58 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystus
in his conception the words can perfectly well be predicated of the same
subject.Theiosandanthr ̄opinosrefer to aspects of diseases, but not, as in
the first interpretation, in the sense of their being caused by divine factors
and human factors (which would after all imply the incompatibility of
the two words).^34 On this reading, the problem of the ‘derived divinity’
or of the ‘shift’ of the use oftheios, as well as the need to takekaiin
18. 1 as explicative, disappears. Furthermore, on this viewOn the Sacred
DiseaseandAirs, Waters, Placesexpress the same doctrine concerning the
divinity of diseases, and in both treatises the use oftheiosis justified by
the connotations ‘unchanging’, ‘imperishable’ and ‘eternal’. The fact that
all diseases have a nature, a definite pattern of origin and growth or cause
and effect, constitutes the element of ‘constancy’ which inheres in the word
theios. Perhaps also the connotation of ‘oneness’ or ‘definiteness’ is present
here, in that all the various and heterogeneous symptoms and expressions
of the disease, which the magicians attributed to different gods ( 1. 32 – 9 ,
6. 360 – 2 L.), can be reduced to one fixed nature underlying them.^35
There are, however, two difficulties involved in this interpretation, the
first of which is precisely the basis of the other view: the phrase ‘these things
are divine’ ($ ’ , 18. 2 ). To be sure, the divine character of
the factors mentioned in 18. 1 might now, on the second interpretation,
be better understood, as these factors too probably have aphusisand are
therefore divine. But in order to understand the divinity of the disease
the mention of the divine character of these factors is, strictly speaking,
irrelevant, because it suffices for the author to have demonstrated that the
disease is caused by natural factors which constitute itsphusis. It is the fact
of the disease having these causes (i.e. its having aphusis), not the allegedly
divine character of these causes, which determines its divinity.
A possible solution to this problem is to adopt the reading of the
manuscript(which is in general not less reliable than the other authority
(^34) As 1. 25 ( 6. 358 L.) and 1. 31 ( 6. 360 L.) show, the wordstheiosandanthr ̄opinosare not applied to concrete
factors, but to aspects which are expressed in the form of propositions: ‘it belongs to divinity to... ’
or ‘we use the word divine when... ’.
(^35) But it is dangerous to explain the author’s connection of ‘divine’ with ‘having a nature’ by means
of associations like ‘rational’ or ‘the rationality of nature’. It is highly questionable whether the
author ofOn the Sacred Diseasecan be credited with the identification of the divine with ‘rational’
or ‘knowable’: the only explicit statement which might support this association is his criticism of the
idea that what is divine cannot be known or understood ( 1. 4 : ‘their hopelessness of not knowing’,
"# $ %
; 13. 13 : ‘nor is it more hopeless [than other diseases]... neither as far as
curing nor as far as understanding it is concerned’,(. ")#...&
+
& *
;
cf. n. 13 above); but this does not imply that the divine is (in the Platonic sense) the knowablepar
excellence. Nor does the association oftheioswith the ‘laws’ of Nature have any textual basis (on the
difference between the nature of the disease and Nature in general see below, pp. 60 , 68 – 9 ).