Footnotes

^94:1 Some emend γνώμης to γνώμονος ('Gnômôn'); Heath prefers γωνὶης ('angle'). See Greek Mathematics, I, p. 178.

^94:2 Diels: 'The Parapêgma was a bronze or marble indicator of the days of the solar year according to the Zodiac, together with the customary weather-signs. Beside the days were holes in which the days of the civil month could be inserted.

^96:1 Bird-days are those on which migrant birds appear; bird-winds are those which bring migrant birds.

^98:1 These are thought to be the work of another Democritus, who according to Suidas wrote two books on Tactics and one on the Jews: perhaps Democritus of Mende.

^99:1 Pun on ἀποπληξίη and πληγή.

^99:2 Given in a collection called 'Maxims of Democratês'. But Stobaeus quotes as 'Maxims of Democritus’ many of the sayings here recorded; it is therefore thought that 'Democrates' is a corruption of 'Democritus', or perhaps a later attribution by Byzantine scholars who had discovered the existence of one Democrates of Aphidna in Attica, a writer on agriculture of the fourth century B.C.

^101:1 Cp. Heracleitus, Frg. 40.

^102:1 Cp. Heracleitus, Frg. 49.

^106:1 'By which is clearly meant a plane indefinitely near to the base.' Heath, Greek Mathematics, I, pp. 199-80.

^107:1 The MS. reading ἀλκήν is emended by Diels-Kranz to ἀλκῇ and translated: 'It is possible to use what is good as a help against what is evil.'

^108:1 It seems best to take μὴ πονεῖν, after the intrans. ἀνιέντες, as a consecutive infinitive: 'If children are left free so as not to work.' Kranz translates: 'If we do not leave children free to work.'

^113:1 Cp. Heracleitus, Frg. 85.

^114:1 Meineke inserted the negative μή which was accepted by Diels-Kranz.

^115:1 For the doubtful words, the MSS. have εὐθυμίης and κτάσεως. Various emendations have been suggested, but none is satisfactory.

^116:1 i.e. power may corrupt even the best. Diels took τοὺς ἄρχοντας as the object of άδικεῖν and translated: 'There is no means of protecting the magistrates from hurt.' He then could make nothing of the next sentence, and was obliged to assume a lacuna.

^118:1 From a Herculanean MS. of Demetrius of Byzantium, who wrote 'On Poetry'. He quotes an unnamed author whom Wilamowitz took to be Democritus, because of the dialect.

^118:2 For a discussion of these, see Companion, pp. 323-5.

^119:1 Probably a scribe's mistake for 'five'.

^119:2 The work of Bolus of Mende, Ch. 78 below.

^119:3 From the Corpus Parisinum Profanum. Some of these are the same as genuine fragments of Democritus; but many come from other writers, and the collection must be regarded as unauthentic.

^119:4 Cp. Heracleitus, Frg. 49.

^120:1 Gomperz regarded this as genuine.

^120:2 Protagoras, Frg. 1.