Short Fragments and Testimonia from Uncertain Works
Simplicius Commentary on Aristotle's Physics
232a23 ff. CIAG 10.938.17-22 (277 U)87
[1-83]For unless every magnitude were divisible, it would not always be
possible for a slower object to move a lesser distance in an equal time
than a quicker one. For slower and quicker objects cover the atomic and
indivisible [distance] in the same time, since if [one] took more time, it
would cover in the equal time a [distance] less than the indivisible [dis-
tance]. And that is why the Epicureans too think all [bodies] move at
equal speed through indivisible [distances], so that they can avoid having
their atomic [quantities] be divided and so no longer atomic.Aetius 1.12.5 = Dox.Gr. p. 311 (275, 280 U) [1-84]
Epicurus [says that] the primary and simple bodies are ungraspable,
and that the compounds formed from them all have weight. Atoms
sometimes move in a straight line, sometimes in a swerve, and those
which move upwards do so by collision and rebound.Aetius 1.23.4 = Dox.Gr. 319-320 (280 U) [1-85]
Epicurus says there are two kinds of motion, the straight and the
swerve.Plutarch On the Generation of the Soul in the [1-86]
Timaeus 1015bc (281 U)... they do not concede to Epicurus that the atom can swerve the
tiniest bit, on the grounds that he introduces a causeless motion coming
from not being.Simplicius Commentary on Aristotle's De
Caelo 275b29 CIAG 7.242.18-26(284 U)[1-87]For they [Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus] said that the princi-
ples were unlimited in number, and they also thought that they were
atomic and indivisible and impassible, because they were dense and did
not have a share of the void; for they said that division takes place where
there is something void in bodies, and also that these atoms, being
separated from each other in the unlimited void and differing in shape
and size and position and ordering, move in the void and that they catch
up with each other and collide and that some rebound to any chance
place while others get entangled with each other, in accordance with the