Sôzein ta phainomena: Some semantic considerations
Saving the appearances (sôzein ta phainomena) often features as a programmatic description of the aim and objective of ancient astronomical theory. The paper, after an expository section, discusses some earlier proposals for what such a programme presupposes. After this, through a survey of the usage in Plato and Aristotle of some key terms-among them the verb sôzein-describing the relationship of an account to what it is an account of, submits that the phrase in this semantic framework could express the crucial property of an account that it is faithful to the phenomena, and it does not overrule or discard them.
On Eudemus Fr. 150 (Wehrli)
Fr. 150 of Eudemus Rhodes, preserved in the De principiis of the 6th c. Neoplatonist philosopher Damascius, is our main source on early theogonical narratives. The analysis of Damascius's method shows that Eudemus' work contained probably more theogonies and certainly more generations from the individual theogonies than what we have in the fragment. A survey of the Aristotelian references to the 'theologians' proves that, pace Wehrli, Eudemus's text was not a digression in a systematic work intended to review endoxa on a particular theoretical question: it was more probably a synoptical collection of the genealogical narratives of the 'theologians.'