About 530 AD the Neoplatonist Simplicius wrote an extensive commentary on Aristotle's Physics. In it he reproduced the fragment, thus preserving it for the western world. He copied it from Theophrastus. From the time pronounced his saying--we do not know where or when or to whom--to the moment Simplicius jotted it down in his commentary more than a millennium elapsed. Between the time of Simplicius' jotting and the present moment lies another millennium-and-a-half. Can the fragment, from a historical and chronological distance of two thous ....