Dear Nicholas,

I am astonished by your reply – are you a mere man or in reality some kind
of Sibyl?

Of course  I understand  it is foolish to build big castles upon
“pre-Socratic” texts - as Popper surely taught us! - but I will venture
anyhow, in the hope of learning.

Regarding the translations of these related ideas, all by the phrase ‘minute
philosophers’, it seems to me that a problem is the differences between the
larger framing contexts in the Greek, Roman and Georgian eras.

To me it still seems useful to see a tendency of Ionian culture towards
atheism, democracy and market openness.  With Dorian culture tending to the
opposites, on all three matters.  And within that basic framework, Socrates
can be seen as playing a complicated game of double bluff, with a mixed outcome.

Yet in the Georgian period, perhaps in Pope, and certainly in Berkeley,
atheism becomes associated with anti-democratic forces, and with vertical
integration of retail outlets. (Swift playing an excellent innings as a
double bluffer)

Thus for me, the core idea of a duplicitous ‘minute philosopher’ does seem
to remain the same, so long as we bear in mind the (subsidiary) changing
contexts.  

This thesis would seem very thin stuff if built entirely upon fragments of
preserved text, but, along with Auden, I believe that “Serious historians
study coins and weapons” – and it is a plain fact that Ionia in general, and
Miletos in particular, struck huge quantities of small change, of the type
suitable for the use of ordinary citizens going about their business in the
Agora.  Yet, perplexingly, Athens, so often cited as the true home of
democracy, struck almost only large coin, coin apparently with the uses of
only such as its wealthy ‘men of the sea’ in mind.  I can tell a similar
story for Georgian England, if anyone wishes to hear it.

Rob Tye, York, UK