Diocles of Carystus on the method of dietetics 75
This heaping up of uncertainties at the beginning of this chapter may
appear a rather weak rhetorical strategy. Yet it throws some light on my
reasons for selecting Diocles’ fragment 176 for discussion in the context
of an examination of the relationship between Hippocratic medicine and
ancient philosophy, and it may serve to illustrate an approach to it which
I would rather try to avoid. For the fragment in question – one of the
few longerverbatimfragments of Diocles we possess – has repeatedly been
interpreted as being related to, and perhaps even directed against, certain
Hippocratic texts.^6 Moreover, it has fallen victim to what I believe to be
exaggerated and unjustified interpretations of Diocles’ own position. It
has, for instance, been read as a foreshadowing of medical Empiricism or
even Scepticism,^7 or as the culmination of the Aristotelian development
from speculative philosophy to an empirically minded study of particular
phenomena.^8 I shall be the last to deny that the fragment is important or
that it testifies to Diocles’ awareness of questions of methodology; and I
shall argue that in this respect we may speak of an original contribution
to dietetics by Diocles, which may be seen as a partial correction of the
direction that dietetics had taken in the Hippocratic textsOn Regimen
andOn Ancient Medicine; but it should not be seen as the ‘great fragment
on method’ (‘das große Methodenfragment’) in which Diocles expounded
his philosophy of science and from which extrapolations concerning his
general medical outlook can be safely made.^9
The chapter is structured as follows. First, I shall interpret the fragment
itself in some detail (section 2 ).^10 Then I shall try to reconstruct the views
Diocles is criticising and consider to what extent these correspond to what
we find in the Hippocratic Corpus – and to what extent the critical elements
on theAphorismsin which theverbatimquotation is not present); see Jaeger ( 1938 a) 27 n. 1 .Infr.
57 Galen has preserved a verbatim quotation of an argument used by Diocles against Hippocrates’
assumption of the existence of fevers recurring every five, seven or nine days. However, although
Diocles addresses someone in the second person singular, we cannot be certain that his objection
was originally directed against Hippocrates. For caution with regard to Diocles’ acquaintance with
the name and reputation of Hippocrates see Smith ( 1979 ) 187 ff.(^6) See Wellmann ( 1901 ) 163 ; Fredrich ( 1899 ) 169 – 73 ; Torraca ( 1965 ) 105 – 15 (with Italian translation of
the fragment); Wohrle ( ̈ 1990 ) 175 ff.
(^7) Kudlien ( 1963 ) and ( 1964 ), both reprinted in Flashar ( 1971 ) 192 – 201 and 280 – 95.
(^8) See the publications by Werner Jaeger ( 1938 a), ( 1938 b), ( 1940 ) (reissued in German translation in
[ 1951 ]), ( 1952 ) and ( 1959 ). The reactions Jaeger’s views provoked are conveniently discussed by von
Staden ( 1992 ).
(^9) In this I endorse a view which was recently stated by von Staden ( 1992 ) 240.
(^10) See also the commentary on the fragment in van der Eijk ( 2001 a) 321 – 34. Further discussions of
the fragment (other than the ones already mentioned) can be found in Deichgraber ( ̈ 1965 ) 274 n. 3 ;
Bertier ( 1972 ) 32 – 3 ; Kullmann ( 1974 ) 350 – 3 ; Smith ( 1979 ) 183 – 6 (with an English translation), ( 1980 )
439 ff. and ( 1992 ) 267 ; Frede ( 1987 a) 129 and 235 , 238 and ( 1985 ) xxii; von Staden ( 1989 ) 120 – 1.