On the Universe — Heraclitus ============================ ΠΕΡΙ ΦΥΣΕΩΣ Translation/edition: W. H. S. Jones Language: English Read in Plato Scroll: https://plato-scroll.com/s/heraclitus-fragments/ This file: https://plato-scroll.com/text/heraclitus-fragments-b.txt Other editions of this work: - John Burnet: https://plato-scroll.com/text/heraclitus-fragments.txt Sources and licences: https://plato-scroll.com/attribution.html Numbers in [brackets] are the edition's reference loci (Stephanus, Bekker, book.line, page...). Superscript numerals refer to the Notes at the end. ## On the Universe Translated by W. H. S. Jones, 1931. Fragment numbers follow Bywater’s edition. ## Fragment 1 It is wise to listen, not to me but to the Word, and to confess that all things are one. For λόγος see Heinze, Lehre vom Logos, 1873; Zeller, i. 630; Aall, Gesch. d. Logosidee 1896. “All things are one” because they are all resolved into fire and come from fire. ## Fragment 2 This word, which is ever true, men prove as incapable of understanding when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For although all things happen in accordance with this Word, men seem as though they had no experience thereof, when they make experiment with such words and works as I relate, dividing each thing according to its nature and setting forth how it really is. The rest of men know not what they do when awake, just as they forget what they do when asleep. Aristotle was in doubt whether αἰεὶ should be taken with ἐόντος or with ἀξύνετοι γίνονται. See Rhetoric, III. 5, 1407, b 14. ἐόντος means “true” in Ionic with words like λόγος. See Burnet, E. G. Ph. note on Fragment II. I have tried in my translation to bring out the play on words in ἀπείροισι ἐοίκασι πειρώμενοι. ## Fragment 3 The stupid when they have heard are like the deaf; of them does the proverb bear witness that when present they are absent. ## Fragment 4 Bad witnesses are eyes and ears to men, if they have souls that understand not their language. This passage is not a general attack on the senses; it merely lays stress on the need of an intelligent soul to interpret the sense-impressions. The clever emendation of Bernays would mean: “when mud holds the soul,” i.e. when the soul is moist, and therefore (on Heracleitean principles) dull and stupid. ## Fragment 5 Many do not interpret aright such things as they encounter, nor do they have knowledge of them when they have learned, though they seem to themselves so to do. H. seems to be referring to (a) the correct apprehension of phenomena and (b) the difference between unintelligent learning and understanding. ## Fragment 6 Knowing neither how to listen nor how to speak. ## Fragment 7 If you do not expect it, you will not find out the unexpected, as it is hard to be sought out and difficult. Heracleitus is laying stress upon the importance of the constructive imagination in scientific enquiry — what the early Christians might have called “faith.” ## Fragment 8 Gold-seekers dig much earth to find a little gold. ## Fragment 9 Critical discussion. ## Fragment 10 Nature is wont to hide herself. φύσις is not necessarily an abstraction here, but merely the truth about the Universe. It is easy, however, to see why the Stoics could maintain that their pantheism was founded on Heracleitus. See Fragments XIX, XCI, XCII. ## Fragment 11 The lord whose is the oracle in Delphi neither declares nor hides, but sets forth by signs. ## Fragment 12 The sibyl with raving mouth utters things mirthless, unadorned and unperfumed, but with her voice she extends over a thousand years because of the God. In this and the preceding H. seems to be calling attention to his oracular style, which was in part due to the strong religious emotion of his age. There is much that is oracular in Aeschylus and Pindar. ## Fragment 13 The things that can be seen, heard and learnt, these I honour especially. This and the following two fragments emphasise the importance of personal research, as contrasted with learning from authority. Bywater’s punctuation would make the meaning to be: “Am I to value highly those things that are learnt by sight or hearing?” — an attack upon the accuracy and value of the senses. But H. does not distrust the senses, but only sense impressions interpreted in a stupid way. ## Fragment 14 Particularly at the present time, when all places can be reached by water or by land, it would not be right to use as evidence for the unknown the works of poets and mythologists, as in most things our predecessors did, proving themselves, as Heracleitus has it, unreliable supporters of disputed points. ## Fragment 15 Eyes are more accurate witnesses than ears. First-hand information is better than hearsay. ## Fragment 16 Much learning does not teach understanding, or it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, as well as Xenophanes and Hecataeus. As is plain from the following fragment, this is an attack on confusing second-hand information with true understanding and education. It is unfair to the mathematical achievements of Pythagoras and scarcely does justice to the theological acumen of Xenophanes, to say nothing of his wonderful anticipation of the modern doctrine of scientific progress. See Fragment XVI. (In Stob. Flor. 29, 41): οὔ τοι ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς παρέδειξαν, ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητοῦντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. ## Fragment 17 Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, practised research more than any other man, and choosing out these writings claimed as his own a wisdom that was only much learning, a mischievous art. An attack on book-learning that is merely the acquisition of second-hand information. Diels rejects the fragment as spurious, chiefly because it makes Pythagoras a writer of books. But the reading ἐποιήσατο for ἐποίησεν does away with this objection. ## Fragment 18 Of all those whose discourses I have heard, not one attains to this, to realise that wisdom is a thing apart from all. This has been interpreted to mean that true wisdom is attained by none, or that general opinions do not contain real wisdom. ## Fragment 19 Wisdom is one thing — to know the thought whereby all things are steered through all things. That is, to understand the doctrine of opposites and of perpetual change. ## Fragment 20 This world, which is the same for all, was made neither by a god nor by man, but it ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out. The use of κόσμος to mean “world” is Pythagorean, μέτρα refers to the approximate correspondence between the things that are becoming fire and the things that are coming out of fire. The balance of nature is not disturbed by perpetual flux. ## Fragment 21 The transformations of Fire are, first, sea; of sea half is earth and half fiery storm-cloud. This is the famous “road up and down” (or at any rate the best illustration of it) with its three stages — earth, water, fire. On the earth is the sea, above the sea is the sun. Sea is half composed of earth transforming itself to water and half of fiery cloud, the latter representing water on its way to become fire. This explanation of πρηστήρ I owe to Burnet. ## Fragment 22 All things are exchanged for Fire and Fire for all things, even as goods for gold and gold for goods. ## Fragment 23 It is melted into sea, and is measured to the same proportion as before it became earth. The subject is γῆ, and the whole fragment means that along the “road up” the proportion of the “measures” remains constant. The amount of earth in the universe remains approximately the same, because the “measures” of water turning to earth equal the “measures” of earth turning to water. ## Fragment 24 Want . . . surfeit. E.g. the “want” of earth for water to increase it equals the “surfeit” of earth which makes some of it turn to water. ## Fragment 25 Fire lives the death of air, and air lives the death of Fire; water lives the death of earth, earth that of water. ## Fragment 26 Fire when it has advanced will judge and convict all things. For the “advances” of fire see περὶ διαίτης I, Chap. III. Such statements as the one above led the Stoics to develop their theory of ἐκπύρωσις, the destruction of all things periodically by fire, to be followed by a re-birth and restoration of all things. ## Fragment 27 How can you hide from that which never sets? ## Fragment 28 The thunderbolt steers all things. ## Fragment 29 The sun will not overstep his measures; otherwise the Erinyes, helpers of Justice, will find him out. See the notes to XX and XXIIΙ. ## Fragment 30 The limits of the East and West are the Bear, and opposite the Bear is the boundary of bright Zeus. The “boundary of bright Zeus” is, according to Diels, the South Pole. Burnet takes it to be the horizon, and the whole passage a protest against the Pythagorean view of a southern hemisphere. ## Fragment 31 If there were no sun, there would be night, in spite of the other stars. ## Fragment 32 The sun is new every day. This is because of the perpetual flux. One sun is extinguished at sunset; another is kindled at sunrise. ## Fragment 33 Thales is supposed by some to have been the first astronomer and the first to foretell the eclipses and turnings of the sun, as Eudemus declares in his account of astronomical discoveries. For this reason both Xenophanes and Herodotus pay him respectful honour, and both Heracleitus and Democritus bear witness to him. ## Fragment 34 So time, having a necessary connection and union with the firmament, is not motion merely, but, as I have said, motion in an order having measure, limits and periods. Of which the sun, being overseer and warder, to determine, judge, appoint and declare the changes and seasons, which, according to Heracleitus, bring all things, is a helper of the leader and first God, not in trivial or small things, but in the greatest and most important. ## Fragment 35 The teacher of most men is Hesiod. They think that he knew very many things, though he did not understand day and night. For they are one. In Theogony 124 Hesiod calls day the daughter of night. According to Heracleitus day and night, two opposites, are really one, or, as we should say, two aspects of the same thing. ## Fragment 36 God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger. But he undergoes transformations, just as fire, when it is mixed with spices, is named after the savour of each. “Unity of opposites” again. Burnet renders ἠδονὴ “savour,” and I have followed him, though with some hesitation, especially as the reading of the second sentence is dubious. καθ᾿ ἡδονὴν ἑκάστου could mean: “according to individual caprice,” and I am not certain that this is not the meaning here. ## Fragment 37 If all existing things were to become smoke, the nostrils would distinguish them. ## Fragment 38 Souls smell in Hades. It is difficult to see what sense can be given to this fragment except that in Hades souls are a smoky exhalation, and so come under the sense of smell. Pfleiderer suggested ὁσιοῦνται, “are made holy,” a thought foreign to Heracleitus. ## Fragment 39 Cold things become warm, warmth cools, moisture dries, the parched gets wet. ## Fragment 40 It scatters and gathers, it comes and goes. ## Fragment 41 You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you. ## Fragment 42 [TRANSLATOR NOTE: I omit this, as being obviously a corrupt form of XLI.] ## Fragment 43 And heracleitus rebukes the poet who says, “would that strife might perish from among gods and men.” For there could be (he said) no attunement without the opposites high and low, and no animals without the opposites male and female. ## Fragment 44 War is the father of all and the king of all; some he has marked out to be gods and some to be men, some he has made slaves and some free. ## Fragment 45 They understand not how that which is at variance with itself agrees with itself. There is attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and of the harp. With the reading παλίντροπος the meaning is: “a harmony from opposite shapes.” ## Fragment 46 In reference to these very things they look for deeper and more natural principles. Euripides says that “the parched earth is in love with rain,” and that “high heaven, with rain fulfilled, loves to fall to earth.” And Heracleitus says that “the opposite is beneficial,” and that “from things that differ comes the fairest attunement,” and that “ail things are born through strife.” Burnet thinks that there is a reference to the medical theory of “like is cured by unlike” in the first of these quotations from Heracleitus (τὸ ἀντίξουν συμφέρον). See also Stewart on Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1104, b16. ## Fragment 47 The invisible attunement is superior to the visible. This apparently means that the attunement of opposites in the natural world is a superior “harmony” to that which we hear from musical instruments, ἁρμονία means “tune” rather than “harmony.” ## Fragment 48 Let us not make random guesses about the greatest things. ## Fragment 49 Men who love wisdom must have knowledge of very many things. This is not inconsistent with πολυμαθίη νόον ἔχειν οὐ διδάσκει. Though πολυμαθίη is not enough, yet the true philosopher will have it. ## Fragment 50 The straight and the crooked way of the cloth-carders is one and the same. This is a reference to the motion of the fuller’s comb, which both revolved and also moved in a straight line. ## Fragment 51 Asses would prefer straw to gold. ## Fragment 51a Heracleitus said that if happiness consisted in bodily delights we should call oxen happy when they find bitter vetches to eat. ## Fragment 52 Sea-water is both very pure and very foul; to fishes it is drinkable and healthful, to men it is undrinkable and deadly. Here we have the “unity of opposites” in a slightly different form. ## Fragment 53 Dry dust also and ashes must be placed near the walls wherever the porch or roof protects the chicken-run, that the birds may have a place to sprinkle themselves; for with these things they improve their plumage and wings, if only we believe Heracleitus the Ephesian, who says: “pigs wash in mud and barnyard fowls in dust (or ash).” ## Fragment 54 To delight in mud. ## Fragment 55 Every creature is driven to pasture with blows. The reading τὴν γῆν, preferred by Zeller and Pfleiderer, will refer to the “crawling creatures” (worms) which feed on earth. But cf. Aeschylus, Agamemnon 358 and Plato, Critias 109 b, καθάπερ ποιμένες κτήνη πληγῇ νέμοντες. See Diels in Berl. Sitzb. 1901, . Men do not know what is good for them, and have to be forced to it. ## Fragment 56 The attunement of the world is of opposite tensions, as is that of the harp or bow. See Fragment XLV. ## Fragment 57 Good and bad are the same. This refers (a) to a thing being good for some and bad for others; (b) to goodness and badness being two aspects of the same thing. ## Fragment 58 Goodness and badness are one. At any rate doctors, as Heracleitus says, cut, burn, and cruelly rack the sick, asking to get from the sick a fee that is not their deserts, in that they effect such benefits † in sickness. † With ἐπαιτιῶνται the meaning is: “complain that the patients do not give them an adequate return.” See Plato, Republic VI, 497b. ## Fragment 59 Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things. The reading συνάψειας could be taken as a potential optative without ἄν. Burnet renders συμφερόμενον διαφερόμενον “what is drawn together and what is drawn asunder,” and takes all three pairs to be explanatory of συνάψιες. ## Fragment 60 Men would not have known the name of Justice were it not for these things. That is, justice is known only through injustice. ## Fragment 61 They say that it is unseemly that the sight of wars delights the gods. But it is not unseemly, for noble deeds delight them. Wars and fighting seem to our thoughtlessness (?) terrible, but in the sight of God even these things are not terrible. For God makes everything contribute to the attunement of wholes, as he dispenses the things that benefit, even as Heracleitus says that to God all things are fair and good and just, but men have supposed that some things are unjust, other things just. ## Fragment 62 We must know that war is common to all and that strife is justice, and that everything comes into being by strife and . . . The corrupt χρεώμενα has been emended to καταχρεώμενα, to φθειρόμενα and κρινόμενα, but no reading commends itself as really probable. ## Fragment 63 For there are things foreordained wholly. ## Fragment 64 Whatsoever things we see when awake are death, just as those we see in sleep are slumber. Diels thinks that the original went on to say that “what we see when dead is life.” The road up and down has three stages, Fire, Water, Earth, or, Life, Sleep, Death. ## Fragment 65 The one and only wisdom is both unwilling and willing to be spoken of under the name of Zeus. “Unum illud principium mundi est materia causa lex regimen. Ζεύς, Δίκη, σοφόν, λόγος: varia nomina, res non diversa. Idem significat illud . . . πῦρ αἰείζωον, unde manat omnis motus, omnis vita, omnis intellectus.” Ritter and Preller, Hist. Philos. Gr. § 40, note a. This is admirably said, and puts a great deal of Heracleitus’ teaching into three sentences. ## Fragment 66 The name of the bow is life, but its work is death. A pun on βιός (bow) and βίος (life). ## Fragment 67 Immortal mortals, mortal immortals, one living the others’ death and dying the others’ life. For the sake of symmetry in English I have translated τεθνεῶτες rather inaccurately. Being perfect in tense it strictly means “being dead,” i.e. their being dead is the others’ life. ## Fragment 68 For it is death to souls to become water, and death to water to become earth. But from earth comes water, and from water, soul. The best commentary on this is Aristotle, de Anima I. 2, 405a, 25: καὶ ‘Ηράκλειτος δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν εἶναί φησι ψυχήν, εἴπερ τὴν ἀναθυμίασιν, ἐξ ἧς τἆλλα συνίστησιν. ## Fragment 69 The road up and the road down is one and the same. ## Fragment 70 The beginning and end are common. Heracleitus is referring to a point on the circumference of a circle. ## Fragment 71 The limits of soul you could not discover though you journeyed the whole way, so deep a measure it has. Burnet renders λόγον “measure,” as in Fragment XXIII. ## Fragment 72 It is delight to souls to become moist. Perhaps because the change to moisture means death, and the rest of death is pleasant. Or, the way down to death is really a way to the joy of a new life. Or (finally), the passage cannot be altogether without a reference to the τέρψις of intoxication. See the next fragment. ## Fragment 73 A man when he has become drunk is led by a mere stripling, stumbling, not knowing where he walks, having his soul moist. ## Fragment 74 A dry soul is wisest and best. ## Fragment 75 Dry light is the wisest and best soul. ## Fragment 76 Where earth is dry, the soul is wisest and best. For LXXV and LXXVI see notes on the text. ## Fragment 77 Man, like a light in the night, is kindled and put out. ## Fragment 78 For when is death not within our selves? And as Heracleitus says: “Living and dead are the same, and so are awake and asleep, young and old. The former when shifted are the latter, and again the latter when shifted are the former.” Burnet takes the metaphor in μεταπέσοιτα to be the moving of pieces from one γραμμὴ of the draught-board to another. ## Fragment 79 Time is a child playing draughts; the kingship is a child’s. Cf. Homer, Iliad XV. 362: ὡς ὅτε τις ψάμαθον πάϊς ἄγχι θαλάσσης, ὅς τ᾿ ἐπεὶ οὖν ποιήσῃ ἀθύρματα νηπιέῃσιν, ἂψ αὖτις συνέχευε ποσὶν καὶ χερσὶν ἀθύρων. The changes of time are like the changes of the child’s game. ## Fragment 80 I searched my self. See Ritter and Preller, § 48. Possibly it means: “I inquired of myself, and did not trust others.” See Fragments XV-XVIII. Some see a reference to γνῶθι σεαυτόν, and it is possible that Heracleitus gave a new meaning to this old saying. But Pfleiderer’s theory, that H. sought for the τέλος in introspection, is a strangely distorted view. ## Fragment 81 Into the same rivers we step and do not step; we are and we are not. ## Fragment 82 It is toil to labour for the same masters and to be ruled by them. I.e. change is restful. Cf. the next fragment. ## Fragment 83 By changing it rests. ## Fragment 84 The posset too separates if it be not stirred. An example of change and motion giving existence and reality. ## Fragment 85 Corpses are more fit to be thrown out than is dung. ## Fragment 86 When born they wish to live and to have dooms — or rather to rest, and they leave children after them to become dooms. ## Fragment 87 SOME READING ἩΒῶΝΤΟς in this passage make a generation to consist of thirty years, as Heracleitus has it, this being the time it takes a father to have a son who is himself a father. ## Fragment 88 The number thirty is one most intimately bound up with nature, as it bears the same relation to tens as three does to units. Then again the cycle of the moon is composed of the numbers 1, 4, 9, 16, which are the squares of the first four numbers. Wherefore Heracleitus hit the mark when he called the month (or moon) a generation. ## Fragment 89 In thirty years a man may become a grandfather. The Fragments LXXXVI-LXXXIX refer to the “cycle of life.” The circle is complete when the son himself becomes a father. ## On Politics and Ethics ## Fragment 90 We all work together to one end, some wittingly and with understanding, others unconsciously. In this sense, I think, Heracleitus says that even sleepers are workers and co-operators in the things that take place in the world. ## Fragment 91 Thought is common to all. Men must speak with understanding and hold fast to that which is common to all, as a city holds fast to its law, and much more strongly still. For all human laws are nourished by the one divine law. For it prevails as far as it wills, suffices for all, and there is something to spare. “The common” will be fire, which is the one true wisdom. So men who have understanding must “keep their souls dry” and refuse to cut themselves off from the great principle of the universe by letting their souls grow moist. See Introduction, . Passages like this were eagerly seized upon by the Stoics when they elaborated their theory of a great κοινὸς λόγος animating the universe. True virtue, they held, was for a man consciously and lovingly to follow this λόγος, which is really the will of God, and to try to associate himself with it. What is crude and imperfect in Heracleitus became mature and complete in Stoicism. Christianity seized upon this thought, and developed the λόγος doctrine of St. John and the early Fathers. ## Fragment 92 Therefore one must follow the common. But though the Word is common, the many live as though they had a wisdom of their own. Burnet thinks that τοῦ λόγου δ᾿ ἐόντος ξυνοῦ does not belong to Heracleitus, appealing to the MSS. reading δὲ ὄντος in support of his contention. He is chiefly influenced by his conviction that λόγος can mean only the message or gospel of Heracleitus. But at this early stage in the history of thought there could be no distinction made between (a) the message and (b) the truth which the message tries to explain. It is the latter meaning that I think λόγος has in this passage. ## Fragment 93 They are at variance with that with which they have most continuous intercourse. ## Fragment 94 We ought not to act and to speak as though we were asleep. ## Fragment 95 Heracleitus says that there is one world in common for those who are awake, but that when men are asleep each turns away into a world of his own. Sleepiness to Heracleitus was the state of a man who allowed his soul to sink on the downward path into moisture or mud. See Fragments XCI and XCII. To be awake was to have one’s soul dry, and to be in close connection with “the ever-living fire” of the universe. ## Fragment 96 Human nature has no understanding, but that of God has. This fragment expresses in another way the thought that τὸ ξυνὸν is good, τὸ ἴδιον evil. ## Fragment 97 Man is called a baby by the deity as a child is by a man. ## On Religion ## Fragment 98 And does not Heracleitus too, whom you bring forward, say this very same thing, that the wisest of men compared with God will appear as an ape in wisdom, in beauty and in everything else? ## Fragment 99 Sir, you do not know that the remark of Heracleitus is a sound one, to the effect that the most beautiful of apes is ugly in comparison with another species, and that the most beautiful of pots is ugly in comparison with maidenhood, as says Hippias the wise. ## Fragment 100 The people should fight for their law as for a wall. This is because the law is ξυνόν is, in fact, but a reflection of the great ξυνὸν of the natural world. ## Fragment 101 For greater dooms win greater destinies. This refers to the “fiery deaths” of heroic men. See Introduction, , and also the following fragment. ## Fragment 102 Gods and men honour those who are killed in battle. ## Fragment 103 You should put out insolence even more than a fire. ## Fragment 104 For men to get all they wish is not the better thing. It is disease that makes health a pleasant thing; evil, good; hunger, surfeit; and toil, rest. ## Fragment 105 It is hard to contend against one’s heart’s desire; for whatever it wishes to have it buys at the cost of soul. Burnet so translates θυμός; the word covers a wider area than any English equivalent, but includes much of what we include under “instinct,” “urge,” “passionate craving.” Aristotle understood θυμὸς to mean anger (Ethic. Nicom. II. 2, 1105 a 8). To gratify θυμὸς is to allow one’s soul “to become moist.” ## Fragment 106 It is the concern of all men to know themselves and to be sober-minded. ## Fragment 107 To be sober-minded is the greatest virtue, and wisdom is to speak the truth and to act it, listening to the voice of nature. These two fragments (both are of doubtful authenticity) express positively what is stated in Fragment CV in a quasi-negative form. ## Fragment 108 It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine. ## Fragment 109 To hide ignorance is preferable to bringing it to light. ## Fragment 110 It is law too to obey the advice of one. ## Fragment 111 For what mind or sense have they? They follow the bards and use the multitude as their teacher, not realising that there are many bad but few good. For the best choose one thing over all others, immortal glory among mortals, while the many are glutted like beasts. ## Fragment 112 In priene lived Bias, son of Teutamas, who is of more account than the others. ## Fragment 113 One man to me is as ten thousand, if he be the best. Fragments CXI–CXIII show the aristocratic tendencies of the mind of Heracleitus. His “common,” of course, has nothing to do with “common-sense” or with general opinions. It refers to the law or principle of nature, which each man must apprehend for himself. He who can do so best is a natural leader and lawgiver. ## Fragment 114 All the ephesians from the youths up would do well to hang themselves and leave their city to the boys. For they banished Hermodorus, the best man of them, saying, “We would have none among us who is best; if there be such an one, let him be so elsewhere among other people.” ## Fragment 115 Dogs also bark at him they know not. ## Fragment 116 He escapes being known because of men’s unbelief. “A prophet is not without honour save in his own city.” ## Fragment 117 A fool is wont to be in a flutter at every word. ## Fragment 118 The one most in repute knows only what is reputed. And yet justice will overtake the makers of lies and the false witnesses. Of all the emendations of the corrupt φυλάσσειν I prefer Bergk’s φλυάσσειν, but I follow Burnet in deleting the word. ## Fragment 119 He said that Homer deserved to be expelled from the lists and beaten, and Archilochus likewise. ## Fragment 120 One day is like any other. ## Fragment 121 A man’s character is his fate. ## Fragment 122 There await men after death such things as they neither expect nor look for. ## Fragment 123 To rise up and become wakeful guards of the living and of the dead. ## Fragment 124 Night-walkers, magians, priests of Bacchus and priestesses of the vat, the initiated. ## Fragment 125 The mysteries that are celebrated among men it is unholy to take part in. ## Fragment 126 And to these images they pray, as if one were to talk to one’s house, knowing not the nature of gods and heroes. ## Fragment 127 For if it were not to Dionysus that they made procession and sang the phallic hymn, it would be a most disgraceful action. But Hades is the same as Dionysus, in whose honour they rave and keep the feast of the vat. ## Fragment 128 I distinguish, therefore, two kinds of sacrifices. First, that of men wholly cleansed, such as would rarely take place in the case of a single individual, as Heracleitus says, or in the case of very few men. Second, material and corporeal sacrifices, arising from change, such as befit those who are still fettered by the body. ## Fragment 129 Cures (atonements). ## Fragment 130 When defiled they purify themselves with blood, just as if one who had stepped in mud were to wash himself in mud.