Plutarch, De primo frigido, Harold Cherniss (Translator), William C. Helmbold (Translator), 9

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[9] Nevertheless it is better for us first to attack things perceptible to the senses,in which Empedocles¹ and Strato² and the Stoics³ locate the substances that underlie the qualities, the Stoics ascribing the primordially cold to the air, Empedocles and Strato to water; and someone else may, perhaps, be found to affirm that earth is the original substance of coldness.⁴ But let us examine Stoic doctrine before the others.

Since fire is not only warm but bright, the opposite natural entity (they say) must be both cold and dark: as gloomy is the opposite of bright, so is cold of hot. Besides, as darkness confounds the sight, so cold confuses the sense of touch. Heat, on the other hand, transmits the sensation of touching, as brightness does that of seeing. It follows, then, that in nature the primordially dark is also the primordially cold; and that it is air which is primordially dark does not, in fact, escape the notice of the poets since they use the term air for darkness:

Thick air lay all about the ships, nor could

The moon shine forth from heaven.⁵

And another instance:

So clad in air they visit all the earth.⁶

And another:

The air at once he scattered and dispelled the mist;

The sun shone forth and all the battle carne in view.⁷

They also call the lightless air knephas, being as it were, kenon phaous void of light; and collected and condensed air has been termed nephos cloud because it is a negation of light.⁸ Flecks in the sky and mist and fog and anything else that does not provide a transparent medium for light to reach our senses are merely variations of air; and its invisible and colourless part is called Hades and Acheron.⁹ In the same way, then, as air is dark when light is gone, so when heat departs the residue is cold air and nothing else. And this is the reason why it has been termed Tartarus because of its coldness. Hesiod¹⁰ makes this obvious when he writes murky Tartarus; and to shake and shiver with cold is to tartarize.¹¹ Such, then, is the reason for these names.

De primo frigido. Plutarch. Harold Cherniss (Translator), William C. Helmbold (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1957.

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Funding provided by The National Endowment for the Humanities.

Current edition Perseus

On the Principle of Cold (English) (Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. XII. Cherniss, Harold and William C. Helmbold, translators. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1957 (printing).)

Editions (1)

Περὶ τοῦ πρώτως ψυχροῦ Perseus (Plutarch. Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia, Vol V. Vernardakēs, Grēgorios N., editor. Leipzig: Teubner, 1893.) — 9 focus

[9] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ αἰσθητὰ ταυτὶ προανακινῆσαι βέλτιόν ἐστιν, ἐν οἷς Ἐμπεδοκλῆς τε καὶ 948d Στράτων καὶ οἱ Στωικοὶ τὰς οὐσίας τίθενται τῶν δυνάμεων, οἱ μὲν Στωικοὶ τῷ ἀέρι τὸ πρώτως ψυχρὸν ἀποδιδόντες, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ καὶ Στράτων τῷ ὕδατι· τὴν δὲ γῆν ἴσως ἂν ἕτερος φανείη ψυχρότητος αἰτίαν ὑποτιθέμενος. πρότερον δὲ τὰ ἐκείνων σκοπῶμεν. ἐπεὶ τὸ πῦρ θερμὸν ἅμα καὶ λαμπρόν ἐστι, δεῖ τὴν ἀντικειμένην τῷ πυρὶ φύσιν ψυχρὰν τʼ εἶναι καὶ σκοτεινήν· ἀντίκειται γὰρ ὡς τῷ λαμπρῷ τὸ ζοφερὸν οὕτω τῷ. θερμῷ τὸ ψυχρόν· ἔστι γὰρ ὡς ὄψεως τὸ σκοτεινὸν οὕτω τὸ ψυχρὸν ἁφῆς συγχυτικόν, 1 ἡ δὲ θερμότης διαχεῖ τὴν αἴσθησιν τοῦ ἁπτομένου καθάπερ ἡ λαμπρότης τοῦ ὁρῶντος. τὸ 948e ἄρα πρώτως σκοτεινὸν ἐν τῇ φύσει πρώτως καὶ ψυχρόν ἐστιν. ὅτι δʼ ἀὴρ τὸ πρώτως σκοτεινὸν ἐστιν, οὐδὲ τοὺς ποιητὰς; λέληθεν· ἀέρα γὰρ τὸ σκότος 1 καλοῦσιν

ἀὴρ γὰρ παρὰ νηυσὶ βαθεῖʼ ἦν οὐδὲ σελήνη

οὐρανόθεν προύφαινε·

καἴπάλιν

ἠέρα ἑσσάμενοι πᾶσαν φοιτῶσιν ἐπʼ αἶαν

καὶ πάλιν

αὐτίκα δʼ ἠέρα μὲν σκέδασεν καὶ ἀπῶσεν ὀμίχλην, ἠέλιος δʼ ἐπέλαμψε· μάχη δʼ ἐπὶ πᾶσα φαάνθη.

καὶ γάρ κνέφας τὸν ἀφώτιστον ἀέρα καλοῦσι, κενόν, ὡς ἔοικε, φάους ὄντα· καὶ νέφος ὁ συμπεσὼν καὶ 948f πυκνωθεὶς ἀὴρ ἀποφάσει φωτὸς κέκληται καλεῖται δὲ καὶ ἀχλὺς καὶ ὁμίχλη· καὶ ὅσα τοῦ φωτὸς οὐ 5 παρέχει τῇ αἰσθήσει δίοψιν ἀέρος εἰσὶ διαφοραί· καὶ τὸ ἀειδὲς αὐτοῦ καὶ ἄχρωστον Ἅιδης καὶ Ἀχέρων ἐπίκλησιν ἔσχεν. ὥσπερ οὖν αὐγῆς ἐπιλιπούσης σκοτεινὸς ἀήρ, οὕτω θερμοῦ μεταστάντος τὸ ἀπολειπόμενον ἀὴρ ψυχρὸς ἄλλο δʼ οὐδέν ἐστι· διὸ καὶ 10 Τάρταρος οὗτος ὑπὸ ψυχρότητος κέκληται δηλοῖ δὲ καὶ Ἡσίοδος εἰπὼν

τάρταρά τʼ ἠερόεντα·

καὶ τὸ ῥιγοῦντα πάλλεσθαι καὶ τρέμειν ταρταρίζειν ταῦτα μὲν οὖν τοιοῦτον ἔχει λόγον. 15

Translations (1)

Concerning the First Principle of Cold Perseus (Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. V. Goodwin, William W., editor; Fetherstone, F., translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.) — 9 focus

[9] But it is much the better way for us in the first place to move forward upon those things which are perceptible to sense, wherein Empedocles, Strato, and the Stoics placed the substances of active qualities; the Stoics ascribing primitive cold to the air, Empedocles and Strato to the water; and perhaps there might be somebody else who might affirm the earth to be the substance of cold. But first let us consider the opinions of those already named.

Seeing then that fire is both hot and bright, therefore there must be something opposite to fire which is cold and dark. For as dark is opposite to light, so is cold to hot. Besides, as dark confounds the sight, so cold confounds the feeling. But heat diffuses the sense of feeling, as light diffuses the sense of seeing. Therefore that which is first dark in nature is first cold. Now that the air is first dark, was not unknown to the poets; for that they call the air darkness:

The thickened air the fleet with darkness covered,

Nor could the moonlight be from heaven discovered.

And again:

Then darkness scattered and the fog dispelled,

The sun brake forth, and all the fight beheld.

They also call the air, when it is without light κνεφας, as being as it were κενὸν φάους ( void of light.) The air collected and condensed into a cloud is called νέφος, from its negation of light ( νή-φάος). The words also ἀχλύς and ὁμίκλη ( mist), and whatever else restrains the perception of light from the sense, are but distinctions of the air; insomuch that the same part of it which is invisible and without color ( ἀειδές and ἀρχωστον) is called Hades and Acheron. So that, as the air grows dark when the splendor of it fails, in like manner when heat fails, that which is left is no more than cold air, which by reason of its coldness is called Tartarus. And this Hesiod makes manifest, when he calls it Τάρταρον ἠερόεντα (or cloudy Tartarus); and when a man quakes and shivers for cold, he is said to tartarize. And so much for this.

Notes on the current edition

On the Principle of Cold

1. Cf. Diels-Kranz, Frag. der Vorsok. 5, i, p. 319, frag. B 21, part of which is quoted below in 949 f.

2. See Fritz Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles, Part V. frag. 49.

3. Cf. Mor. 952 c, 1053 f; von Arnim, S.V.F. ii, pp. 140 f.

4. As Plutarch himself: see below, 952 c ff. (chapters 17-22).

5. Homer, Odyssey, ix. 144-145. Words for air in Homer often mean mist or fog.

6. Hesiod, Works and Days, 255.

7. Homer, Iliad, xvii. 649-650.

8. Plutarch’s etymologies here are no more scientific or convincing than those to be found in his Roman Questions, L.C.L. vol. iv, pp. 6-171.

9. Invisible; cf. 953 a below and Plato, Cratylus, 403 a ff.; Phaedo, 81 c-d and contrast Mor. 942 f supra; colourless, achroston, Acheron. Cf. L. Parmentier, Recherches sur le traite d’Isis et d’Osiris de Plut., Mem. Acad. Belg. ii. 2 (1912/13), pp. 71 ff.

10. Theogony, 119; contrast Plato, Phaedo, 112 a ff.

11. Cf. Servius on Vergil, Aen. vi. 577.

Plutarch De primo frigido 9

Harold Cherniss (Translator), William C. Helmbold (Translator)

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