Heraclitus B28 · B28

The sting is in a repeated root. The 'most reputable' man is <em>dokimotatos</em>, the most approved; what he knows and guards is <em>dokeonta</em>, mere seemings — the same δοκ- that gives δόξα, opinion. The man everyone rates highest is precisely the one who takes appearances for knowledge and holds fast to them. Heraclitus is not exempting the wise crowd's favourites; he is naming them as the chief victims of <em>dokos</em>, seeming-that-passes-for-truth. Even reputation itself is a δόκιμον thing, a matter of how one seems.

The second half, perhaps a separate saying joined by Clement across the gap, supplies the check that mere seeming lacks. <em>Dikē</em>, Justice, will 'catch' the builders and witnesses of falsehood — <em>tektonas</em>, carpenters of lies, an image of fabrication as craft. For Heraclitus Dike is no mere courtroom virtue: she is the cosmic order that keeps measure (B94, where the Furies as her deputies would hunt down a sun that overstepped its bounds). Lies are a kind of overstepping, and the order of things closes on them. What seems can be manufactured; what is cannot be evaded.

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