The central core of the Life of Heraclitus handed down by Diogenes Laertius is represented by a biographico-characterological portrait in which the haughtiness and the superciliousness attributed to this philosopher is ridiculed with an openly satirical and polemical purpose. Substantial analogies with the moral-protreptic writing On Relieving of Arrogance amply quoted and paraphrased by Philodemus in the ending section of PHerc. 1008 ([On Arrogance], cols. 10-24) are detectable. Significantly, at the beginning of the latter (col. 10.16-26 Ranocchia) Heraclitus is expressly mentioned, along with other philosophers and poets, amongst those who became arrogant «on account of philosophy». To the similitudes formerly identified by W. Knögel and S.N. Mouraviev it is now possible to add numerous further thematic correspondences between these writings, which make us suppose that both originally belonged to a same philosophical tradition, whose goal was to describe, and to heal from, arrogance. This tradition possibly embraced both a general illustration/therapy of the vice and specific exemplifications of it by means of lively portaits of 'arrogant' philosophers and poets like Heraclitus, Empedocles, Pythagoras, Socrates, Hippias and Euripides.
Heraclitus' Portrait in Diogenes Laërtius and Philodemus' On Arrogance (PHerc. 1008)
Graziano Ranocchia
2019
Abstract
The central core of the Life of Heraclitus handed down by Diogenes Laertius is represented by a biographico-characterological portrait in which the haughtiness and the superciliousness attributed to this philosopher is ridiculed with an openly satirical and polemical purpose. Substantial analogies with the moral-protreptic writing On Relieving of Arrogance amply quoted and paraphrased by Philodemus in the ending section of PHerc. 1008 ([On Arrogance], cols. 10-24) are detectable. Significantly, at the beginning of the latter (col. 10.16-26 Ranocchia) Heraclitus is expressly mentioned, along with other philosophers and poets, amongst those who became arrogant «on account of philosophy». To the similitudes formerly identified by W. Knögel and S.N. Mouraviev it is now possible to add numerous further thematic correspondences between these writings, which make us suppose that both originally belonged to a same philosophical tradition, whose goal was to describe, and to heal from, arrogance. This tradition possibly embraced both a general illustration/therapy of the vice and specific exemplifications of it by means of lively portaits of 'arrogant' philosophers and poets like Heraclitus, Empedocles, Pythagoras, Socrates, Hippias and Euripides.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
