Socrates, Plato and Aristotle

Euripides gave Socrates a small work by Heraclitus of Ephesus entitled On Nature to read, and asked him afterwards what he thought of it.  Socrates replied, “The part I understand is excellent, and so, I think, is the part that I have not understood, but the book requires a diver from Delos to get to bottom of it.”  There is a metaphor in here, but in order to make sense out of what Socrates said, we need to understand what quality were inherent in a Delian diver that would make this more meaningful than, say, that of a diver from the island of Samos or Lesbos?  What is it about Delian divers that make them better at uncovering hidden things in the deep places?  Is a diver from Delos more highly skilled at swimming and diving for objects of treasure at great depths?

The island of Delos is part of…