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to be too free. For it does say: ζῶντες τὸν ἐκείνων θάνατον, τὸν δὲ ἐκείνων βίον τεθνεῶτες, "in that they live the death of those and in that they die the life of those." If we interpret ἀθάνατοι in the familiar sense as gods and θνητοί as humans, then it is a matter of an interpretive step that we cannot assert with unconditioned certainty. To be sure, the immortals are the gods in Greek myth. But there are also intermediate beings, the heroes, who are born as mortal, half gods, and are elevated to become immortals. Is the milieu of immortals and mortals familiar with reliability and certainty? The problem is what is indicated by ἀθάνατοι and θνητοί. But first we take up the mythological meaning, and comprehend the immortals as the gods and the mortals as humans.
The gods are also characterized in Fr. 62 from out of death. True, immortals are indeed removed from death. They are not delivered over to death, but they stand open to it. As immortals they must know themselves as the ones who win their self-understanding in the negation of dying. They know themselves as the beings who are open to death, but who do not encounter death, the beings who observe the death of humans, and the beings who come to know their own permanence in the sight of the passing away of transient humans. The mortals are humans who know that they are delivered over to death in reference alone to the gods who always are and are removed from death. θνητοί is not some objective designation which is spoken from an extra-human point of view; it points, rather, to the self-understanding of humans in understanding that they are delivered over to death, in so far as they know themselves as morituri [those about to die]. Humans know themselves as transient in view of and in reference to the everlasting gods who are removed from death. With immortals and mortals the greatest innerworldly distance is named between innerworldly beings, the taut bow stretching between gods and humans who, however, are nevertheless referred to one another in their self-understanding and understanding of being. Mortals know their own disappearing being in view of and in reference to the everlasting being of the gods; and the gods win their perpetual being in contrast and in confrontation with humans who are constantly disappearing in time. The distinction of immortals and mortals is characterized from out of death. But this distinction is not one like the distinction between life and death itself. For, in their self-understanding, the immortals and the mortals live and comport themselves toward the being of the other. The relationship of the gods to humans is not to be equated with the relationship of the living to the dead, and yet the taut bow stretching between ἀθάνατοι-θνητοί and 6vT]to£-ci8avatoL is thought out of the reference to life and death. The most widely stretched out distinction between gods and humans, immortals and mortals, is intertwined and is tightened together with its