Inferno 4.136 · 4.136

Now the pre-Socratic and later natural philosophers, named in a swift roll. Democritus gets a single defining clause — <i>’l mondo a caso pone</i>, he puts the world down to chance — the atomist who, to a medieval Christian, most nearly denied Providence.

The rest come as a litany: Diogenes, Anaxagoras, Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Zeno. Dante is displaying the breadth of ancient inquiry into nature, the reach of unaided reason toward the truth of things. That they reached so far, and still rest in Limbo, is the canto's persistent, unspoken ache.

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