This is Gadamer's take on the PreSocratics and the incipient (a word he uses to great effect to describe the idea of beginning—of being open to possibility) part of the book held much promise, but it petered out near the end. Consisting of a series of lectures that Gadamer gave in Italian, it didn't have a literary flow to it—at times, there were clumsy transitions (or no transition at all) or asides that would have worked better in a classroom setting. However, there were nuggets of gold to be found, particularly in Gadamer's observation that interpretation of the PreSocratics requires reading the doxagraphy of Plato and Aristotle. The reason for this is that there are hardly any bits of writing from the PreSocratics, that much of it was wisdom passed down. And so we have to go through Plato and Aristotle (who are also mediated by translation for us) to get to the PreSocratics. Gadamer also notes that the idea of doing "primary text" sourcing and research is a product of 18th and 19th century historicism, that prior to the Enlightenment, there was no such concern for "primary" texts and that much of philosophy consisted of notes and explicatory texts, that it was not the "original voice" of a thinker. But my favorite bit from this book is Gadamer's view that Plato was an excellent stylist, whereas Aristotle's writing was not his own, but is rather the collection of notes taken by students in his lectures. That's as good an introduction to classical philosophy as you're going to find.