Heraclitus in verse : The poetic fragments of Scythinus of Teos

The fragmentary state in which Heraclitus’ book has survived makes it necessary to use secondary sources to shed light upon some aspects of Heraclitean philosophy. One of these sources is the poetical version of Heraclitus composed by Scythinus of Teos (5th-4th century BC). Only two fragments of this work still survive. The first one describes Apollo tuning his lyre by “taking together the beginning and the end”, while holding the light of the sun as plectrum. This image reveals to be an original synthesis of Heraclitus’ philosophy. The second fragment, preserved by Stobaeus in an unexpected and corrupt prose version still maintaining traces of metre, provides a unique definition of χρόνος, a concept which does not occur in Heraclitus’ fragments. Several scholars have tried to restore the original metrical form. Wilamowitz’s proposal in trochaic tetrameters seems to be the most consistent and philologically reliable. Scythinus describes Time as the first and last of all things, which goes forward to find itself on the opposite way – yesterday and tomorrow are therefore interchangeable. Such a definition shows to be very close to the content of many surviving Heraclitean fragments. Since we know that Scythinus just transposed the content of Heraclitus’ book into poetry, we must conclude that this fragment coincides with the Heraclitean definition of χρόνος. On this basis, it is possible to bring to light strong analogies between Heraclitus’ own thought and Orphic doctrines.