Diocles of Carystus on the method of dietetics 85
causal explanations of the groups mentioned in the above.^26 There is no
question of an absolute priority of experience over reasoning, and the last
sentence (section 11 ) shows that Diocles acknowledges that causal expla-
nation, in all those cases where it is possible,^27 may make the physician’s
account more informative and reliable. While ‘those who believe that one
should state a cause for all [things]’ ( )
) clearly refers to the group criticised in section 8 , it is less clear who
are meant by the words ‘those who state causes in this way’ ( . G
2)
$
). The most likely possibility is that it refers to those
who are criticised in the sentence immediately preceding it, that is those
who make mistakes because their causal explanations are ill-founded; but
this is not quite compatible with section 9 , where the lack of a change of
subject suggests that Diocles’ additional criticism (‘in addition’,3 .
-
) still applies to the same group. Another possibility is that ‘those
who state causes in this way’ are the ones criticised in the first part of
the fragment (the champions of claims one and two), although it is a bit
awkward to take the phrase ‘in this way’ (2)) as referring not to the
ill-founded ‘stating the cause’ (
%
) mentioned just before
but to what was discussed in section 7.
Perhaps this difficulty becomes less urgent when we consider how the
three claims Diocles criticises are interrelated. As I said, at first sight it seems
that in his refutation of claim three in section 8 , Diocles is arguing against a
rather different group from the one which is his target in the earlier part of
the fragment (claims one and two). Yet after reading the whole fragment,
it is easy to see why he discusses these claims in the same context and
in this order. The first claim is the weakest, in that it does not commit
itself to the assumption of a causal nexus between quality and power;
consequently, its empirical refutation is likewise easy. Subsequently, this
empirical refutation is used by Diocles as an argument against the second
claim, which is one of the possible implications of the first claim. Finally,
this second claim can in its turn be seen as a possible instance of the third
(^26) See Smith ( 1979 ) 184. The similarity of this sentence toOn Ancient Medicine 2. 1 (p. 119 , 13 ff. Jouanna,
- L.): 1 H# 2#
C !)C(‘and the things
that have been discovered, which are manifold and are firmly established, have been discovered
over a long time’) was noted also by von Staden ( 1992 ) 240. Torraca (‘a quelli che fondano le lore
deduzioni sull’ esperienza fatta per lungo tempo’) and Smith (‘those who reached understanding
from experience through much time’) wrongly take the participle as masculine;)means
‘observe’, ‘perceive’, ‘learn’ (see LSJ s.v.). Bertier rightly concedes that Diocles does not reject causal
explanation altogether ( 1972 , 32 ).
(^27) Following Jaeger ( 1938 a) 38 and 40 , I take
in the same sense as
in section
8 :1 ! are ‘those things that admit of this, i.e. of being causally explained’ (although I do
not accept Jaeger’s far-reaching conclusions drawn from linguistic resemblances to Aristotle on this
point). I cannot endorse Smith’s translation ‘But we must seek a cause for what we accept.’
- L.): 1 H# 2#