Diogenes Laertius on the life of Socrates

http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/diogenes/dlsocrates.htm

Burnet’s commentary on what follows os estin tis Socrateis down to the end of our reading, poion, is so good that I just want to transcribe it nearly verbatim, for my edification, and yours if you choose, and the world at large.

Pps. 155 – 157

B 7 σοφος ανηρ. This was not a compliment in the mouth of an Athenian of the fifth century, B.C. Cf. Euth. 3 c 6 sqq.

τα τε μετεωρα φροντιστης ‘a thinker on the things on high.’ The construction of a verbal adjective or substantive with an object accusative is common to many Indo-European languages. It is not very frequent in Greek except with εξαρνος.

τα μετεωρα (called τα ουρανια 19b5) are literally the things ‘aloft,’ ‘on high’, whether the heavenly bodies or what we now call meterological phenomena in the more restricted sense, clouds, rainbows, ‘meteors’, &c. The distinction of astronomy from metereology is connected with the later separation of the heavens from the sublunary region; in the philosophy of Ionia no such distinction was recognized. In the Clouds (228) Socrates is made to explain that he can study τα μετεωρα πραγματα better in the air than on the ground. This study was characteristic of the eastern Ionian philosophers, the Anaxagoreans, and Diogenes of Appolonia, and they are called for that reason μετεωρολογοι. In Attic writers the word and its cognates often imply a certain impatient contempt. Cf. Rep. 488e4.

φροντιστης was a regular nickname of Socrates, and Aristophanes called his school the φροντιστηριον or ‘thought factory’. The Connus of Ameipsias, which was produced the same year as the Clouds (423 b.c.e.) and also dealt with Socrates, had a chorus of φροντισται. Now the use of φροντισ for ‘thought’ and of φροντιζειν for ‘think’ is Ionic rather than Attic. In Attic φροντιζειν is ‘to care’ or ‘to heed’ (generally with a negative), and it is clear that the continual use of φροντις and φροντιζειν in the Clouds is intentional and means that the words struck Athenian ears as odd.

τα υπο γης, ‘the things under the earth.’ Just as the study of τα μετεωρα was characteristic of the eastern Ionians, so that of the interior of the earth (of which they had discovered the spherical shape) was characteristic of the Italiotes and Siceliotes, and especially of Empedocles. That Socrates was familiar with his theories can hardly be doubted, as they were attracting attention at Athens when he was a young man, and Plato has made him give a vivid description of the subterranean regions on strictly Empedoclean lines in the myth of the Phaedo (114c4).

A quick chime in from Deniston on our passage from last week. Unfortunately, he does not address the ωσπερ ουν construction—so we can follow up on that. Deniston has something to say about the και δη και in 17d.

Generally και δη και conveys the idea of climax: “And in fact…” after a sequence of aggregating terms in a list. “This transitional use is particularly common in Plato’s later work.”

But the use in 17d belongs to the class that D. terms non-normative. He says of this passage:

“Apodotic. This usage is perhaps more apparent than real. Some instances are textually uncertain, others can be explained as anacoluthon, or by the consideration that the second και goes clearly with the word that follows it.” (257)

The apodotic nature of this use then strengthens the conditionality of the sentence. As if what preceded was indeed the protasis to what follows, signaled by the και δη και. But how mysterious is Deniston here: “This usage is perhaps more apparent than real.” Why “apparent?”

Is it an anacoluthon? I’d want to really think twice and thrice and in a sedimented fashion towards any anacolutha in Plato.

All in all, this sentence seems to be more complicated than it seems, rhetorically and grammatically.

Post script: this is hilarious.