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Here's a first question I have about Graham's article on Heraclitus. It has to do with how he handles a line from Plato. Graham is certainly not alone in doing this; he follows common opinion. That opinion may be well-founded. But to me it appears at first glance not to be. So I simply raise this question, and later I will attempt to answer it more conclusively for myself, or, if you know the answer, please tell me.

The line from Plato is a very famous passage from Cratylus 402a:

Le/gei pou 9Hra&kleitoj o3ti pa&nta xwrei= kai\ ou)de\n me/nei, kai\ potamou~ r(oh|~ a)peika&zwn ta_ o1nta le/gei w(j di\j e0j to_n au)to_n potamo_n ou)k a2n e0mbai/hj

Fowler renders this:

Heraclitus says, you know, that all things move and nothing remains still, and he likens the universe to the current of a river, saying that you cannot step twice into the same stream.

Now my question concerns the status of the two phrases in red, in particular, whether we should treat them differently or the same. Graham (following lots of others) presupposes that the first phrase is an interpretation and the second a direct quotation. But what is the reason in the text itself to treat them differently? If we understand Plato to be intending to give a direct quotation in the second phrase, then mustn't we understand him to be intending to do the same in the first?

I am not raising a question about whether Plato actually succeeds in getting the words right or remembering them correctly. My question is simply about his intent: From the way he writes this passage, should we take him to be intending to refer to two passages in Heraclitus that he regards as distinct? And my first impression is that the answer to this question is "Yes". Plato is intending to refer to two distinct passages. (In that case to dismiss the first and give credence to the second, or to explain the first as a recasting of the second, would--without independent evidence--be misguided.)

The argument for taking them as intended in the same way is simply that they are introduced in the same way.

One might respond that the first is introduced with pou ("you know", "I take it", or perhaps even "somewhere"). But if this means, "I take it", its force carries over throughout the sentence, and if it means "somewhere", then it only strengthens the case for an intended direct quotation. (If anything, isn't it the second phrase that is introduced in a weaker way, with w(j rather than o3ti?)

Furthermore, a TLG search quickly reveals that elsewhere le/gei pou o3ti is used by Plato only to introduce (what is taken to be) a direct quotation:

Cratylus, 402b6

le/gei de/ pou kai\ 0Orfeu_j o3ti

0Wkeano_j prw~toj kalli/rrooj h}rce ga&moio,

Protagoras 339a6
le/gei ga&r pou Simwni/dhj pro_j Sko&pan to_n Kre/ontoj u(o_n tou~ Qettalou~ o3ti—

a1ndr' a)gaqo_n me\n a)laqe/wj gene/sqai xalepo&n,
xersi/n te kai\ posi\ kai\ no&w| tetra&gwnon, a1neu yo&gou
tetugme/non

In the Protagoras the introduced quotation is taken to be so familiar that both Socrates and Protagoras could recite it from memory. Thus pou apparently does not itself indicate any unclarity or vagueness. (Presumably it is used, rather, in a polite and self-depreciating way: a speaker uses it to pretend that he only vaguely remembers what in fact he has a complete grasp of.)

I don't see why "All things move and nothing remains the same" should be regarded as too blunt, not sufficiently paradoxical, to be similar to Heraclitus' original words. It seems paradoxical and clever enough to say that everything remains moving, that constantly nothing stays the same. (Yes, that can be the suggestion of the present tense. And compare the repetition, sc. constancy, in ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα in B12, which brings out exactly the same paradox.)

In recent decades ... some scholars have become skeptical about the accuracy of the Platonic-Aristotelian interpretation of Heraclitus' views on change; and with good cause, for the fact is that there is nothing in the extant fragments about the constant flux of all things, even though one would have expected the survival of some original support for a view so widely popularized in the fourth century.

Thus Kirk in 1951. My question, in a sense, is why this sort of interpretation isn't simply an exercise in circular argument. It excludes at the start the evidence for the "Platonic-Aristotelian interpretation" (i.e. as much independent evidence as one ever gets as regards Heraclitus), and then it considers that it is making an argument when it says that there is no evidence for it.