Ce-LOEB-ration

New Loebs, New You!

From the bookstores that brought you Lichtenberg Awareness Month ('15), JOUBERT-uary ('16), and CIORAN-uary ('17) comes the ultimate ce-LOEB-ration of aphorisms. Head "Back to the Presocratics" with the Loeb Classical Library's Early Greek Philosophy, the LCL's first multi-volume series to be published all together, and only edition consisting entirely of fragments and testimonia, greatly enhancing our understanding of the earliest stages of the Western intellectual tradition.

In keeping with tradition, we're sharing words of wisdom and brevity by Heraclitus of Ephesus to help ring in the new year on this page and across our social media throughout the month of January. Chime in for our Heraclitus Caption Contest for a chance to win a 25 volume LCL set (details below), receive a free Loeb tote with any Loeb Classical Library purchase, while supplies last, and join us in celebrating the new nine volume series on Early Greek Philosophy with editors André Laks and Chicago's own Glenn Most, Fri. 1/26 6pm at the Co-op. RSVP and details here.

Skip the diet and discover the written treasures of classical masterpieces from the ancient Greek and Roman world. Going back is only the beginning. 


Heraclitus Caption Contest!

Share a photo or drawing to help comedically illustrate any of the below fragments from Heraclitus of Ephesus on the Co-op's social media by tagging the Co-op and using the hashtag #ceLOEBration. Not artistic? Try your hand at a thoughtful reflection (250 words or fewer) and share via social media in the same manner as above. While we encourage "sharing the Loeb" via social media, we will also accept submissions sent to info@semcoop.com. Four decidedly modest winners will receive a 25 volume set of Loeb Classical Library titles of their choice (!) and lifetime's supply of vast knowledge and virtue.

New winners selected every Wednesday of this month, starting 1/10 through 1/31. Please submit your entry by midnight of the previous Tuesday for consideration that week.


1/1: The sun is not only new each day, but forever, continuously new. (Toronto, fragment 6)

1/2: I went in search of myself. (Cambridge XXVIII)

1/3: Let us not make random conjectures about the most important matters. (Toronto, fragment 47)

1/4: Nature loves to hide. [Becoming is a secret process.] (ND, 17)

1/5: Instead of becoming angry, Heraclitus, among the sages, was overcome by tears, and Democritus by laughter. (Loeb P12, EGP)

1/6: For god, all things are beautiful, good, and just, but humans have assumed that some things are unjust, others just. (Loeb D73, EGP)

1/7: Fire lives the death of air, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of earth, earth that of water. (Loeb XXV, Hippocrates)

1/8: The way up and the down is one and the same. (Cambridge, CIII)

1/9: They do not comprehend how a thing agrees at variance with itself; it is an attunement turning back on itself, like that of the bow and the lyre. (Cambridge, LXXVIII)

1/10: Those who search for gold dig up much earth and find little. (Loeb D39, EGP)

1/11: Just as what Heraclitus is reported to have said to strangers who wanted to meet him -- they were approaching hi, but they stopped when they saw that he was warming himself by the oven; but he told them not to hesitate but to enter, saying to them, "For there are gods here too"... (Loeb P15, EGP)

1/12: Pigs wash in mud, chickens in dust. (ND, 103)

1/13: It is the concern of all men to know themselves and to be sober-minded. (Loeb CVI, Hippocrates)

1/14: We ought not to act and to speak as though we were asleep. (Loeb XCIV, Hippocrates)

1/15: The river we stepped into is not the river in which we stand. (ND, 110)

1/16: He used to say that thinking is an instance of the sacred disease and that sight is deceptive. (Toronto, fragment 46)

1/17: Extinguish pride as quickly as you would a fire. (ND, 88)

1/18: They say that Euripides, after he had given Heraclitus' treatise to him [Socrates], asked, "What do you think of it?" The other answered, "What I understand is splendid; I think that what I did not understand, is too; but it needs a Delian diver." (Loeb R5, EGP)

1/19: By Changing it rests. (Loeb LXXXIII, Hippocrates)

1/20: One day is like any other. (Loeb CXX, Hippocrates)

1/21: But other men are unaware of all they do when they are awake, just as they forget all they do while they are asleep. (Loeb D1, EGP)

1/22: He who does not expect will not find out the unexpected, for it is trackless and unexplored. (Cambridge, VII)

1/23: History is a child building a sand-castle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man's power in the world. (ND, 24)

1/24: Many who have learned from Hesiod the countless names of gods and monsters never understand that night and day are one. (Haxton, 35)

1/25: The most beautiful order in the world is still a random gathering of things insignificant in themselves. (ND, 40)

1/26: […] when his fellow citizens asked him to give his opinion about concord, he went up to the rostrum, took a goblet of cold water, sprinkled some barley groats into it and stirred it with mint; then he drank it out and went away -- he had shown the that to be satisfied with one's circumstances and to feel no need for luxuries preserves cities in peace and concord. (Loeb P7, EGP)

1/27: We share a world when we are asleep; each sleeper is in a world of his own. (ND, 15)

1/28: Character is fate. (ND, 69)

1/29: All things are a-flowing', sage Heraclitus says. (Ezra Pound, "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley," 1920)

1/30: How will one hide from that which never sets? (Cambridge, CXXII)

1/31: Not I but the world says it: All is one. (ND, 118)