Introduction By RICHARD BUXTON
IT has often been maintained, and it is still widely held, that the civilization of ancient Greece underwent a development from myth to reason, or–to adopt the Greek-derived terms which have sometimes assumed talismanic status in relation to the debate-from Mythos to Logos. Such a progress, embracing, among other areas, philosophy, historiography, medicine, technology, and various sciences, has frequently been presented as a triumphal one. That may be why, at the beginning of volume 2 of the otherwise unillustrated Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker by Diels-Kranz, we find an Ephesian coin on which the philosopher Heraclitus, one of Ephesus’ most famous sons, is depicted, in the manner of Heracles, brandishing a club.