragments of the early Greek speculators. Presocratic studies has become contested ground, and the idea of producing a two-volume set that might update, stabilize, and make DK accessible for an English-reading audience, despite the protestations of the few (xiii), must be considered nothing less than wholly welcome. Given his demonstrated comprehension of the field of Presocratic studies at largehe has produced two broad-ranging monographs, edited several general volumes, and offered many article-length contributions on early Greek philosophyGraham would seem to be the perfect choice for the job. What remains to be seen, then, is whether the volumes as we have them rise to the challenge of the project. The results, I think, are mixed. I will first discuss those aspects of The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy that seem more successful and testify to the value that such a collection offers to educators and students alike. Then I will examine some areas where the volumes do not quite reach the heights promised by the project. Graham claims to have drawn from DKs promiscuous (xiii) collection of pre-Socratics and post-Socratics, as well as non-philosophers, the leading Presocratic thinkers. The collection, organized into two parts (Cosmologists and Ontologists and Sophists), is further subdivided into nineteen chapters concerning individual figures (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Diogenes of Apollonia, Melissus, Philolaus, The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus, The Atomists, Continued: Democritus Ethical Fragments, Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Prodicus, and Anonymous Texts, including the subchapters Anonymous Iamblichi and Dissoi Logoi) and one short appendix on Pythagoras. Additional material is included in a general introduction, which does an admirable job of concisely discussing the historiography of Presocratic studies from Plato, Aristotle, and Theophrastus through the doxographers and biographers of antiquity to the twenty-first century, a general bibliography, a concordance with DK, and indices of sources, passages, and other general issues. Overall, these ancillary materials are model combinations of concision, clarity of exposition, and relevance for use; they are, moreover, nicely supplemented by the essays found in Graham and Curds edited volume, The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy (Oxford 2008), which bring students of early Greek philosophy up to speed with recent scholarly debates. Bibliographies, which follow each individual chapter, are synoptic and also include important items from scholarly traditions outside the English-speaking world, and a general bibliography at the back of part 2 is both compact and pertinent. After spending quite a long time on various individual chapters in my MA module, Ancient Philosophers

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on Origins, where graduate students in Classics and Philosophy used Grahams volumes as the central textbook, I must admit that I have managed to locate only one minor error in the transcription of the Greek (on 356, where should be ). Textual interventions, while not perhaps as rare as Graham would like to imply (xiv), tend to be reasonably employed, even when Graham chooses to deviate from the readings found in the authoritative recent editions. The ap. crit. provided at the foot of the page, while not complete, nonetheless lists the most important readings, and the judicious selection provides instructors with opportunities to discuss more carefully the Greek text with students. One good example of this is text 9 [F 1] (DK 21 B 1) of Xenophanes, a notoriously difficult text preserved in Athenaeus Deipnosophistae (11.462c63a). Graham highlights the textual issues in the ap. crit., including less problematic interventions such as Dindorfs for the manuscripts in l. 2, as well as more potentially controversial interventions such as Musurus and Bergks correction of for the manuscripts in l.17. Because they are not bombarded with articles written on these readings in the nineteenth century, students are able to dwell on the correlative problems of establishing and interpreting the text, a procedure with which they might be familiar if they happened to work with other collected student editions, e.g., Campbells Greek Lyric Poetry (London 1982). In fact, Grahams ap. crit. on Xenophanes B 1 is more attentive to the details of the Greek text than Campbells, a welcome sign from a scholar who humbly claims only to be merely a philosopher with classical training rather than a card-carrying classicist of the type who should be editing texts (xiii). Grahams volumes thus provide a unique opportunity for students to understand the great importance that is allotted to active engagement with the texts of early Greek philosophy, and they encourage students to think more about how advancing an interpretation is tied to the problems of committing to a text in ancient philosophy. Compared with other available source books on early Greek philosophy, Grahams volumes could be said to encourage students to reflect upon their own broader assumptions about the organization of an ancient philosophers works. Like KRS, which also supplies the Greek text along with a translation into English, Grahams volumes are thematically organized, often starting with an introduction and biographical information and then proceeding to philosophical topics that, while they generally advance in order from universal to particular, remain sensitive to the philosophical peculiarities of each thinker. The chapter on Heraclitus offers a very good example and proceeds from (I) Life and (II) Works to (III) Philosophy, which is then subdivided according to (A) Principles and Knowledge, (B) The World and Opposites, (C) Psychology, Ethics, Politics, Theology, and, finally, (IV) Reception. In a sense, this is a schema not terribly divergent, at least in principle, from DKs presentation (cf. 7), with one exception: Graham, like KRS, combines fragments and testimonia in order to obtain a more coherent and unified conceptual mapping than DK. Notable is the absence of the sorts of interpretive exegesis that separate out fragments and testimonia now common in other teaching textbooks of early Greek philosophy, including KRS

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as well as those of McKirahan and Barnes, which construct narratives between fragments by means of explanation of the source materials and added contextualization. Graham leaves it to the reader to try to see how the fragments and testimonia shed light on one another, preferring instead to combine testimonies and fragments into a global order and distinguishing the fragments (or possible fragments in some cases) by putting them in boldface type (7). Obviously, this choice has a serious effect on the reader, and certain instructors will not find this organizational choice to be very conducive to classroom use. Grahams volumes are, I suggest, best suited for advanced undergraduates and graduate students who have already taken courses in both Greek philosophy and the ancient Greek language. Other more narrative-based or contextualizing textbooks of Presocratic philosophy, which might sacrifice interpretive freedom for coherence (such as those of KRS and McKirahan), would be better suited to less advanced students or to students operating outside of their comfort zone in a Classics department; and I would still recommend Barnes (1982) for advanced undergraduates or graduate students without Greek in a Philosophy department, because it will be more similar to what they are used to, without compromising philological precision. Pedagogical issues aside, I would also like to note that Grahams volumes are very useful for research purposes: if a researcher or graduate student writing a paper needs a reliable Greek text of the major Presocratics and Sophists to be at hand for cross-referencingwithout the pain of dragging out the German dictionary to consult DKGrahams The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy does the job effectively, if not comprehensively. Other aspects of the two-volume set are not as successful as those mentioned above. While the volumes are indeed useful for cross-referencing and a quick look (much like Loebs), as a consequence of the fact that Graham has reordered the fragments from DKs original, such cross-referencing is more labyrinthine than straightforward, because one is forced to consult the concordance located at the back of part 2. This can be a nuisance when working with the majority of the fragments and testimonia of the Presocratics, which are located in part 1. Since I find Grahams global order of fragments to be conducive to, without being restrictive of, the development of a conceptual narrative for each ancient intellectual, I would not want to sacrifice the new order (even if I find the text/ fragment distinction, as well as the three-letter abbreviations of the philosophers, somewhat cumbersome); and it is true that Graham has listed all the A, B, and C designations from DK ad loc. Perhaps this problem could have been resolved by adding concordances at the back of each volume that would have been particular to the contents of each part. Because the work seems to waver in its purpose whether it is to make accessible (a selected portion of) DK to the lay reader (7), or to develop a coherent organizational principle that balances the global order with DKs division and classification of fragments and testimoniaits application to each of those projects is not fully realized. It is almost unfair to raise the issue of the choice of authors for the volumes, but there is still reason to question the selection of leading Presocratic

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thinkers (13). Graham chooses not to include some figures for lack of fragments; in particular, he mentions the absence of Hippias, Critias, and Archelaus. Generally, it is true that some selection from DK is requiredwho would really think it a tragic loss that Xenophilus the Pythagorean had been passed over? But why, according to the same argument, include Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, for whom we have only controversial scraps, if even that? Here we see selection biasespecially based on the importance to some modern scholarly discussionsbeing leveled against these figures. It is difficult to disregard the absence of Hippias, Critias, and Archelaus and easy to underestimate their significance for philosophers (and others) in the classical world: whether or not Socrates was taught by Archelaus, he was probably the earliest Athenian who engaged in Ionian philosophy of some sort; Hippias, for all we know, is likely to have been the first proper historian of philosophy and a model for Aristotles and Theophrastus approaches to scientific inquiry (on which see L. Zhmuds The Origin of the History of Science in Classical Antiquity [Berlin 2006], 4849 and A. Patzers Der Sophist Hippias als Philosophiehistoriker [Freiburg 1986], passim), irrespective of whatever activities he may have undertaken in mathematics; and the dramas of Critias, Platos uncle and a leading figure of the Thirty who overthrew the Athenian democracy, survive in no less than seventy-five fragments (according to DKs numbering). This is not to mention those other influential early figures whom Graham has passed over in silence and for whom we have fragments (in the first two cases in abundance): Epicharmus of Syracuse, Ion of Chios, and Alcmaeon of Croton. Two of these three figures have received major scholarly treatments: Epicharmus was given an up-to-date bilingual critical text and translation in 1996 by Luca Rodrguez-Noriega Guilln, and Ion was the sole subject of 450-page Brill volume edited by Victoria Jennings and Andrea Katsaros in 2007, which includes three chapters devoted to the question of whether he should be considered a philosopher. The Derveni Papyrus, which has been the subject of a great deal of exciting debate, especially concerning early approaches to the philosophy of language and cosmology (see, e.g., R. Barney, Names and Nature in Platos Cratylus [London 2001], 5052 and G. Betegh, The Derveni Papyrus [Cambridge 2004], passim), is all but absent here. Each of these intellectuals, who were included in DKs editions (excepting the Derveni Papyrus, which was not unearthed until 1962), was taken seriously by Barnes and KRS, who even include a chapter on Archelaus. To his credit, Graham does admit that the selection and arrangement of material inevitably presuppose some kind of preliminary interpretation on my part (13), but I am not convinced that this statement can be taken as a sufficient explanation of the exclusion of these remarkable figures and texts. Finally, there are the related issues of Grahams translations and commentaries. The treatment of these varies by author or topic, and they often go hand-in-hand. For example, the translation and commentary on Empedocles is excellent, with precise and well-considered translations of the material accompanied by a thorough but also balanced discussion of content, philological, and

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philosophical issues, etc. in the commentary. One might draw a contrast with the chapter on Philolaus of Croton, in which deviations from the current authoritative edition (in this case, Huffmans Cambridge edition of 1993) are sometimes simply mistaken. Take, for example, this passage of the notoriously difficult but extremely stimulating Fragment B 6 (Text 11, [F3], in Grahams numeration, p. 493; trans. Graham):
, , . [T]he essence of things, being eternal, and nature itself admit of divine but not human knowledge; except that it is not possible that any of the things that exist and are known by us could have come to be unless the essences of things, from which the world-order is composed, existednamely limiters and unlimiteds.

Now here is Huffmans translation (12324):

[T]he being of things, which is eternal, and nature in itself admit of divine and not human knowledge, except that it was impossible for any of the things that are and are known by us to have come to be, if the being of the things from which the world-order came together, both the limiting things and the unlimited things, did not preexist.

Grahams translation exhibits clarity and cadence where Huffmans translation preserves the awkwardness of the language through close adherence to the Greek. But perhaps Graham could have been more attentive here: he has mistaken the Doric singular genitive for Attic/Ionic plural accusative (the essences of things ... existed for the Doric genitive absolute ), and his translation elides what Huffman carefully differentiates, namely, the three modes of existence (to be [], to have come to be [], and to preexist []). The incautious reader will thus be presented with a mistranslation in which the limiters and limiteds are essences in addition to the essence of things, the things are not the limiters and limiteds but other things, and all these, somehow, just seem to exist simpliciter. The reader might, in this state of aporia, feel inclined to reject Philolaus outright for confusion, but she might also wish to check Grahams commentary on these lines for help: Here Philolaus renounces a direct knowledge of reality, but accepts a derivative kind of knowledge. For the world to be as we experience it to be, it must have limiters and limiteds. In effect, his argument here is reminiscent of a Kantian transcendental argument which argues from the fact of knowledge to the conditions that would make it possible (511). The reference to Kant is apt, in that it highlights the potential significance of this fragment to the broader history of philosophy. It also implicitly links B 6 to B 1 and B 2, drawing together Philolaus physics, ontology, and epistemology. But analysis of Philolaus nature itself and the obscure essence of things has dropped out entirely, which is surprising given the obvious potential significance

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of these concepts to Platos ontology (not to mention Aristotles development of the language of predication). The combination of mistranslation due to insufficient attention to the Greek and the spare commentary constitutes, at least in the case of Philolaus B 6, a double-whammy for the reader, who is likely to feel more baffled than if she had simply stayed with Huffmans Greek text. Slackness at points in the commentary might be a function of the fact that the author was asked to supply it by Cambridge University Press on the grounds that the texts were not sufficiently self-explanatory to stand on their own (xiv), but this must remain mere speculation. To my mind, it is hard to fathom how any of the texts of early Greek philosophy might be thought to stand on their own. In summary, Graham has produced in The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy a work whose strengths achieve prominence in the relief of its weaknesses. It is my hope that if its author and Cambridge University Press were to entertain the possibility of a second editionpart 2, it is worth noting, is relatively short in page countthey would consider ways to expand beyond the volumes selfavowed identification as a starting-point for further inquiry and reflection or willing acceptance of major gaps in the record of a lost conversation about the nature of things (1314). After all, those heavyweight contenders which Grahams volumes seek to measure up against (KRS, Barnes, and McKirahan) all found better footing in revised and expanded editions, and there is no reason to assume the same regimen would not work here. Phillip Sidney Horky
Durham University e-mail: Phillip.Horky@Durham.ac.uk

Stephano Maso, Carlo Natali, and Gerhard Seel, eds. Reading Aristotle: Physics VII.3. What is Alteration? Proceedings of the International ESAP-HYELE Conference. Las Vegas, Nev.: Parmenides Publishing, 2012. xvii + 152 pp. Paper, $65. As the editors of this excellent little volume point out from the outset, Aristotles Physics VII.3 is a curious, difficult, andsadlymostly neglected chapter. On the one hand, the chapter discusses quite important matters. Offering one of the lengthiest discussions of qualitative change in the Aristotelian corpus, it starts out by restricting this type of changenot to changes in any of the four types of quality Aristotle had distinguished in Categories 8but to change in perceptual qualities only (i.e., to change in the third type of affective qualities listed in Categories 8). It then proceeds by demonstrating that two seeming counterexamples to this refined notion of qualitative changenamely, items taking on figures or shapes, and the taking on and casting off of states (the fourth and first type of quality listed in the Categories, respectively)are not in fact cases of qualitative change, even if their occurrence depends on qualitative changes