50 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystus
are here ‘constant’, ‘unchanging’, ‘imperishable’ – not in the sense that
the disease itself is unchanging, but in that it shows a constant pattern
of development. These connotations, in fact, also led the Presocratic
philosophers to apply the word to their ultimate principles.^14 The dis-
ease is human in virtue of being capable of treatment and cure by human
beings, but in a more abstract sense than in the first case (see below).
Both interpretations are based upon the following passages:
- 2 ( 6. 352 L.):(
* ' )
# ,
-) (. / )#0
" 1 -
.
1
1 0
0 -
. 2#
!
.^15
[This disease] does not seem in any respect to be more divine or more holy than
the others. It is rather that just as the other diseases have a nature from which they
arise, likewise this one has a nature and a cause.
- 1 – 3 ( 6. 364 L.):3 . !# $ (
! ,
*
*0 " 1 -
.
1 ' 0 4
0
-
. $ !
0 "3 $ ($
" 5
1 ' 0
#3
(. 6 7) .^16
It seems to me that this disease is in no respect more divine than the others, but
rather that just as the other diseases have a nature from which each of them arises,
likewise this one has a nature and a cause, and it derives its divinity from the same
source from which all the others do, and it is in no respect less curable than the
others...
- 1 – 2 ( 6. 394 L.):2# . 8 $ 8 /% # "3 ( 9
)
/
0 "3 *
!) "
!) :-
(^14) See Jaeger ( 1980 ) 204 (on Anaximander DKa15,b3): ‘What happens in Anaximander’s argument
(and that of his successors in line) is that the predicate God, or rather the Divine, is transformed from
the traditional deities to the first principle of Being (at which they arrived by rational investigations),
on the ground that the predicates usually attributed to the gods of Homer and Hesiod are inherent
in that principle to a higher degree or can be assigned to it with greater certainty.’ The predicates
in question are"#(‘ungenerated’),' (‘imperishable’)," (‘immortal’) and
" (‘imperishable’).
(^15) This sentence is put between square brackets by Grensemann ( 1968 c)ad loc. on the grounds that it
is almost verbally repeated in 2. 1 – 2 ( 6. 364 L.), that2#(instead of$) is syntactically awkward
and that the sentence/ ' )
.( 1. 3 ) is in asyndeton with the preceding one. Each of these
arguments may be questioned: repetition of this kind is quite frequent inOn the Sacred Disease(e.g.
2. 6 , 6. 366 L. and 5. 1 , 6. 368 L.; 13. 13 , 6. 386 L. and 18. 1 – 2 , 6. 394 L.) and obviously serves an organising
purpose; the word$, to which2#refers, is mentioned in the immediate context, and the
alternation of!# and$is so frequent in this text that they seem practically synonymous;
and the deletion of a whole sentence is more drastic than the insertion of’. Besides, after the
opening sentence ( / - # ;
) it is more reasonable to expect an
exposition of what the author believes than the rejection of what other people believe.
(^16) On the sequel to this sentence, which contains an important qualification of the curability of the
disease, see below, pp. 71 – 2.