From xpolakis@otenet.gr Mon Mar 1 12:36:52 1999 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.1+UW98.09/8.9.2+UW99.01) with ESMTP id MAA33932 for ; Mon, 1 Mar 1999 12:36:52 -0800 Received: from athserv.otenet.gr (athserv.otenet.gr [195.170.0.1]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with ESMTP id MAA26634 for ; Mon, 1 Mar 1999 12:36:50 -0800 Received: from [195.167.118.153] (athe530-e025.otenet.gr [195.167.118.153]) by athserv.otenet.gr (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id WAA11883 for ; Mon, 1 Mar 1999 22:36:44 +0200 (EET) X-Sender: xpolakis@mail.otenet.gr Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 22:39:58 +0200 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: xpolakis@otenet.gr (Antreas P. Hatzipolakis) Subject: Re: Question on Timaeus 70B--blood circulating? John Hamilton wrote: >A physician friend of mine was amazed to read in Plato's Timaeus (70B) >that the blood CIRCULATES through all the limbs. He asked me about the >translation (does it have a bias?). The verb is peripheromenou (tou >peripheromenou kata panta ta mele sphodros haimatos="..the blood which >circulates vigorously through all the limbs..."--as the Loeb has it. >I think the translation is o.k. but then thought that the Greek term could >be dynamic as well as static which would mean that " the 'periphery' does >not necessarily move'. >Any ideas most appreciated since I never noticed the passage. In '40s two Greek iatroi (doctors) wrote a diatribe on that subject. They were awarded with an award in 1942, and the diatribe was published in 1947: S. N. Pezopoulos - I. K. Lameras: Ai Peri Kukloforias tou Aimatos Gnwseis twn Arxaiwn Ellhnwn. Aqhnai 1947 (64pp) They discuss the passage in question in the page 14. Not "periphery" (perifereia) but "perifora" is the noun from the verb periferomai, that is the blood does do a "perifora" in the body. As for the word "perifora": they compare the platonic passage with the following Aristotelian one: Nou men kinhsis, nohsis, kuklou de perifora, h de perifora palin ep' arxhn anakamptei (Peri Yuxhs, a3) Antreas .