help with ancient greek translation

Greek Learning Greek
1

Hello,

I recently came across this sentence in the video game “Disco Elysium”: οῦ λὸγου δʹ ἐόντος ξυνοῦ ζώουσιν πολλοὶ ὡς ἰδίαν ἔχοντες φρόνησιν.

Out of curiosity I asked a greek friend of mine for help translating it, but he told me it was ancient greek and he could unfortunately not read it. Now I was really intrigued, so I sought out an ancient greek keyboard to accurately type it out and asked google, which could only tell me that it apparently had something to do with the philosopher Heraclitus. Since I am a philosophy student, this peaked my interest even more. But since there are no ancient greek translation tools to be found online, I did not know where to go from there, until I discovered this forum. I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask my question, so please forgive me if this kind of request is unwelcome here! But I hope someone can help me find out what that little “secret message” means and maybe even where it came from.

Best wishes

2

Hi, yes it is from Heraclitus (although the first letter has been rubbed out in the picture). Here is the Greek text and a translation:

http://heraclitusfragments.com/B2/text.html
http://heraclitusfragments.com/B2/translation.html

Cheers, Chad

3

Thank you! The first letter having been cut off also explains why it was hard for me to find the fragment in any collections I guess.

Wishing you a good day

4

A bit more lively:

The masses, having a speech in common, all live as if they have their own understanding.