Herakleitus of Ephesus, known throughout antiquity by the denomination of the Obscure, comes certainly after Pythagoras and Xenophanes and apparently before Parmenides. Of the two first he made special mention, in one of the sentences, alike brief and contemptuous which have been preserved from his lost treatise:--"Much learning does not teach reason: otherwise it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hekatæus." In another passage Herakleitus spoke of the "extensive knowledge, cleverness, and wicked arts" of Pythagoras. He declared that Homer as well as Archilochus deserved to be scourged and expelled from the public festivals.[78] His thoughts were all embodied in one single treatise, which he is said to have deposited in the temple of the Ephesian Artemis. It was composed in a style most perplexing and difficult to understand, full of metaphor, symbolical illustration, and antithesis: but this very circumstance imparted to it an air of poetical impressiveness and oracular profundity.[79] It exercised a powerful influence on the speculative minds of Greece, both in the Platonic age, and subsequently: the Stoics especially both commented on it largely (though with many dissentient opinions among the commentators), and borrowed with partial modifications much of its doctrine.[80]
[Footnote 78: Diogen. L. ix. 1. [Greek: Polumathi/ê no/on ou) dida/skei; Ê(si/odon ga\r a)\n e)di/daxe kai\ Puthago/rên, au)=tis te Xenopha/nea kai\ E(katai=on], &c. Ib. viii. 1, 6. [Greek: Puthago/rês Mnêsa/rchou i(stori/ên ê)/skêsen a)nthrô/pôn ma/lista pa/ntôn, kai\ e)klexa/menos tau/tas ta\s suggrapha\s e)poi/êsen e(ôu+tou= sophi/ên, polumathi/ên, kakotechni/ên.]]
[Footnote 79: Diogen. Laert. ix. 1-6. Theophrastus conceived that Herakleitus had left the work unfinished, from eccentricity of temperament ([Greek: u(po\ melagcholi/as]). Of him, as of various others, it was imagined by some that his obscurity was intentional (Cicero, Nat. Deor. i. 26, 74, De Finib. 2, 5). The words of Lucretius about Herakleitus are remarkable (i. 641):--
Clarus ob obscuram linguam magis inter inanes Quamde graves inter Græcos qui vera requirunt: Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque Inversis quæ sub verbis latitantia cernunt.