The boundaries of the sky
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ἠοῦς καὶ ἑσπέρας τέρματα ἡ ἄρκτος καὶ ἀντίον τῆς ἄρκτου οὖρος αἰθρίου Διός
The boundaries of dawn and evening are the Bear, and opposite the Bear the boundary-mark of bright Zeus.
Preserved by Strabo in his Geography, where he cites Heraclitus on the limits of east and west. The Bear (the never-setting northern constellation) and its opposite fix the cardinal points; 'bright Zeus' is the clear daytime sky.
This is Heraclitus the observer of the sky, fixing the cardinal points. Dawn and evening — east and west — are bounded by the Bear, the constellation that never sets and so marks true north; and opposite the Bear lies the 'boundary of bright Zeus,' the south, where <em>aithrios Zeus</em> is the clear daylit heaven rather than a person. The fragment lays out the frame of the world by its limits (<em>termata</em>).
What looks like dry geography is of a piece with the rest. Heraclitus is preoccupied with measure and boundary — the sun that will not overstep its measures on pain of the Furies (B94), the fire kindled and quenched <em>metra</em> (B30). Here the whole visible cosmos is pinned between fixed marks, north against south, dawn against dusk: even the sky is a structure of opposites held at their limits. The disputed word <em>ouros</em> — boundary, or watcher, or peak — keeps the line hard to pin down, fittingly for a thinker who said nature loves to hide (B123).
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