DOI 10.

1515/rhiz-2013-0009

RHIZ 2013; 1(2):000000

Catherine Rowett

On calling the gods by the right names

Abstract: Do you need to know the name of the god youre praying to? If you get the name wrong what happens to the prayer? What if the god has more than one name? Who gets to decide whether the name works (you or the god or neither)? What are names anyway? Are the names of the gods any different in how they work from any other names? Is there a way of fixing the reference without using the name so as to avoid the problems of optional names? There is a type of formula used in prayer in ancient Greece which I call (in this paper) a precautionary formula. The person praying uses expressions like whether you want to be called [x] or [y], and if this is the name by which you would like to be called. I also include here the practice of adding definite descriptions that identify the god by means other than the name (e.g. their place of birth or residence, their deeds etc). In this paper I ask what these formulae were for, why so many occur in philosophical work, particularly Plato, and whether the puzzles about the names of the gods go back to the Presocratics. Keywords: Heraclitus, Plato, Prayer, Naming, Divine names, Reference, Presocratics.

Catherine Rowett: School of Philosophy, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park Norwich NR4 7TJ, England, E-mail: C.Osborne@uea.ac.uk

1A question about precautionary formulae

At lines 160162 of Aeschyluss Agamemnon, the Chorus addresses a prayer to Zeus, but they seem to be uncertain about whether the god they are addressing will want to be called Zeus, or indeed who he is exactly.
Zeus: regardless of who he is, if being called by this name is acceptable to him, then this is what I will use to address him.

1Chorus: , , | , | . (Aeschylus Agamemnon 160162) The verb is characteristic in this context, indicating that one is addressing something, particularly where there is an issue about what name to

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The Chorus can use the name Zeus, it seems, even while they are still unsure of who Zeus is. They are also unsure whether that name is acceptable to the god. The Chorus would like to use a name that he is willing to accept. They suppose that Zeus may be such a name. This illustrates a type of formula which I shall call (in this paper) a precautionary formula. The person praying appears to be anxious about how to address the god, and whether to use a certain name. I shall include among precautionary formulae expressions like whether you want to be called [x] or [y], and if this is the name by which you would like to be called, and the practice of adding definite descriptions that identify the god by means other than the name (e.g. their place of birth or residence, their deeds etc). At first glance, such formulae appear to be fairly widespread in what literary evidence we have for ancient practices of prayer. However, an alarmingly large number of them actually occur in philosophical texts, particularly in Plato. In a recent monograph on prayer in Greek religion, Simon Pulleyn argues that we should not read these as genuine precautions against the failure of prayer. He offers three reasons. First, he points out that the evidence for such formulae is less strong in the Greek world than has been supposed, and that many older scholars cited evidence from Roman literature when discussing the phenomenon, as though all ancient cultures had the same customs at prayer. Second, he argues that many well-known examples (particularly those in Plato) reflect a tradition of philosophical speculation, not the normal modes of prayer. Third, he argues that where these formulae did occur as a proper part of prayer, they were a technique for praising and pleasing the gods, not an expression of anxiety. Their function was, he suggests, laudatory, not sceptical or timid. And most importantly, it was not about attempting to gain power over the gods.

address it by. Cf. Aeschylus Agamemnon 162, 1291; Cho 110, 224; Sophocles Aj. 857; Euripides Hipp. 99. Pindar Isthm. 6.17. 2But see note 18 3Plato Cratylus 400e; Philebus 12bc; Symposium 212b; Phaedrus 257a; and see below section 3. 4Pulleyn (1997), chapter 6. I have tried to separate his considerations more perspicuously than he does there (hopefully, without misrepresenting them). 5Besides the piece from Aeschylus in note 14, the best Greek examples (besides Plato) are Menander Rhetor 445, 25ff; 438.10ff; Euripides Tro. 884ff.; Bacch. 2756; fr. 912.2, N2. Horace Odes 3.21 and Catullus 34.21 may also be adaptations of Greek models. Older scholars who tended to assimilate material from Greece, Rome and other ancient cultures include Ogilvie (1969), Ausfeld (1903), Norden (1913). See Pulleyn (1997), p. 100. 6Pulleyn (1997), pp. 1034. 7Pulleyn (1997), p. 105.

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On calling the gods by the right names

In this paper my purpose is not primarily historical. I am not asking whether people did worry about how to name their gods. Rather my task is to investigate the texts that Pulleyn takes to be expressing a merely philosophical worry. How is that worry related to the practice of prayer? Are the puzzles new in Plato, or are there antecedents in the Presocratics? The paper is in three parts: first I question Pulleyns claim that when prayers talk of pleasing the gods they mean the names in the prayer to serve a laudatory function. Second I review Platos examples, and ask what they are about. Third I consider some earlier Presocratic examples, mainly from Heraclitus, in search of related issues about the correctness of names (primarily for gods, but also to look for similar issues in relation to the naming of other things). I conclude that the Presocratics were already talking about similar issues and worries relating to how we can successfully use names to refer to gods and other things, and worries about how well, if at all, the names capture the identity of the things that they name, well before Plato, and that they express a range of interesting views which can fruitfully be compared and contrasted with the ones that we find in Plato.

2On pleasing the gods

One of Pulleyns main concerns, in analysing these formulae, was to deny that names were supposed to have magic power, in particular as a way of manipulating the gods to answer prayers. He does, however, appear to endorse a second idea, that the gods (somewhat like dogs) wont hear that you are addressing them if you dont address them by name. Yet even that second idea would not justify the precautionary formulae, Pulleyn thinks, because (he says) most people knew which god they were trying to address and what that gods name

8Pulleyn (1997), pp. 96, 989, citing Fraenkel (1950), commentary to line 160, in Aeschylus, Agamemnon. Pulleyn attributes this idea to mistaken assimilation of the Greek world to anthropological models from other cultures, particularly the unutterable name of God in Jewish thought. He thinks classical scholars mistakenly suppose that the idea that the name must not be uttered is due to fear of the names magical power; he identifies rather a sense of awe and the risk of profanation of the name of God, though he acknowledges (Pulleyn 1997, p. 99) evidence for cabbalistic and theurgic rites that treat the name as magical. 9The analogy is from Ogilvie (1969), p. 24. Pulleyn (1997), p. 97 apparently endorses it, claiming that knowledge of the name is essential to any form of communication. Yet that is plainly false, particularly in a culture accustomed to using images in prayer, but also in normal social interaction between people.

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was. Yet this leaves no space for the possibility that the god you are trying to address might go by various names, using different names on different occasions or in different cult contexts or places. Pulleyn argues that in Greece prayer primarily worked by the believer trying to be nice to the gods, so that the god will be inclined, not compelled, to respond. It was a reciprocal deal, he thinks, and this relationship was improved if the believer addressed the gods in the way that they liked to be addressed. Hence a formula that offered a range of alternative names, epithets or relative clauses, to describe or address the god, despite looking superficially like an expression of anxiety or doubt, might rather be a way of adding more honorific weight to the prayer. The multiple names would function as terms of praise, intended as a source of delight to the god. Almost all the relevant formulae include phrases about being pleased to be called such and such. It is this language of pleasing to which Pulleyn appeals in claiming that the formulae, and the extra names, are designed more to please the god with honorific names, than to express anxiety or guard against failure of the prayer if it does not give pleasure. But does the language of pleasing really show that the formula is intended to give pleasure? There are surely two ways of reading the being pleased phrases. It could be read as Pulleyn reads it, to mean that all the forms of address that are being offered are expected to be pleasing and that adding more of them will add more pleasure and win more favour the more the better, since the more laudatory names you add the more the god will be inclined to act favourably. Alternatively, we could read the being pleased phrases to mean that there are

10For the most part it must be safe to suppose that many people will have known to whom they wanted to pray or sacrifice and that they went ahead without having to discover the name at all. (Pulleyn 1997, p. 98). Pulleyn fails to observe the opacity of contexts, and disregards the possibility that one might know an item under one description and not know it under another, and so fails to address the problem of gods with multiple names, where you know (under some description) which god you are aiming at but not which name to use. Note also Xenophon Anabasis VII.8.16 (noted as a counter example by Pulleyn 1997, p. 98). 11Since a wide variety of cult places and cults, each with their own nomenclature, follows the emergence of a panhellenic religion (achieved by identifying local cults as specific manifestations of a single deity with different characteristics or interests when he inhabits different shrines), it is easy to see how there might be issues regarding which god dwells here and under what name or epithet. 12Pulleyn (1997), pp. 1056. There is some tension between this claim, and pp. 1034 where he suggests that the formulae belong to non-liturgical speculation. See below, section 3, on this aspect. 13The verb is typically (Plato Protagoras 358a; Symposium 212b, Cratylus 400e). Also (Philebus 12bc).

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only some ways in which the god is willing, or pleases, to be addressed, while other modes of address would be either unpleasing, or perhaps ineffective (because he is not pleased to answer to them this time). If being pleased to be called such and such means the god is willing to answer to that name, and if the gods have various names which they might (on occasions) be unwilling to answer to, then the vocabulary of being pleased can express anxiety and the fear that the god might not be willing to listen. When we read it like that, it is as if each god has special names that he can choose to stand behind, just as he has shrines that he can choose to dwell within. If on some occasion he is not standing behind this name, the prayer addressed to this name will not arrive (much as if someone with several e-mail addresses logs in to only one of them each day). Then the list of names, and the expression if this is the name that you are pleased to be called by, or if not then some other one is like sending the message to all his inboxes, even broadcasting them to all his inboxes, even those we dont know. But in that case, the language of being pleased does not refer at all to the gods delight at these names, but rather expresses his right to choose any name, not necessarily one we know, and to change his habits at will. Both readings are possible, but the second one seems in many ways more natural as a reading of the phrase about if you are pleased to use this name. Hence we cannot infer directly from the presence of expressions that refer to being pleased that the formulae are (as Pulleyn argued) intended to delight the god, or that none of the names could displease him.

3Plato and the epistemic worries

Pulleyns second argument to show that these formulae were not intended as precautions in prayer starts by conceding that some texts reflect a sceptical worry about how to find the right name for something. He grants that such worries are not confined to the Roman world; they are integral to some of the clearest and earliest examples in Greek, especially in Plato. Arguably, we might say, such scepticism, first about ones knowledge of the identity or being of the god, and, to a lesser extent, about ones knowledge of his preferred name, is already there in the Aeschylus text with which we started this paper. But, Pulleyn suggests, this is a philosophical worry. It appears in literary and philosophical texts, but this does not show that it appeared in real prayers. Instead, in those cases where that sceptical worry appears in what purport to be prayers, Pulleyn argues that the literary context is not genuinely portraying the attitude of prayer, but is self-consciously philosophical, and that the ignorance of

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which it speaks would not be a matter of concern in the context of real prayer. It is an academic matter, about the philosophy of language. Those philosophical puzzles about naming and about errors in naming or referring are my interest in this paper. A high proportion of the precautionary formulae in Greek literature occur in Plato, typically uttered by Socrates in ironic mode, when he disclaims knowledge about a certain matter, such as what word to use to describe something. The most familiar examples are Cratylus 400e; Philebus 12c14; Phaedrus 246d. I shall discuss these first, along with some other less often discussed examples, and then turn to ask whether they are raising a philosophical issue of even greater antiquity, to do with the relation between a name and the referent of that name. The main concern of the Cratylus is correctness of names, which is clearly relevant in many ways to the issue we are considering in this paper. But we shall start with the passage that actually makes reference to the practice of prayer. As a second best model of how to name the gods, Socrates cites what we do when we pray. The passage starts with a question from Hermogenes:
Hermogenes: But concerning the names of the gods, like you said just now about the name Zeus, could we do a similar investigation into what kind of correctness applies in the establishment of their names? (Crat. 400d)

Socrates responds by agreeing that the best thing would be to know the correct name of the god. But that is beyond us:
Socrates: Yes, by Zeus. Though mind you, one kind [of correctness], the very best kind, which if we have any sense given that we dont know anything about the gods, neither about themselves nor about their names, what on earth they call themselves for evidently its they who call themselves by the true names (ibid.)

So instead, Socrates says, we use a precautionary formula.

Socrates: But theres a second kind of correctness, as in when we pray our practice is to pray that whoever they are and whatever they like to be called after, we too will call them those things, because we dont know anything else. (Crat. 400e401a)

14Pulleyn (1997), pp. 1034. 15A range of others less often noticed include Philebus 63ab; Protagoras 358a; Symposium 212b and see further below on Phaedo 100d and parallels. 16For more on the Cratylus, and the wider context of this quotation see further below.

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On calling the gods by the right names

Note that here, as in Aeschylus, the precautionary formula expresses caution both about the identity of the gods (whoever they are) and about their preferred names (and whatever they like to be called after). So the precaution is not confined to an issue of naming, or perhaps more likely the issue of not knowing the name is internally related to the issue of not knowing the identity (for instance, if one can only find the right name when one knows who one is trying to name, and hence identify the relevant identity or mode of being that the name is supposed to define or denote). Socrates continues:
Socrates: That seems to me to be a good practice. So are you happy if we investigate this matter as if we had first said to the gods that we are not conducting an investigation into them at all for we dont think that were qualified for that investigation but an investigation about people, into what people were thinking when they gave the gods their names? For that is not something that will incur nemesis. (Crat. 401a)

It is certainly possible that Socrates is turning expressions that did not express anxiety in real life into mock expressions of anxiety, for the sake of humour and to express or portray a philosophical worry. Perhaps Plato was abusing an existing formula, wilfully distorting it to create a philosophical puzzle of his own. Yet the mention of a danger of nemesis from enquiring too closely into a matter about the gods which is too ambitious for mortal enquiry implies that there is something peculiarly risky about venturing to know things that mortals cannot and should not know. Since Plato repeatedly makes Socrates allude to such expressions in the dialogues, it may be something authentic to the historical Socrates, along with his famous disavowal of knowledge and his ironic attitude regarding the gods. On the other hand there is also a clear example at Timaeus 28b, where Timaeus (not Socrates) uses such a formula when wondering how best to describe the world: But the whole heaven or cosmos, or whatever other name it might most accept to be called by, let it thus be named by us this we must first investigate. So it seems that the habit of appealing to such formulae to express philosophical humility is not peculiar to Socrates, or to specially ironic or theoretical disavowal contexts. Another clear example concerning the names of gods occurs in the Symposium, when Socrates finishes his encomium of Eros with a worry about the name we should use for that god:

17Cf. Phaedrus 257a where Socrates utters a mock prayer to Eros and passes the blame for anything that might offend the god, to Lysias, the father of the speech, but no precautionary formula appears. 18Timaeus at Plato Timaeus 28b25.

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Socrates: So, Phaedrus, you should regard this speech, if you will, as an encomium spoken in praise of Eros, but if not, then whatever and howsoever you like to name him, name him that. (Symposium 212b)

This example too is about the identity of the god, as it turns out, and the issue of just who it is that we are talking about when we speak in praise of Eros. The formula is so placed, as to hint that the speech is not really about Eros (the god of love) at all, but about someone else of a different name: a clever device in the context, since (as many have noticed) the description of Eros was, at the same time, a description of Socrates himself. A third example occurs at Phaedrus 246d. Socrates, having described the soul as a winged charioteer and horses, says But in whatever way is dear to the god, let these things be and be said in that way. This is not specifically about naming the gods, but it evidently alludes to a formula (about speaking in a way that is philon to god) that is now familiar to us. Fourthly, early in the Philebus (12b7c6), Socrates tells Protarchus that Philebus had claimed that Aphrodite is not the correct name. The context is a question about the value of pleasure:
Soc: Well, were going to have to try [sc to answer the question], beginning with this goddess who (Philebus says) gets termed Aphrodite, though her truest name is pleasure. Prot: Quite correct.

Socrates then expresses his concern about whether he can do the naming of gods:
Soc: Theres a constant anxiety that I feel about the names of the gods, Protarchus. Its no ordinary human anxiety: it exceeds the greatest fear. And now, Ill address Aphrodite howsoever is pleasing to her. But pleasure is complicated, that I do know. And as I said before, thats where we must start

Protarchus had been happy to agree with what Philebus had said, but Socrates is less sure that Philebus is right that Aphrodites real name is pleasure, and he claims to have a special anxiety about the gods names, as a result of which he would like to address Aphrodite howsoever it suits her.

19See Marsilio Ficino Symposium Commentary oratio 7; Osborne (1994), p. 94 n. 32 and further references there. 20 , , . (Phaedrus 246d23). 21Compare (or rather, contrast) Symposium 180bc, where Pausanias says that there are two Aphrodites, and provides different genealogies and different epithets ( and ). For Pausanias, two goddesses go under the one name Aphrodite,

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On calling the gods by the right names

On the other hand, Socrates has no worries about talking of pleasure. What he knows about pleasure is that it is it is manifold or various. This could imply that there is no simple way of encapsulating it in words. But since poikilia does not make it hard to speak about pleasure, clearly that is not what generates Socrates worry about speaking of the gods. So we can infer that he does not have a quite general worry about language, or about language about complicated things. No: it is a special anxiety about applying names to the gods, and it is perhaps also a worry about naming things that matter to the gods, where they might have a view on what word is correct, or might know better than we do what the nature of the thing really is. Pleasure is also the topic in our fifth passage, Protagoras 358a. Here, as in the Phaedrus and the Timaeus, the issue is not explicitly the names of gods, but rather the correct name for pleasure. The Protagoras thus stands in an ambiguous relation to the Philebus, where, as we saw, Socrates was confident about pleasure but anxious about Aphrodite. In the Protagoras, by contrast, he uses a precautionary formula to express a worry about how best to speak of pleasure, where no god is in the picture at all. A closer look at the passage, however, reveals that this one is a joke at the expense of the sophist Prodicus:
Socrates: So you agree, I said, that the pleasant is good, and the painful bad by the way, Im excusing myself from the distinctions that Prodicus here makes about names whether you call it pleasant or enjoyable or delightful, or whence-so-ever and how-so-ever you delight to call these things by name, Prodicus, you incomparable dude, just give me your answer to the question Im trying to ask. (Protagoras 358a)

It seems that Socrates himself has no more worry than he had in the Philebus about how best to speak of pleasure, but he thinks that Prodicus might worry about it. To enhance the joke, Socrates modifies the precautionary formula, so that where it would normally talk about how the god delights to be named, or is willing for something else to be named, here it speaks instead of how Prodicus delights to call the various pleasures by name. So Socrates alludes in an amusing way to Prodicuss habit of distinguishing words, to create a logically perfect language for pleasure, with a one-to-one correlation between words and concepts (a Prodican concern also noted by Aristotle). Socrates apparently treats that obses-

whereas for Philebus/Protarchus there is one goddess, and Aphrodite is not her only, nor her truest, name. But Platos Pausanias is a ridiculous pedant offering a pseudo-theology designed to promote homosexual over heterosexual love, as part of the entertainment at Agathons party. 22Topics 112b2126.

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sion as comic, either if it is applied to all ordinary concepts, or perhaps especially if it is an obsession with naming the varieties of pleasure. But when it comes to the gods, he implies that it is no joke, but a real fear (or at least he pretends to do so). At this point we should compare Prodicuss own published work, The Choice of Heracles, which is indirectly preserved (roughly, and from memory) in Xenophons Memorabilia. In the story, Heracles meets two women, advocating, respectively, the life of duty and the life of pleasure. After the speech in favour of pleasure, Heracles asks the speaker what her name is:
And Heracles, hearing these words, said Woman, your name? What name do you have? She said My friends call me Eudaimonia, but those who hate me use the name Kakia as a term of endearment for me.

Xenophon, in his own voice, paraphrasing Prodicus calls this woman kakia (vice) at Mem. II.1.29. On the other hand, she had said, at II.1.26, that kakia was not her real name but a nickname, used of her by her enemies. So is she really supposed to be vice? If so her claim that vice is just a nickname would be a cunning lie, part of her deceptive speech. Or is she not supposed to be vice, since what she says is only that vice is a term of abuse, used by those who disapprove of her? If so, then we do not know her true name. Should we not conclude that she is really pleasure, and neither of the two names she provides is her identity? Hedonists, for whom pleasure and happiness are identical, call her Happiness, while kill-joys, for whom pleasure is synonymous with vice, call her vice. If this is correct, then Xenophons presentation is quite misleading, and Prodicus really meant Heracles to choose between a life devoted to the pursuit of virtue and a life devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. For sure, virtue speaks of certain superior kinds of pleasure that accrue from a life of virtue, but this need not detract from the plausibility of taking the work to be about choosing between a life of virtue and a life of pleasure. So in Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle we repeatedly find Prodicus fussing about the names for pleasure. It seems likely that Plato was often thinking of Prodicus when he invoked these disclaimers about the correctness of names. Several pertinent places where they occur in Plato are about names for gods of love and sexual delight, the varieties of pleasure that so interested Prodicus. Yet

23Xenophon Mem. II.1.2134. On this text, see Wolfsdorf (2008). 24 . Xenophon Mem. II.1.26. 25Evidently Xenophon is paraphrasing Prodicuss work, putting it into the mouth of Socrates. When he calls the hedonistic woman Vice, he may be misunderstanding or over-simplifying.

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there are other examples that suggest that Plato is not just joking or making fun of Prodicus, but also sometimes trying to overcome the fact that language struggles to express the things he wants to say. The example in the Timaeus about whether cosmos or ouranos is the right way to describe the world is one such. Similarly, in speaking of the relation between forms and particulars at Phaedo 100d, Socrates wonders what term will do:
That nothing else makes this beautiful except either the presence or the association, or in whatever way and howsoever it [sc the association] is to be addressed, of that Beautiful Im not going to stick my neck out on this with any certainty, beyond this much: that its by The Beautiful that all beautifuls are beautiful.

Socrates does not want to fix an exact term to designate the presence of the beautiful that makes things count as beautiful. He settles for a disjunction of possible terms, thereby leaving open the question of what exactly is the nature of the relation between the Beautiful itself, and the other beautifuls. If we compare his formula here (either or or in whatever way or howsoever it is to be addressed) with the formulae about the names of gods, and with parallel formulae in contexts similar to this (Crito 50a, Euthydemus 288b, Timaeus 28b), we find that they typically recur where Platos characters are unsure how best to describe something in words, not just because the words are not available, but also where the nature of the thing to be described is uncertain or not to be wholly specified. It seems plausible that Plato is playing upon a traditional formula used when addressing the gods. Even if such a formula did typically occur in prayers, this does not settle the question of whether the Greeks who used that formula in their prayers were anxious about what name the gods would accept, or about the success of their prayers. It does not tell us what gave rise to the idea that a god might have various names, or that choosing the right name or adding more names was important. We could speculate on historical circumstances that might contribute to this situation: the unification of the Greek world, the assimilation of local indigenous cults into the Olympian pantheon, the rationalisation of local variations in cult, for instance. But that is not my focus here. My interest is in the fact that Plato is playing important and interesting philosophical games with these formulae,

26See above, note 31. 27Phaedo 100d48: , . On the textual crux concerning the word there is an unpublished paper (of 2008) by Fritz-Gregor Herrmann.

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enlisting them in analysing the relation between words and things, and perhaps even more in cases where the relation between words and things is not a problem, but the nature of the item to be named is under-determined (so that the name too needs to be similarly indeterminate to avoid over-specifying something that cannot yet be described). Plato employs these formulae repeatedly in situations where he refuses to settle on one term rather than another, because each alternative might be inaccurate or misleading. The formulae allow Plato to bracket the missing terminology, to evade the need to explain in detail what is being described, or to avoid being too prescriptive or technical in describing it, and yet still to make progress with the enquiry despite these tasks remaining uncompleted. Before leaving Plato we should return for a moment to his discussion of naming the gods in the Cratylus, of which we looked at just one exchange at the beginning of our discussion of Plato. That exchange was relevant because it included a mention of the prayer formula, disclaiming knowledge of the name or essence of the god addressed, but it is now apparent that the whole of the Cratylus is engaged with the same issue, including the twin themes that we have observed, namely (i) using names to try to express the true identity of something (an identity that may be inaccessible to us, or better known to the gods, or to someone with genuine insight into the natures of things that are to be named), and (ii) concerns about what happens when something is mistakenly called by a name that is not appropriate. For it is not just in the case of gods that words addressed to the wrong entity under the wrong name may be fruitless; a similar problem afflicts language that attempts to refer to non-linguistic things in the external world. The issue is not confined to proper names. Indeed it arises more in other cases: perhaps it arises with proper names only when proper names are not treated as logically proper names, whose only meaning is the referent. It is only when they are treated as carrying some sense from the semantic load of their component parts (vel sim.) that there can be an issue about, say, whether Hermogenes is the right name for Hermogenes, and it is only on that basis that it makes sense to engage in etymological explanations of the names of the gods. The issue is about how language can refer successfully, and whether its success depends upon a meaningful match between the name and the real identity or nature of the thing itself. A fuller treatment of this theme in Plato would need to consider this dialogue in some detail. But our task is not to chart the theme in Plato, but rather to turn back to where he might have found it already present.

28Cratylus 383b (the name of Hermogenes); 400d408d for the expositions of the meaning of the names of the gods.

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In the Cratylus, Socrates identifies some cases in Homer where humans are said to use a different name for something from the one used by the gods for the same thing. So, as far as he is concerned, some of the issues are already there in Homeric thought, though Homer just mentions the two names, without commenting in any way on how the divergence arises, nor which name is better. Socrates is interested in identifying which name is the right one but Homer has no such ambition.

4Heraclitus
Turning to the Presocratics, we now have two questions. Do the precautionary formulae as such figure in earlier philosophy, before Plato, as a vehicle for expressing philosophical issues about language and about other matters to do with knowledge, and the limits of human understanding? And more generally, do the issues that we have seen emerging in Platos use of these formulae turn up already in earlier thought, as topics for philosophical reflection? I shall suggest that certain sayings of Heraclitus come to life in a striking way when read in the light of the precautionary formula. It seems plausible that before Plato picked it up, Heraclitus was already using this motif for philosophical ends. Let us begin with fragment 32.
.

This text is hard to construe. First, we dont know whether means one (the wise thing) or the wise thing is one thing. The latter interpretation is tempting to start with, but gradually recedes, because as we proceed turns out to be the subject of , not a clause in its own right. Yet whatever its grammatical role, clearly mentions something singular and neuter. This one item does and does not want the name Zeus. Does and does not want: the repeated verb is one of those being pleased words that figured in our analysis of precautionary formulae. The god

29391e (Homer says that the gods call the river Xanthos, but men call it Scamander). 392a (a bird which the gods call Chalcis but men call Cymindis; a hill known as Batieia to men, but Myrinas tomb to the gods). 30An alternative translation, taking the verb to mean no more than is accustomed, would render the phrase is and is not in the habit of answering to the name of Zeus. This would eliminate the idea of being displeased. I think it is less plausible, once we have seen the probable allusion to a prayer formula.

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wants certain names and the believer tries to use the name that the god wants. Pulleyn claimed that the believer tried to find many names, because adding further names is a way of hymning the god. But in Heraclitus B32 the god both does and does not want that name. Indeed the not wanting is placed first. So might it be unwise to call him by that name that he does not want? This is the worry that ones prayer might go amiss. Yet it is also wise to do so, since he does want it. Evidently, then, it will be hard to formulate your prayer in a way that is surely going to please the one god. Adding a name clearly will not add value, if the name is one that the god does not like. So it is a risky situation: more is not necessarily better. Worse still, in this case the name that the god does want is the very one that he does not want. If (as Pulleyn suggested) the believer used names as a form of flattery, Heraclitus is evidently problematising that practice. Perhaps Heraclitus thinks that conventional prayer is too simple-minded, if (as Pulleyn implies) it assumes that extra names invariably delight the gods? Or perhaps Pulleyn is wrong about the formulae, and Heraclitus is merely uncovering a worry that already underlies the ordinary practice, a concern about whether ones choice of names could be displeasing, which already motivates the precautionary formulae in their traditional use. Perhaps the formulae do, after all, express a fear of error and a desire to employ whichever name is acceptable to the god? Besides the two occurrences of in Heraclitus B32, there is a second verb, . Translations usually treat it as synonymous with , to be called. In English we cannot use say in the passive, as Heraclitus does in this case with an accusative () and the specified name in the genitive (). Heraclitus says, the one wise does and doesnt like to be said the name of Zeus. This construction does not work in English. Does it work in Greek? That is hard to say. It would have to mean that the one does and does not like to have the name Zeus said of it so perhaps Heraclitus is thinking not of praying to Zeus, but of speaking about him. Yet there is another possibility. might be middle, not passive. Then the translation could be: One, the wise, alone, is not willing, and is willing, to call himself the name of Zeus, or (if has its choosing sense as well as its speaking sense) One, the wise, alone, is not willing, and is willing, to choose for himself the name of Zeus. The saying sense suggests a worry about the name we use in speaking of him to his face, or in the third person; the choosing sense suggests that we are seeking the name that the god chooses (or delights) to be called by. If it is for the god to choose what name he answers to,

31Pulleyn (1997), chapter 6. See above section 2.

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then it is for us to wonder what name he chooses, for it is not our task to invent or choose a name that fits. So, Heraclitus may mean not just that Zeus does and does not want to be called Zeus, but also that he does and does not choose the name of Zeus for himself. That is, there is not just one verb of pleasing (), but two ( and ). The emphasis on the gods whim is duplicated: not only does he choose for himself a name to answer to, but he is inconsistent or contradictory in his liking for that name. He does and does not choose the name. It is unclear whether this contradiction is simultaneous (at any time, he both does and does not like to choose that name) or diachronic (sometimes he chooses it and sometimes not). If the latter, the worry would just be whether now is the right time for this name. But it may be more rewarding more Heraclitean to think that it is the former: the god is simultaneously contradictory in his enthusiasm and lack of enthusiasm for a particular mode of address. Then the problem would be that there can be no occasion on which the name Zeus is unambiguously correct. Who is the subject, who has this option of choosing what to be called? Is it Zeus? The answer to this question eludes us because Zeus is just a name, and it succeeds in naming the item we were trying to mention only if, as a matter of fact, the item in question is willing to have that name. Names become ineffective in such a situation: the item in question slips through our grasp by not choosing to stand behind the name that we tried to use for it. So we cannot say Zeus does not like that name because Zeus does not refer if the god does not accept it as a name. Or, at least, that would be so if refusing, or disliking, a name is equivalent to closing the mailbox that receives mail from that name. Perhaps gods can do that. Yet in other contexts it seems that the power of language to refer is not affected by the preferences of the object designated. Someone may be angered by being called by a name they dislike, but they will not be unaware of the reference unless they are unaware that the name is directed at them. But since there are many ways of making clear that one is speaking of that person or thing, besides using a name, it is not difficult to ensure that the name hits its target: standing before a statue and addressing it, for instance. If the names of gods continue to work, even if they dislike them, then they will hear themselves named, and may be angered or irritated but will not necessarily ignore the address. Two alternatives therefore emerge. Either the names of gods work like ordinary names and nicknames, and they will continue to refer to the god in question,

32We can use a nickname for someone even if they hate it and would rather not be called by that name. I thank Gbor Betegh for helpful suggestions on this topic.

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willy-nilly, even if he dislikes the name. The worry about his preference will then be about the danger of angering him, or failing to win his favour, by using a word that he likes but is powerless to resist. Or alternatively, if the gods have a special power over the names applied to them, such that they can choose a name, and refuse others, in a way that renders the name wholly ineffective if it is not the chosen name of the day, then the worry about his preference will be a worry that the mailbox for the name that we are using may be closed, and no communication will occur. Maybe it is not just prayers addressed to the god that become useless then, but even conversation about the god, if the god can control even whether the name refers to him, as well as whether it can be used to call upon him. Then all reference to the god under that name becomes empty, and the names turn out not to designate anyone at all. This would be an odd way of thinking of language, but in support of the idea that this is what is meant we should note the practice of describing the god by means of other descriptors. Suppose that the object itself (in this case a god) can render our language meaningless by declining to accept the word that we are wont to use. Instead we have to find some other expression to fix the referent, something that will succeed in mentioning the relevant item regardless of how it chooses to be addressed. Such a designator will not be a name, onoma, but some other kind of expression such that the god cannot choose not to use of himself. This seems to be the role performed by the definite descriptions in some prayer formulae, which identify the gods by their location, their deeds, or their sphere of action. Looking back to the first part of Heraclitus B32, we can now see that is doing that work. There is the characteristic definite article referring unambiguously to one thing. If we take as an indefinite description (some one thing) and then read as the defining specification (that is, the wise one), the two together fix the identity of the item that is to be the subject of the sentence (There is some one thing, namely the wise thing, which ). Thus Heraclituss sentence succeeds in speaking of some one definite thing, despite the fact that it cannot use the name Zeus to just that thing, because that name does not have an unambiguous grip on it. Although Heraclitus does not say so explicitly, this worry may also apply to the use of any other divine name: after all Zeus should be the most appropriate candidate among these to be an acceptable name for Heraclitus one, wise thing. Having noticed this method of fixing the referent by a definite description, we can observe the same phenomenon in Heraclitus B93, as quoted by Plutarch:

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I reckon you know the bit in Heraclitus that says that the lord to whom the Oracle that is in Delphi belongs neither states nor conceals but signifies. (Plutarch De Pyth. or. 404d = B93)

In this saying, Heraclitus is alluding to another problem about the gods and language, this time the fact that the gods do not speak in unambiguous terms or it least this god does not and we cannot always understand what his oracles mean (as in the ones delivered at Delphi). The point is not the difficulty of naming the god but the ambiguity of his utterances. But Heraclitus does not mention Apollo by name in this remark. Instead (as in B32) he uses a definite article plus generic noun (the lord) followed by a defining phrase that fixes which lord is meant by referring to the location of his oracle. This circumvents any problem about naming the gods, by naming places and oracles instead. So although the saying does not seem to be on that topic, it bears upon the issue of how to name or refer to the gods without risk of misfiring.

Several other Heraclitean remarks now turn out to be about the gods names and their identity criteria. Here is Heraclitus B15, quoted by Clement of Alexandria:
As a mystical memento of this experience they set up phalli to Dionysus in the cities. For, says Heraclitus, if it were not to Dionysus that they made the procession and sang the hymn to the shameful parts, they would do something most shameless; but Hades is the same as Dionysus, to whom they rave and do Lenaia (not I think due to bodily intoxication so much as the offensive ritualization of debauchery). (Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus 34, 5 = B15)

Heraclitus speaks as though Hades and Dionysus are two names, or two cult manifestations, of the same god: one entity under two descriptions. Perhaps he is also struck by the incongruity or incompatibility of the ceremonies associated with this god. B15 does not describe the ceremonies associated with Hades, perhaps because Hades as such was not a recipient of cult. (There were cults in Ephesus of what seems to be the same god, but only under the name Pluto). Alternatively, perhaps the ceremonies associated with death are just assumed, as familiar or best not mentioned. Instead, to alert us to the incongruity, Heraclitus mentions ceremonies associated with Dionysus, including phallic processions and Lenaia or transgressive maenadic rites.

33 . 34See also Plutarch De Is. 362a. 35In Athens the Lenaia was a winter festival of Dionysus. But Heraclitus is probably not referring to a particular festival, and certainly not to Athens, but perhaps to the Dionysiac revelry

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The idea that Hades and Dionysus are the same need not be some fanciful or Heraclitean mystery, as many commentators suppose. As I have noted elsewhere, there is evidence of Chthonian cults of Dionysus that distinctly associate him with death and the underworld. And both mainstream and Orphic texts often leave Hades unnamed, or identified by euphemisms, or given names that represent the god in a more positive light (e.g. Pluto). The reluctance to use a name in these cases may be partly superstition and fear, but it also ties in with what we have been exploring here. There may be no one name that is exclusively correct or effective. Despite the fact that there are several available names, maybe none of them is usable. Maybe we dont know whether the ones we know are any good. Three further sayings from Heraclitus are worth adding to this context. One is B23, quoted by Clement of Alexandria as follows:
So Heraclitus gets it right when he says they wouldnt have known Justices name if it hadnt been for these things, and Socrates gets it right when he says that the development of law is not directed at the good. (Clement, Strom IV.3, 10.1 = B23)

We cannot tell whether Dike (Justice) should be thus capitalised and personified, and whether this is supposed to be the name of a divinity. Also it is unclear what these things () are, without which they would not have known justices name. Nor, indeed, do we know who they are. Modern interpretations tend to follow Clement of Alexandrias understanding of this text, focusing on the idea that justice, law, punishment and so on are not required in the absence of evil and wrong-doing. So they are the folk, and these things are wrong-doing etc. But such a reading passes over the reference to not knowing the name of justice. It is as if Heraclitus had said they would have had no need of judicial practices. Of course, he might simply mean that the word justice would be absent from the language in a society with no role for such practices. If so, justice should not have a capital letter. The saying would be about words and concepts in our language, not about the identity and naming of gods.

associated with Dionysian rituals everywhere when he uses the verbal form (they do lenaia). 36See Osborne (1997), note 19, and further references there. Also Cole (1993); Seaford (1986); Aristophanes Frogs. 37 , . ( Sylburg, followed by Schleiermacher, Bywater, Staehlin, Diels, Kranz, Kirk, Marcovich: L: Hoeschel and Gomperz). 38Marcovich (1967), p. 229; Ramnoux (1959), p. 377; Robinson (1987), p. 91; Kahn (1979), p. 185.

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But given that other fragments are about the names and identities of gods, we should consider another interpretation of B23. If (as B15 suggested) gods may have multiple identities under different names for different cult roles, we might know a god under one description and not under another. So if there is a god whose names include Justice among others, and in some case a society or community has no role for that aspect of the gods identity, then the folk will never encounter the god under that name, nor have any need of it. So if the name (onoma) in B23 is the name of a god (Justice), Heraclitus would be saying that the people never knew that the god had this name, the name of Justice. Note the genitive of the name that is not known, as in the fragment about the name of Zeus that we considered at the beginning. Secondly, in a passage quoting Heraclitus B67, Hippolytus says that according to Heraclitus the God is day, night, winter, summer and so on, but is named according to the pleasure of each. Since Kirk, this has been read as referring to savours, not pleasure, taking the saying to be about how we name the smoke according to the smell of the incense that is put on the fire. But normally means pleasure, and if we take it with that meaning, B67 refers not to different smells but to the pleasures or preferences of individuals. In an earlier paper I suggested that Heraclitus meant the observers preference, whereby they find the scents of different spices nice or nasty. If we read B67 as meaning that we name the gods as each of us pleases, then Heraclitus means that the gods acquire their various different names because we, the believers, come with an interested gaze, and it is we who name them, according to our own human interests. This would fit with B23, in which we would never use the name Justice for God, if we, the observers, had no place for justice in our lives. On the other hand, possibly it might not be the observer whose pleasure is at issue. We can now see that the phrase (it is named according to the pleasure of each) might be alluding to those expressions about the names that give the gods pleasure and delight, which are characteristic of the precautionary formulae. So the phrase in B67 could mean named according to the gods pleasure each gods pleasure. Just as (in B32) something is and is not willing to be called Zeus, so in B67, something is pleased or not pleased at certain times to be called, say, summer or winter, or day or night. It is named according the gods whim. When we read fragment 67 in the light of the precautionary formulae this construal leaps out and looks attractive. However, the meaning of each is

39This translation goes back to Kirk (1954), p. 197 at least. 40Osborne (2009).

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plainly problematic in the phrase is named according to the pleasure of each. Can this mean each god? Hippolytus implies that Heraclitus is speaking of just one thing (or god) with various names, so we should not expect him to mention the pleasure of each as though there were multiple gods, multiple subjects with different preferences. In the light of this difficulty, it may be preferable to reject the tempting resonance with B32 and the precautionary formulae, and read it as referring solely to the observers pleasure, as sketched above. Thirdly, Heraclitus B48 observes that the bow whose function is death also has a name (bios) that means life. This remark is not obviously about the gods, nor about what we would think of as proper names. Rather it appears to be about the word for a bow. Various possible meanings emerge in relation to different themes in Heraclituss thought, most of which are not relevant to our current interest in the names of the gods and the precautionary formula. However, the fragments about the names of the gods that we have looked at, such as B67 and B15, do share a common thread with B48 in the idea that the names we use do not in themselves deliver a grasp of the nature or identity of the item to which they belong. In the case of the bow, Heraclitus might mean that we have got the name wrong because it does not correctly express the identity or true nature of the implement. Using a word for life to refer to an instrument of death is comparable to using the name Hades when performing processions that belong to Dionysus. Alternatively he might mean that the name bios is right, even though it names an instrument of death, because it correctly expresses the ambiguous and riddling nature of the world, in which the overt function of an item does not necessarily indicate its underlying nature. So although the thoughts here are not about proper names, nor about the nature of the gods, some parallel is apparent with the problems about how to speak of the gods and about how a word or name expresses the nature of the object to which it belongs. In summary, we have traced a thread in Heraclitus that resonates with the worries about naming that we found in Plato. We should now turn to ask whether there are any relevant passages in other Presocratic thinkers. A few items in Parmenides and Empedocles seem to be worth examining.

41There is a problem with the text of B67. Here I have been omitting the supplement accepted by most recent editors (following Diels), that supplies a new subject (e.g. fire) for . But in favour of the supplement see my earlier discussions in Osborne (1987), p. 159 n. 80 and Osborne (2009) .

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5Parmenides and Empedocles

In Parmenides (especially fragments B8, B9, and B19) we find material that is strikingly similar to Heraclitus B67. We should start with B8. First, at lines 3641, the goddess claims that, in their attempt to speak of what is (which is, she maintains, unique and undifferentiated), mortals laid down () names for it, and took the names to be true (presumably, true in the sense of such as to convey or capture the truth of what they are naming). The names attempt to describe what they name as something that changes, moves about, changes colour, is and is not (B8.40 41). By implication, the goddess means that these words or names do not in fact capture the nature of the being that they are trying to describe correctly, as they suppose.

Here for example:

For nothing is or will be Over and above Being, since fate has fettered it To be whole and unmoved. This is what all the names will be names for, names which mortals have laid down, persuaded that they are true: Becoming and perishing, being and not being, Changing place and altering in apparent colour. (Parmenides, B8 3641)

and again, in B19, where again Parmenides speaks of people laying down () names for things, taking the names to be significant (), to refer in some significant way to what the things are like:
This is how things grew and how they now are, according to opinion, And how later, once they have taken sustenance from this, they will come to an end. It is for these things that people have laid down a name that is significant for each one. (Parmenides B19)

In these passages, Parmenides seems to be saying that mortals have invented a range of contrasting names for something that is really just one. But for Parmenides, the mortals are assuming that the names pick out and make informative reference to the different natures of a range of different things, and similarly for changes and alterations that are real, when in fact all their names are really referencing one single undifferentiated and unchanging being. The practice of naming (of giving names) is supposed to be philosophically and scientifi-

42Construing as indicating the referent of the names, not an inferential particle (following Kingsley 2003, pp. 1901, and see also Tor 2011, pp. 1067.

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cally informative and yet as a result it is also liable to mislead when done badly. This contrasts with the idea that we found in Heraclitus, that one thing, or one god, can legitimately have multiple names, correlating with various roles and manifestations. Furthermore it seems that, whereas for Heraclitus the gods themselves may choose to go under various names, Parmenides blames the mortals for deliberately applying names that have no purchase on reality. Although he does not talk explicitly about naming the gods, the issue of how differences in names engage with differences in the items named seems to be the same. Furthermore, it appears from B8.53 where again the term is used of what the mortals do in setting up their belief system that the act of (mis)naming what is really one ultimate Being, assigning it various names as though it were not one, is itself the basic original sin, the one that sets the mortals off on their mistaken path of doxa, from which they will never escape until they give up that practice of misguided assignment of names. Is any of this about a name for a god? Arguably the one immovable being, which is falsely understood as a plurality by mortals is familiar from the notion of one god in Xenophanes. The argument could be read as a discussion of the nature and names for a god that eludes mortal understanding, and which is the ultimate being that we cannot see. It may also be significant that no name is ever given for the goddess who is addressing the mortal youth throughout Parmendides poem. Comparable thoughts about mortals practices of naming can be found in Empedocles. Here again we meet the idea that the terminology used by mortals is not always accurate or delivering correct information about the nature of reality. Empedocles suggests (in fragments 8 and 9) that when mortals speak of or , as though there were absolute development of new entities, or when they speak of death as though that were the end of something, they are using a convention (nomos) of naming (, fragment 8, fragment 9). Yet, in reality, Empedocles is making a very different point from Parmenides. He suggests that such a convention works well enough, so long as it is understood in the correct way. He himself admits to following the same convention. Ultimately the practice of using misleading names is not actually harmful; it is misleading

43On the idea that this voluntary practice of naming is more than mere non-committal labelling, see Tor (2011), pp. 1067. 44Notice the voluntary nature of the practice of naming, evident in the word in the lines quoted above. On which parts of mortals opinions are unavoidable and which ones are culpable or deliberate, see Tor (2011), pp. 106115. 45I thank Gbor Betegh for raising these matters and making some suggestions on these lines.

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only if taken literally. So here we seem to have retreated to a less threatening notion of the giving of names, one where any name will do so long as it is understood by the user and the listener in the way that conveys truth. Indeed it seems that a misleading name can convey truth, if the listener is primed to understand. These points about misnomers in respect of genesis and phthora, are echoed or anticipated by Empedocles contemporary, Anaxagoras, in fragment 17. Presumably both knew the archetype in Parmenides. Yet their position seems to be rather different from Parmenides, for whom the act of deliberate naming by ignorant mortals is itself the fundamental source of epistemological evil. As regards the names of the gods, Empedocles is similarly generous and unfussy in his use of a wide range of nomenclature for what is apparently one and the same god (or element or daimon) in reality. His four elements have various names, some of which seem to be the names of gods. So, for instance, famously in fragment 6, Empedocles lists what he calls the four roots of all things, but instead of calling them earth, air, fire and water, he lists Zeus, Aidoneus, Hera and Nestis. Indeed we cannot tell for certain (and they could not tell in antiquity) which name refers to which element. Empedocles seems to have a series of items that are not just material elements but gods too, and among their many names are the names of gods. None of the gods in Empedocles seems to have just one name. When mortals think of Aphrodite, Empedocles observes, they think of her under a variety of names:
In her (sc. Philots) they think kindly thoughts and complete gentle deeds, Calling her by the title Gthosun, and again, Aphrodit, She whom no mortal man has observed twirling among these things.

Empedocles himself uses a particularly wide variety of nomenclature for his love figure, such as Philots, Phili, Aphrodit, Cypris, and possibly Harmoni (B27, B96), and Eunoi (Strasbourg D3). Aphrodites many names seem particularly striking in the light of Platos comments in the Philebus, which we looked at above. So although Empedocles does not comment directly on the question of whether it is important to get the gods names right, the implication is that there are no strict rules. The idea that gods typically answer to a number of different names is clearly taken as read; but he writes as though there is no issue about which one will work, or about using different ones to be on the safe side. His own

46Empedocles B17. 236. 47See above, section 3.

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writings imply that one can use any name that comes to hand and always be successful. This attitude contrasts radically with that of Plato (or rather with the one wittily attributed to the comic character of Socrates in the passages we reviewed).

Summing up
Although Heraclitus is clearly one of the richest source of reflection, in philosophy of the Presocratic period, on the practice of naming the gods, we do find some treatment of issues around correct and incorrect naming in Parmenides, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras as well, some of it relevant to the names of the gods. There is also a great deal of interest in weird and speculative theories about naming the gods in the Derveni Papyrus, which we have not included here. However, the Presocratic material does not exactly anticipate the expressions of (mock) anxiety that we found in Plato. Rather it presents two or three quite other attitudes: first, in Heraclitus, the idea that the gods multiple names and multiple identities are a kind of mysterious key to the way that things in the world have multiple and contrasting but linked identities, so that the variation in names is not just whimsical or meaningless but significant and important. Second, in Parmenides the idea that all or some uses of names are misleading, even culpably wrong, and that they convey a dangerously mistaken idea of the Being for which they are supposed to be the name. And third, in Empedocles, the idea that gods and other things can have multiple proper names, and it is of no concern which name we use for them, since all are useful and successfully refer; and there is no difference between names that indicate divine status and names that do not, even when they describe the same thing. This latter aspect is of a piece with Empedocles world view, in which all things, including the material elements, seem to be daimones, and all daimones are parts of the physical cosmos. These three Presocratic positions seem to be markedly different from one another, and markedly different from the expressions of anxiety found in the passages from Plato. What we should conclude from this is far from clear. Perhaps this much is worth saying: first, the material in Plato about the names of the gods does seem to have some antecedents in Presocratic philosophy, and the Presocratic material seems to come to life when it is read with Platos issue in

48Perhaps the worry expressed by Parmenides is comparable to that in Plato, but it does not emerge as a concern about angering the gods or failing to reach them in prayer, but about epistemological failure, ignorance about the nature of being as such.

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mind; second the idea that there is a serious problem about knowing the correct name, or about names that might fail to refer or fail to work, seems to be partly anticipated in Parmenides, whose concern that the mortals are deeply and dangerously misled by their practice of naming anticipates the fear in the precautionary formula that one might have the wrong name, but it contrasts with the idea expressed there that one can effectively avoid the problem by adding more names, or by adding a formula that evades the need to know the right name. In Parmenides the mortals lack of knowledge about the true essence of what they are naming is itself the fault, and the misnaming follows from that. The ignorance would not be healed in any way by adding more guesswork names in case the reality of the being was captured better by many names than by one. But thirdly, in all the examples we have examined, there is a sense that behind the name lies a partially hidden essence, which may or may not be truly captured in some name or set of names that we are trying to apply to it.

Bibliography
Ausfeld, Carl (1903): De Graecorum Precationibus Quaestiones, Neue Jahrbcher Suppl 28, pp.50547. Cole, S.G. (1993): Dionysus and the dead. In: Carpenter, T.H. and Faraone, C.A. (eds.): Masks of Dionysus, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, pp.27695. Fraenkel, Eduard (1950): Aeschylus, Agamemnon. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Kahn, Charles H. (1979): The Art and Thought of Heraclitus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Kingsley, Peter (2003): Reality. Inverness, California: The Golden Sufi Center. Kirk, G.S. (1954): Heraclitus: The cosmic fragments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marcovich, Miroslav (1967): Heraclitus, editio maior. Merida: Los Andes University Press. Norden, Eduard (1913): Agnostos Theos: Untersuchungen zur Formengeschichte religiser Rede. Stuttgart: Teubner. Ogilvie, R.M. (1969): The Romans and their Gods. London: Chatto and Windus. Osborne, Catherine (1987): Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy. London: Duckworth. Osborne, Catherine (1994): Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love. Oxford: Oxford University Press Osborne, Catherine (1997): Heraclitus and the rites of established religion. In: Lloyd, Alan B. (ed.): What is a God? Studies in the nature of Greek divinity. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, pp.3542.

49I am grateful for useful input from those who took part in the Symposium Praesocraticum in Budapest, where I first gave this paper, and my discussion and conclusions have been much improved by responding to the helpful comments on the written draft from Gbor Betegh. I am sorry that I have still stopped short of a proper treatment of the Derveni Papyrus.

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Osborne, Catherine (2009): If all things were to turn to smoke, itd be the nostrils would tell them apart. In: Piccone, Enrique Hlsz (ed.): Nuevos ensayos sobre Herclito: Actas del Segundo Symposium Heracliteum. Mexico: UNAM, pp.41541. Pulleyn, Simon (1997): Prayer in Greek Religion. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Ramnoux, Clmence (1959): Vocabulaire et structures de pense archaique chez Hraclite. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Robinson, T.M. (1987): Heraclitus Fragments. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Seaford, Richard (1986): Immortality, salvation and the elements, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 90, pp.126 Tor, Shaul (2011): Mortal and divine in early Greek epistemology. PhD Dissertation, Cambridge University. Wolfsdorf, David (2008): Hesiod and others on work and pleasure, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 35, pp.118.

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