intro
The work is no. 206 in the catalogue of Lamprias.The new Teubner edition of this and the following essays appeared while this volume was in proof, so that only the most necessary changes and corrections could be made. In this essay (since Wegehaupt’s edition was already available) they have not been so plentiful as in the subsequent ones, for which Hubert has now provided the first truly critical edition that these works have ever had.
1
Water is best, but gold is a flaming fire, says Pindar. Olympians, i. 1. He, therefore, bluntly assigns the second place to fire; and Hesiod Theogony, 116. agrees with him in the words And first of all came Chaos into being; for most people believe that this is his name for water because it flows (chysis).Etymologizing (as in Mor. 948 e-f supra) chaos from chysis, diffusion of liquid. Yet the balance of witnesses on both sides seems to be equal. There are, in fact, someThe Stoics; cf., e.g., von Arnim, S.V.F. i, p. 27 (Zeno, frag. 98); cf. Mor. 1053 a-b; 1067 a; 1077 b. who state that fire is the first principle of the universe and, like a seed, creates everything out of itself and receives all things into itself when the conflagration occurs.On the Universal Conflagration of the Stoics see von Arnim, op. cit. ii, pp. 183 ff.; on that of Heraclitus, Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of the Presocratics, p. 29, n. 108. Ignoring the authors, let us examine the arguments on both sides and see where they will lead us.
