Honey or Fire? Democritus and Heraclitus on How to Dispose of the Bodies of the Dead

Abstract In this paper, I set out to analyse a peculiar testimony, preserved by Nonius Marcellus and stemming from a lost Menippean satire by Varro, in which Democritus and Heraclides Ponticus are paired because of their alleged views on funerary practices, that is, on how one should dispose of the bodies of the dead. In the first place, I shall argue that this account should not be attributed to Heraclides, but to Heraclitus, and that the text should thus be added to our collections of Heraclitean testimonies. Heraclitus would have indeed claimed that the bodies of the deceased should be burnt; Democritus, conversely, that they ought to be preserved in honey. In the second place, I shall contextualise this testimony, thanks to parallel sources, in order to enquire into the origins of the two opinions presented there, which cannot be deemed to be authentic. I will point to the centrality of the Hellenistic tradition, namely to the importance both of the Stoic interpretation of Heraclitus and of Stoic-Academic debates, mainly on perception. In doing so, we might catch a glimpse of the mysterious origin of the famous duo Democritus-Heraclitus.