chapter 10 the monism of darkness and the dualism of limit and ...

MONISM OF DARKNESS - DUALISM OF LIMIT AND INDETERMINACY 103
primordial watery slime from which spang forth the aboriginal Hill, the
Sun as child on a lotus in the cosmogonic beginning of things.
16. The formulation is of course of later origin.
17. Col. XIII-XV in Merkelbach’s anonymous edition, Zeitschrift für
Papyrologie und Epigraphik 47, 1982 with separate page-numbering at the
end of the volume. The scandal concerning the already forty years’ delay for
a proper editio princeps of this most important papyrus has reached air’s
limits. The want has been recently satisfied in part by R. Janko’s splendid
work; v. his edition of the Papyrus, The Derveni Papyrus: an Interim Text
in Zeitschrift fϋr Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Band 141, 2002, pp. 1-62.
(Cf. supplementarily F. Jourdan, Le Papyrus de Derveni, 2003, with
translation based on Janko’s text and notes). The cited passage is in Col.
XVII-XIX Janko.
18. This is easily deduced from the repeated comic derision of the view (v.
supra) and also from the Hippocratic foundation of medicine upon this
view in the ÂÚd º˘ÛáÓ treatise.
19. Air is assimilated to fire because both are active elements while earth is
assimilated to water since both are passive (SVF II 418). Heracleitus who
allegorizes Homer calls the former spiritual and the latter material elements,
Homeric Problems, 22 §13; cf. 15, 3. The former because they are tenser
hold themselves together and provide the latter with a cohesive tension by
permeating, and being mixed with, and in, them (II 444 and 473 p. 155,
32-36). The air is the cohesive cause both of physical being (II 449) and of
its own quality (e.g. II 440 p. 145. 9). Air as divine breath and spirit is to be
found mixed in water and in all elements right from the very beginning of
coming-into-being, of Cosmogony proper (II 721). Spirit is basically
moving air (II 471, p. 152. 34). V. Excursus III: On Spirit and Tension in
“First Principles”, esp. pp. 173-4. It is there explained how dispersing
elements can be cohesive causes.
20. Cf. Excursus I: Matter, Body, Incorporeals and Concepts and Excursus IV:
Principles, Ur-Element and Elements in “First Principles”.
21. According to Sanchouniathon the first principle is a breath (spirit) of
gloomy air. The Stoics consider the air to be intrinsically dark and they
invoke the Homeric testimony to corroborate this view. V. II 429. 430. 56.
569 p. 178.8. Cf. Heracleitus, Homerica Problemata 23, 9-11.
22. Even Homeric Zeus is afraid of displeasing the Night and feels awe before
her. Ilias • 258-61 (Zeus wants to punish Sleep who narrates):
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