Democritus (B 299 D.K.): Alien Wisdom, Geometry, and the Contemporary Prose Landscape

This chapter examines a fragment – or better, two fragments – ascribed to Democritus by the Christian writer Clement of Alexandria. According to a story reported by Clement, the Abderite philosopher stole some contents from the Story of Ahiqar, a wisdom book containing the sayings of the homonymous chancellor of the Assyrian king, whose earliest textual witnesses date back to the 5th c. BC. Moreover, in the same passage, Clement cites another report, where Democritus boasts his expertise in geometry, which is proved superior even to that of the Egyptians. My main concern in this discussion is to pinpoint the reasons that lie behind the ascription of these fragments to Democritus, and consequently to the credibility of these reports in antiquity. Since several misleading treatments of this text have circulated in modern scholarship, I will mainly focus my attention on the text and its interpretation. After this, I shall contextualise it against the background that informed it, as well as against other representations of Greek natural philosophers who travelled for the sake of knowledge.