Today I found this citation in the opening page of a tournament
"Time is a child playing a game of draughts; the kingship is in the hands of a child."
Heraclitus

Here is the original:
« Αἰὡν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεσσεύων·παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη. »

are we sure that Time plays draughts ?

(by the way, who decides the citations ?)

S.Kwkw

PS: I forgot to ask if Αἰὡν was correctly rendered by 'Time'...

I'm not sure if Time plays draughts, what is sure is that Heraclitus didn't play them! The translator used the familiar term draughts, but the game known as pessoi or petteia is a different one, maybe mentioned already by Homer, and probably similar to the Roman ludus latrunculorum, whose rules have been lost.

Αἰὡν maybe is better translated by the latin 'aetas' or english 'age', but I think the sense doesn't change... The scholastic translations in Italian and Spanish, if I remember correctly, also use the word time (tempo and tiempo, respectively)

Thank you @inesistenza ! I remark by the way that your pseudo sounds quite philoosphical...

This is what I have in French:

« Le temps de notre vie est un enfant qui joue et qui pousse des pions. C’est la royauté d’un enfant. »
trad. by Yves Battistini
*Trois présocratiques*, traduction revue et corrigée, N.R.F., « Tel », no 136, 1988.

and
« La vie est un enfant qui joue au tric-trac : c'est à un enfant que revient la royauté. »
trad. by Jean-François Pradeau

That translation indeed changes the sense of the aphorism. Αἰὡν, according to the dictionary I'm consulting, can mean time, duration of life, eternity, period... The first translation seems more ontological, the French one more existentialist. I would bet it was a calculated ambiguity.

Anyway thanks for showing me the French translation, I had always assumed, through the translations I read, that 'time' was intended only in a physical way. Would the French 'âge' catch the several meanings?

Great.

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