(Phoenix Supplementary Volumes) Brad Inwood-The Poem of Empedocles - A Text and Translation-University of Toronto Press (2001) PDF
(Phoenix Supplementary Volumes) Brad Inwood-The Poem of Empedocles - A Text and Translation-University of Toronto Press (2001) PDF
(Phoenix Supplementary Volumes) Brad Inwood-The Poem of Empedocles - A Text and Translation-University of Toronto Press (2001) PDF
Revised Edition
Leonard Woodbury
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CONTENTS
PART 1: INTRODUCTION 3
1.1 Text and Translation 3
1.2 Empedocles' Life and Works 6
1.3 Empedocles' Thought 21
Concordances 293
Sources and Authorities 301
Bibliography 309
General Index 319
Index of Passages Translated 329
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PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION 1
The purpose of the second edition of this book is the same as that
of the first: to make available to students, whether or not they read
Greek, the texts necessary for the study of Empedocles' thought. By a
dramatic stroke of good fortune, there are now more such texts avail-
able than in 1991, when the first edition was sent to press. Not only
was the content of a long-neglected papyrus (P.Strasb.gr. Inv. 1665-66)
identified by Alain Martin in the early 1990s, but the formidable task
of preparing it for publication was carried out with exemplary care
and speed by Martin and his collaborator, Oliver Primavesi. The result
is an excellent book, L'Empedocle de Strasbourg (Berlin and New York:
de Gruyter 1999), which presents the new material to the scholarly
world and analyses it with admirable clarity.
Hence, there are more than seventy new lines or part lines of text
now available that were not known when the first edition of this book
was prepared. I am grateful to the series editors and to the University
of Toronto Press for the opportunity to integrate this new material with
the previously known evidence. I have not undertaken a fundamental
revision, for the contents of the papyrus do not seem to me to call for
it. Nor have I done any independent work on the papyrus text; I am
wholly reliant on the work of Martin and Primavesi as published in
their book (henceforth M-P). It remains true that 'the text I provide is
based on the primary research of other scholars' (below, section 1.1). I
have, however, exercised my own judgment on all problematic points.
On the difficult question of how much conjectural supplement to print,
1 I would like to thank David Sedley for reviewing an early draft of this edition and
offering valuable advice.
x The Poem of Empedocles
BRAD INWOOD
University of Toronto, April 2000
The compilation of this book has spanned a period of more than six
years; many people have helped me during that time, and to thank
them all would be impossible. David Gallop has provided consistent
inspiration and guidance; without the example of his edition of Par-
menides this book would not have been possible. I have also to thank
him for acute and careful criticism which went beyond his editorial
duty. David Sedley has shared many Empedoclean and Lucretian ideas
with me, and some of these have significantly affected my thinking.
He, Catherine Osborne, and David Sider have shown me their work
before publication; Abraham Terian and Professor Drossaart Lulofs
have helped with difficult texts in languages which I cannot read. Eric
Csapo subjected my introduction to a painstaking examination from
which it has benefited greatly; and Martha Nussbaum's comments
have helped to improve the entire book. If I had had the time and the
space to follow up all of their suggestions, this would have been a
better (and much larger) book.
But more than any other person Leonard Woodbury has helped
me to understand Empedocles. From the fall of 1974, when I first read
Empedocles under his quizzical but deeply learned guidance, until his
death in 1985, he was a constant challenge: to convince him was never
easy, and sometimes it seemed impossible, but the effort always im-
proved my work. I will never know if any of my ideas about Empedo-
cles would have convinced him; but I have tried to make the argument
worthy of him, and so it is to his memory that this book is dedicated.
BRAD INWOOD
University of Toronto
1991
ABBREVIATIONS
The principal aim of this book is modest: to make available for stu-
dents with a philosophical interest in Empedocles (whether they read
ancient Greek or not) the texts necessary for an exploration of his
thought. For no other Presocratic thinker is there so much evidence.
The literal quotations of Empedocles' own poetry are extensive, the
biographical tradition generous (if eccentric), and the volume of an-
cient discussion of his thought staggering. My first goal, then, is sim-
ple: to translate for the Greekless reader as much of this material as
possible.
The most important part of our evidence for Empedocles is, of
course, the poet's own words. These have often been collected, edited,
discussed, and translated. The exact form of words which Empe-
docles used, his meaning, and the context in his poetry of any
given quotation are very often difficult to determine; such problems
have been addressed in a huge secondary literature; similarly, there
are numerous editions of his work and translations of the surviv-
ing quotations. I do not pretend to guide the reader through this
mass of scholarly work and debate (though I have done my best
to take account of it), or to give the reader a completely new text
of Empedocles' poetic remains: the text I provide is based on the
primary research of other scholars, principally Diels, Kranz, Bol-
lack, O'Brien, and Wright. I have consulted no manuscripts my-
self, and rely completely on the reports of others; but the final
4 The Poem of Empedocles
1 The textual notes bring to the reader's attention significant difficulties and
alternative suggestions. In printing the Fragments of Empedocles, I provide what I
believe to have been Empedocles' words, not necessarily those read by the author
who quotes the passage; this will occasionally result in some inconcinnities between
the Fragments (part 4) and the Fragments in Context (part 2).
2 With a few additional passages interpolated into the Diels-Kranz order.
3 Where there are in my view significant variations in the wording of the quoted
fragment across different citations, I translate in each context according to the
version preserved there. Where the variations are not important, I translate what
5 Introduction
placed this material first. Thus the reader's first exposure to the quota-
tions will be coloured, as it should be, by the information provided by
the quoting authors, who had more of the poem to rely on than we do.
For reasons which will become evident soon enough, the ordering
of the Fragments in Context is unconventional. They are grouped
according to their original order where possible, but with greater
weight given to the need to present as much as possible of the original
context. Moreover, some fragments are presented in the context of the
Testimonia. This method of presentation makes rapid location of the
quoted fragments difficult; consequently I include in an appendix a
table of the locations of the Fragments in Context and also give a
full translation of all the quotations, together with the Greek text and
textual notes (part 4).
In presenting the Testimonia and the Contexts I have used the best
available modern editions for the authors in question, not necessarily
the text in Diels-Kranz. Details of which editions are used and a short
account of the authors who are the sources for our primary and sec-
ondary evidence about Empedocles are given in the section 'Sources
and Authorities.'
The unorthodox features of this edition make it necessary to add a
brief word about the numbering and ordering used for this material.
The novelty is greatest for the Fragments and Fragments in Context,
and they have had to be presented in a wholly new numbering scheme.
References of the form CTXT-n are to selections in the Fragments in
Context (part 2), while those in the form n/m refer to Fragments (part
4), with the n representing the number I assign to the fragment in
my own ordering and the m representing the number of the corre-
sponding B fragment in Diels-Kranz. I hope that the Concordances will
enable the reader to find his or her way around the book without too
much confusion. By contrast, the numeration of the Testimonia follows
Diels-Kranz, but where several texts are grouped under one number
I distinguish them by additional letters; thus A28b is the second text
in Diels-Kranz's entry A28.
The order given by any editor tends to reflect his or her own views
of the original poem(s) from which the Fragments are drawn, and this
was certainly true of the order imposed by Diels. But it is now widely
recognized that Diels's order cannot be accepted without change,4 and
I regard as the common best text in the most important context and provide a
cross-reference to other citations.
4 Diels put 62/96 after 67/62 despite Simplicius' evidence that the former came from
book 1 and the latter from book 2 of the physics (CTXT-47a and CTXT-53). 110/134
6 The Poem of Empedocles
1.2.2 Life
Very little can be asserted with confidence about the life of Empedo-
cles. That he was a Sicilian, a high-born citizen of the city of Acragas6
who lived through the middle years of the fifth century - all of this is
certain. His parents' names and his 'occupation' (if that is a question
one can intelligibly ask about a Greek noble of the period) - these
questions are still unsolved and probably insoluble; so is the question
of the exact dates of his life.7
The reason for this uncertainty is simple enough: we rely almost
totally on anecdotal evidence and romanticizing biographies of the
Hellenistic age for our information about Empedocles' life, sources
written long after most reliable evidence had perished.8
was placed by Diels in the purifications, despite Tzetzes' evidence that it came from
book 3 of the physics (CTXT-91b).
5 'Empedocles Recycled.' See the discussion in 'Works', 1.2.2 below.
6 For a brief account of the milieu in which he lived and presumably worked, see
Guthrie A History of Greek Philosophy 2:129-32.
7 Guthrie (ibid. 128) puts his life between about 492 and 432.
8 Besides Aristotle, the tradition preserves some information from earlier sources,
such as Alcidamas. But the Aristotelian material comes mostly from dialogues and
may not represent the results of his usually careful research; indeed, he must have
had to depend on little more than orally preserved anecdotes about a man who
7 Introduction
1.2.2 Works
15 Many scholars are so committed even when they accept the existence of two distinct
poems. Gallavotti, in Empedocle: Poema fisico e lustrale, regards the two poems as
being completely compatible and even complementary in their message, apparent
differences being explained by the genre differences between the two. But his belief
that the purifications was a didactic letter to Empedocles' aristocratic friends in
Acragas, a literary form which imposed different demands on the author from those
of the private didactic poem (like the physics), is not supported by any evidence.
Gallavotti believes that there were only three books of poetry by Empedocles,
10 The Poem of Empedocles
interpretation of all of our evidence about his thought. For the hy-
pothesis of internal contradiction within a single poem is unappeal-
ing (though possible); even a relatively unconvincing reconciliation is
preferable. Of course, one could still postulate the existence of two
poems, to explain away remaining conflicts or as an alternative to
an extremely far-fetched reconciliation. But this would then be an
exegetical last resort.
The argument which follows encourages a unitary interpretation of
Empedocles' theories. Such an interpretation has always, of course,
been possible for those who believe in two poems. But no reconcil-
iation known to me seems sufficiently secure to negate the possibil-
ity that in two poems Empedocles expounded different theories, for
whatever reason.16 If a unitary interpretation is felt to be desirable, my
argument should be welcome as facilitating it. If one expects a conflict
between the two poems - as Diels did and Stein before him, the men
who most decisively shaped the modern consensus about Empedocles'
works - one must face the fact that there is no particularly good reason
to believe that the existence of two distinct poems is assured by our
evidence about Empedocles' writings. In any case, the balance of prob-
abilities does point in the direction of a single poem and this slender
consideration must in the last analysis be the reason for adopting the
present hypothesis.
We should begin by stating what our evidence is for the works of
Empedocles.
and that the purifications was one of them; the several conflicts with our evidence
for the poems which are produced by this hypothesis are explained away by
positing an edition of Empedocles' work with the one-book purifications as the first
book and the two-book physics as books two and three. Nothing in his account
is impossible; aspects of his speculations are even quite appealing. None of it,
however, is compelling and none of it suffices to show why we must adopt a unitary
interpretation of the fragments. The interpretation of Charles Kahn ('Religion and
Natural Philosophy in Empedocles' Doctrine of the Soul') is also very plausible, but
rests on an uncritical acceptance of the traditional view about the contents of the
two poems. The general position taken by Kahn would be greatly strengthened by
adoption of the one-poem hypothesis.
16 This is even true of the reconciliation proposed by Jonathan Barnes in The Presocratic
Philosophers. I agree with the main outlines of the reconciliation which he proposes;
but I cannot see how Barnes could respond to a challenge based on the claim that
the two poems could have been written many years apart for different audiences.
Much the same could be said about Wright's claim that the physics and the
purifications are compatible, and about Kahn's interpretation in 'Religion and
Natural Philosophy.'
11 Introduction
The Suda (A2) tells us that the physics was two books in length
and had 2000 lines,23 and adds that the medical work was in prose
and that there was 'a lot more' (aAA.a TroAAd).
All other information comes from the authors who quote the frag-
ments. Eight are cited from the physics.24 Three are cited from the
purifications: 1/112 by Diogenes as mentioned above, B153a (see
CTXT-59) by Theon, and a relatively new fragment (85/Wright 152)
from Herodian the grammarian (see CTXT-82 and note). The physics
citations are of little import here. Empedocles was considered to be
a phusikos and anything he wrote was liable to be given the title
peri phuseos or phusika.25 The citations from the purifications are the
only ones which might be held to establish the separate existence of
a second poem.26 It is sobering to reflect that of the three fragments
quoted as being from the purifications, one (B153a) deals with embry-
ology, one (85/Wright 152) apparently with botany, and the last and
only extensive quotation (1/112) makes no mention of the doctrines,
such as the transmigration of the soul, which are usually held to be
characteristic of the purifications.27
of the fragment proves nothing about what Simplicius knew about the origin of
11/115.
23 There is a consensus that the Suda draws on the same bibliographical source
used by Diogenes. On the discrepancies between the two versions, see Osborne
'Empedocles Recycled' 28-29. Most scholars emend the Suda text according to
their own theories; e.g., Zuntz ('De Empedoclis librorum numero coniectura'), in
pursuit of harmony with Diogenes Laertius' evidence, emends thus: 3 books in
3000 lines and 2 of the purifications in 2000 lines. Gallavotti, though, accepts the
Suda's account and rejects that of Diogenes Laertius.
24 By Diogenes Laertius (13/1), Aetius (21/8), Simplicius (25/17, 67/62, 62/96,
98/98, 95/103), and Plutarch (21/8). See Wright, 84.
25 It is extremely unlikely that titles were given to his works by Empedocles or
indeed by any poetic philosopher in the fifth century. See E. Schmalzriedt Peri
Phuseos: Zur Friihgeschichte der Buchtitel. The poems of Homer had been given titles
by that time (for reasons unique to the literary history of those poems, according
to Schmalzriedt, ch. 3), in addition to the titles given to episodes in the two
monumental epics, but Solon's ETTTJ were still untitled (Schmalzriedt, 25). Works of
drama, of course, had titles.
26 This argument might work if we believed (1) that most fragments were correctly
described as being about physics, (2) that a 'purifications' was not about physics,
and (3) that the themes could not be combined under the description 'purifications.'
But none of these is particularly likely.
27 It must be acknowledged at this point that several ancient authors do suggest that
certain other fragments dealt with subject matter which could be described as
'purificatory.' See D. O'Brien Pour interpreter Empedocle 15-19 for such evidence
as it relates to 11/115. But none of these passages requires that the theme of
purifications have been treated in a distinct poem. Only if one is convinced already
13 Introduction
that all purificatory material was in a poem of that name and that its content must
have been radically different from that of the physical poem will one conclude
immediately from these passages that they do not belong in the physical poem.
And for these assumptions there is no evidence whatsoever.
28 15/111 is so immodest that van Groningen ('Le fragment 111 d'Empedocle') denies
its authenticity. This is solely on the grounds that it is out of place in the 'scientific'
poem. Such dogmatic confidence about the character of Empedocles' fragmentary
poetry is unfortunately not uncommon.
29 Though I do not think that the argument from the addressees of various quotations
actually helps us to establish anything about the poems. See Osborne 'Empedocles
Recycled' 31-32.
14 The Poem of Empedocles
claims about the nature and content of Empedocles' poetic works are
and must be thinly grounded hypotheses.
The best hypothesis is that of Catherine Osborne, who argues force-
fully, though not compellingly, that the poetic output of Empedocles
was a single work, known as the purifications, a designation which
eventually came to be regarded as a 'title' for the poem. The designa-
tion 'on nature' or 'physics' is a looser description for the poem - a
kind of alternative title, if you will.30 The only evidence which suggests
that these two titles correspond to two different works comes in the
passage of Diogenes Laertius mentioned above (8.77). In this text and
in the similar text from the Suda (which, however, does not mention
two distinct works in verse) the numerals have quite likely been trans-
mitted incorrectly; but the impression remains that Diogenes thought
- on the basis of his usual welter of ill-digested secondary sources -
that these two works were distinct. Why this one text should suggest
this is not clear: the likeliest guess is that Diogenes simply conflated
evidence from different sources, finding two different designations
for the principal work of Empedocles and naively assuming that they
referred to different works.31 Clearly we should not put much faith in
the accounts of Diogenes or the Suda. Osborne's summation (ibid. 29)
of the situation is judicious:
The discrepancy between the statements of Diogenes and the Suda means
that both are suspect as evidence for Empedocles' books. Diogenes' ignorance
and dependence on secondary sources leaves us in some doubt as to how
well he understood his source of information for Empedocles' works. Either
he was correct in supposing that the number of verses belonged to two
separate works and in listing these as on nature and katharmoi; or this was
a mistaken inference on his part and the Suda was right in listing only one
work on the nature of things that are. Given the nature of the evidence we
cannot exclude the possibility that Empedocles wrote one work on nature,
often called katharmoi; we may indeed be tempted to suggest that it was in
30 Ibid. 27 and n.18. Compare the alternative titles for the work of Heraclitus (Mousai)
and Philolaus (Bacchai - D-K 44B17-19). Heraclitus is particularly instructive: see,
for example, Diogenes Laertius 9.12, where 'physics' is also given as a title, along
with two other poetic labels of Hellenistic date, including one by the grammarian
Diodotus which clearly reflects his own view of the nature and purpose of the work
(see 9.15).
31 That would explain why Diogenes is only able to give a line count for the two
taken together: only one poem was mentioned in the original bibliographic notice
which is more accurately reflected by the Suda. Cf. Osborne, 29.
15 Introduction
three books and about two thousand lines long. On the basis of this evidence
we cannot prove or disprove such a hypothesis.
This is one highly plausible way of handling the conflicting and inad-
equate evidence about Empedocles' poetic output; still, Osborne's ap-
proach is certainly not demonstrably correct, nor is it readily falsifiable.
Another plausible hypothesis would be that Empedocles originally
wrote one long work which became improperly divided into two dis-
tinct works by the hand of Hellenistic bibliographers or booksellers32
and that these two later works were then described as 'physics'
and 'purifications.'33 On most points either hypothesis would account
equally well for the evidence, and there is no reliable way of deciding
between the two.34 In the end, I have adopted Osborne's hypothesis
because of the ease with which it accounts for the reference (A12) by
Dicaearchus, a source from the late fourth century BC, to a recitatio
of the purifications at the Olympic festival.35
But the important point is the strength of the case for there having
been only one poem. In support of that general position, we may also
point to several cases where the way in which our sources for the
fragments cite Empedocles' words can best be accounted for on the
hypothesis of one poem. The first offers a positive reason to hold that
only one poem was ever written, while the others demonstrate the lack
of thematic distinction between material normally assigned to the two
32 My thanks to Eric Csapo for reminding me that the realities of book production
and sale can seriously influence what counts as a separate book.
33 Before reading Osborne's article I had independently developed an elaborate
argument to this effect. The main advantages of that hypothesis over Osborne's are
an easier explanation for the relation between 11/115 and 1/112 (they would be
proems for different parts of the poem) and a fuller recognition that the confusion
over book division within the corpus of one author was common for preclassical
Greek authors.
34 Both can deal equally well with most alleged arguments for the existence of
two poems, such as the significance of the shift between a singular addressee
(Pausanias) and a group of friends in Acragas. See Osborne, 31-32.
35 See too the treatment by David Sedley in The Proems of Empedocles and Lucretius.'
His view is that there is a separate 'purifications', a non-doctrinal poem, 'a set of
oracles and purifications, consisting of ritual advice rather than doctrinal exposition'
(273). This view too makes Empedocles' fragments a thematically unified set, which
is what matters. But I remain unconvinced by Sedley's detailed interpretation,
wondering in particular about the historical soundness of the distinction between
doctrinal and non-doctrinal poems, and about his attempt (272-73) to interpret in a
'non-doctrinal' way the apparently biological fragments attributed to that poem.
16 The Poem of Empedocles
36 Sedley (The Proems') argues that 15/111 should be regarded as from the
'purifications/ on the grounds of its 'magical' context. He cites Apuleius' Apologia
27 (D-K 3A6a), which links magic to Empedocles' purifications. But this evidence
indicates nothing about the independence of the physical and purificatory material.
17 Introduction
37 16 n.l; against van der Ben The Proem of Empedocles' Peri Physios.
38 O'Brien notes that it is exceptional (89).
18 The Poem of Empedocles
39 It has been argued that Plutarch's statement cannot be reconciled with the statement
by Diogenes that 1/112 was the opening of the purifications. But as O'Brien has
shown (ch. 4), expressions like Plutarch's do not force us to place the lines cited at
the very beginning of the poem; an introduction could precede it.
40 The allusion to Kirk's Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments is not accidental. As in
Heraclitus we find an intimate blend of physical and 'religious' or quasi-mystical
speculation about life and death and the place of man in nature, so in the poem
of Empedocles. Heraclitus has long been misunderstood because his readers
never did expect this startling conflation of themes; the same is no doubt true for
Empedocles.
41 We can, of course, be independently confident about the relative order of many
fragments, thanks to the way in which Simplicius and Plutarch sometimes introduce
fragments. And where fragments manifestly deal with closely connected subject
matter, there is some plausibility in a decision about the grouping to use. Where
there is such evidence Wright has given the best reconstruction to date.
19 Introduction
42 The proposal adopted here does suggest that other purificatory material may have
been found in the introduction to the one poem; (for, as O'Brien shows [Pour
interpreter Empedocle 16-19] 11/115 is treated as 'purificatory' by three authors);
how much there was and whether this material included any of our fragments
cannot be known, but that there was some such material in the immediate context
is certainly possible. I have placed none of our other surviving fragments in the
immediate context.
20 The Poem of Empedocles
43 David Sedley argues that av6is at 124/139 line 10 should be translated 'later' rather
than 'again/ and it clearly can. Hence, one might want to place the entire fragment
much earlier in the poem, presumably in the proem.
21 Introduction
edition. For those who read French, Jean Bollack's massive commen-
tary on the physical fragments is useful, though occasionally eccentric.
Rather than give a superficial survey of particular topics, it seems
more useful to devote the rest of this introduction to setting out a
broad framework within which these questions can be explored by
the student with the aid of other secondary literature. The key issues
to consider are those which flow from or are affected by the recognition
that our fragments come from only one poem; for it is the integration
of the basic physical doctrines with issues traditionally regarded as
religious which has always presented the greatest challenge to inter-
preters of Empedocles.
It is impossible to divide the study of Empedocles, reconstruct-
ing his 'scientific' thought and his 'religious' thought separately. As
with Heraclitus, with Parmenides, and (as far as we can tell) with
Pythagoras, Empedocles' thought is a baffling unity; it brings together
concerns which we would want to distinguish as philosophical and
religious. It has become uncontroversial to accept that natural science
and philosophy should not be distinguished in the early period of
Greek thought, at least down to Aristotle. But it is equally important
to accept that religious ideas are integral to the philosophical enterprise
as understood by at least some of the Presocratics.
The naive but bracing assumptions which lie behind the thought
of men like Heraclitus or Empedocles seem to be two: that there is
only one reality 'out there' to be understood, which admits of no
significant subdivisions; and that when external reality is understood
one's life will be profoundly affected. This means that people either
do or should live according to their understanding of what is 'out
there.' The first assumption abolishes (among other things) the gap
between philosophy-cum-science and religion; the second guarantees
that ethics or behavioural norms will not have any independent and
ultimately non-philosophical foundation. Together, these assumptions
serve to broaden (and to some extent to de-rationalize) philosophy as
many would like to think of it; but they also underpin the inspiring,
if now somewhat naive, unity of vision which characterizes Greek
thought from its very beginnings.
49 I am indebted to Charles Kahn's The Art and Thought of Heraclitus for a general
picture of his interests and the character of his thought.
25 Introduction
the study of the observed world virtually pointless, since there is, in
truth, no such world.50
To contemporary readers it often seems remarkable that, even with-
out a solution to Parmenides' central argument, the post-Parmenideans
continued the practice of physics. Yet it is evident that a full rational
justification for doing so could not be given without a refutation of
Parmenides' central thesis, that not-being was a meaningless utterance.
No one seems to have managed this (or even seriously attempted it)
until Plato, in his Sophist, finally tackled and solved the problem set
by 'father Parmenides/ Yet Empedocles, among others, continued to
do physics. Inevitably we ask, How could they do so?51
If the argument to show that what is not is meaningless remained
unchallenged, the conclusions drawn from the pivotal claim could
nevertheless be doubted, challenged, or evaded. Generation and de-
struction, motion and change, internal differentiation and plurality
were denied. But the arguments used to justify these denials are in
some cases surprisingly weak, or absent (at least from our sources).
There is, for example, no clear argument against plurality,52 though
50 How, then, to explain the elaborate doxastic cosmology of the second half of
Parmenides' poem? The orthodox answer is now that it is a purely dialectical
move, to enable the interpreter to deal with inevitable mortal objections (see Gallop
Parmenides of Elea, 23), and I am highly sympathetic to this view. There may also
be a more positive pragmatic motivation: even if the world of appearance is totally
unreal, it is still what appears to mortals; unreal or not, it must be dealt with by
the philosopher. Our world of illusion is, after all, remarkably consistent, and the
spurned 'habit' inculcated in us by perception is widely shared among men. It
would be a mark of foolish ontological puritanism to ignore such a widespread
and internally consistent unreality; a poet like Parmenides would do so, I suggest,
only if he explicitly held that only what was proven to be real should be the
subject of philosophical verse. Why should a philosophical poet so restrict himself?
Even Hesiod's muses know how to tell false tales when they wish (Theogony
27-28), presumably to good effect; in this very poem Parmenides manages to
speak of 'unutterable' not-being and develops the elaborate imagery of the proem.
Though he holds that one can neither say nor think (in the proper sense of either
word) what is not, it does not follow that it cannot be the object of some other,
fundamentally deceptive kind of discourse. (I wish to thank Niko Scharer for some
non-Parmenidean reflections which suggested this line of thought; the Parmenidean
application of it I owe to students in my seminar on the Presocratics, fall 1988.)
51 For a more detailed, recent discussion of the pluralist response to Parmenides, see
the fine study by A.P.D. Mourelatos 'Quality, Structure and Emergence.'
52 This fact encouraged Jonathan Barnes ('Parmenides and the Eleatic One') to deny
that Parmenides need be considered a monist at all. It is interesting that Zeno's
defence of Parmenides focuses on motion and plurality, the very two points at
which the master's declarations are not properly supported by arguments.
26 The Poem of Empedocles
Parmenides clearly believed that there was only one existent thing, as
readers of his poem from Zeno to our own day have agreed. As a
result, a conscientious post-Parmenidean, such as Empedocles, need
not argue for plurality - at least not if he has Parmenides alone in
mind.53 Thus we find Empedocles, like Anaxagoras and the atomists,
blithely starting from pluralist assumptions. In Empedocles' case, the
number of entities he posits is limited to six, the four 'elements' plus
love and strife. The atomists and Anaxagoras posited an indefinite
number, thus giving themselves more resources to use in explaining
the phenomena, but exposing themselves to the possibility of an attack
on 'the indefinite' as intellectually unsatisfying.54 Empedocles allowed
his basic entities to have motion, but not qualitative change; internal
qualitative differentiation is denied, though the possibility of mixture
and combination and the doctrine of pores seem to require the pos-
sibility of internal divisions.55 Thus there is a parallel between the
internal and the external features of the basic entities. Spatial move-
ment and division are permitted; qualitative change and distinction
are not.
Empedocles does not make it clear, in the fragments which survive,
what arguments he would have used to defend his selective acceptance
of Parmenidean conclusions. It is tempting to suppose that he used no
arguments of his own, that he instead hypothesized what he felt was
needed to facilitate a rational account of the physical world. But that
easy answer is discouraged by the seriousness with which Empedocles
accepted the ban on coming-into-being and passing-away. In 18/12 he
accepts Parmenides' denial of genesis and perishing, and supports it
with further considerations which are appropriate to his own position.
It is, as Empedocles says here, impossible for anything to come to be
from what is not; it is unaccomplishable and unheard of that something
which is should pass out of being.56 Line 3 - if rightly reconstructed -
seems to shed light on this claim, and goes beyond mere repetition of
Parmenides' conclusions: whatever one may do to an entity to 'destroy'
it, one is not really destroying it, just removing it from view (hence
the apt choice of 'pushing' to refer to the attempted destruction of an
object). It will still be at a location, no matter what you do to get rid
of it; the most you can do is shove the object out of sight. This line
best justifies the claim in line 2 if one supposes that Empedocles is
here correcting the common notion of destruction.57 What looks like
destruction is really just 'disposal,' getting something out of sight and
out of mind. It still is, even if it is not visible to the sadly limited vision
which men possess.58
What Empedocles offers, then, is not just a conceptual demonstra-
tion that destruction is impossible, as Parmenides seems to do in B8,
but an explanation for prima facie cases of destruction, a theory of
what is happening when things seem to perish. For reasons to deny
that prima facie cases of destruction are genuine, Empedocles seems
to stay with what is offered by Parmenides, as he does also for the
denial of genesis (line 1).
The denial of not-being includes, of course, denial of any emptiness
(19/13); and the same line repeats Parmenides' claim that no part of
what is is overfull or 'in excess.' The denial of void is easy enough
to explain on Parmenidean principles:59 if there is an empty bit of the
cosmos, it is empty of what is and so 'contains' what is not, and that
is impossible. The denial of excess or overfullness can be understood
in two ways: either as a simple counterpart of the denial of empti-
ness, included as a 'polar opposite' for the sake of symmetry, or, in a
more robust way, as support for a claim of internal homogeneity. But
since Empedocles allows division and mixture, it seems unlikely that
this line refers to absolute internal homogeneity of density; however,
since Parmenides does not allow such division, internal homogeneity
is the most plausible interpretation of his apparently similar doctrine
57 Compare his comments on conventional terminology in 21/8 and 22/9. See below
1.3.3.
58 On which see 8/2, 93/106, 94/108, and below 1.3.3.
59 See too CTXT-15. It is obvious that we should connect the rejection of emptiness
with the denial of not-being: here and in 25/17.30-33 the void is mentioned as a
possible source for something in addition to what is, and in Parmenidean terms
that could only mean 'what is not.' The atomists too identify void with not-being,
though unlike Empedocles they are prepared to admit this sort of not-being into
their ontology. For Empedocles the difficult problem is to reconcile his denial of
void with his admission of pores; see A87a-e.
28 The Poem of Empedocles
60 The evidence about the status of the roots and compound objects is widespread in
the fragments, but the testimony of Simplicius in CTXT-19b is clear and invaluable.
One should, however, note that there are some differences between the four roots
and the two principles with respect to the way Empedocles described their eternity;
see below.
29 Introduction
61 And indeed to have inferred the character of the underlying basic entities on the
basis of the observed features of the world-masses around him: see 26/21, in which
the observable phenomena are offered as evidence for the character of the four
roots.
62 'Since the elements were to be as like the Parmenidean One as possible, Empedocles
felt bound to introduce external motivators' - Guthrie A History of Greek Philosophy
2:155.
63 Compare Simplicius' somewhat exaggerated tendency to say that the roots are mere
material causes and love and strife the motive causes: CTXT-19b, CTXT-45c.
64 And note the rejection of local change in B8.41.
30 The Poem of Empedocles
Concerning the point that both of these [love and strife] are immortal and
uncreated and have never received a starting-point for becoming, Empedocles
says other things in roughly this fashion:
For they are, as they were before and will be, nor do I think
that endless time will ever be empty of these two. (20/16)
What are 'these'? Strife and love. For they never began to come into being,
but they pre-existed and will always exist, being unable to endure destruction
because of their unborn quality. But fire <and water> and earth and air are
dying and returning to life. For when the things which come to be by strife's
65 The suggestion of Wright that 23/11 and 24/15 actually came from the 'purifications'
(which she thinks of as a distinct poem) is interesting testimony to the religious
'flavour' of the texts; but note that 23/11 deals with a neuter 'being' (TO
eov) while 24/15 manifestly deals with human lives. Compare too the use of
human limbs and their combination and dissolution as an illustration for what
happens in the cosmic sphere (38/20). The biological vocabulary ('limbs' etc.)
used by Empedocles for his roots and their interactions is also an indication
of how readily he moved back and forth between the cosmic and the animal
realms.
66 See too CTXT-18, which informs us that the elements (i.e. the four roots) are unborn.
Their indestructibility is also strongly suggested by 25/17.15-35, which treat all six
as conforming to Parmenidean standards of permanence. I see no reason to doubt
that love and strife are meant to be corporeal, just as the four so-called material
elements are: see line 20.
67 See CTXT-19b, where Simplicius shows himself aware that in some respects love
and strife are just like the roots and that in others they are not. See too A33a for
the doctrine that love and strife are distinct from the roots: the former are called
principle-powers and the latter are called elements; also A32.
68 But see Osborne Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy 95-96.
32 The Poem of Empedocles
agency die, love receives them and draws them towards, puts them with,
and assimilates them to the universe, so that the universe might remain one,
always being organized by love in one manner and form. And when love
makes the one out of many and assimilates the separated things to the one,
strife again tears them from the one and makes many, i.e. fire, water, earth,
and air, the animals and plants created from these and all the parts of the
cosmos which we conceive of.
to mixture, they are still the elemental building blocks for the other
objects of our observable world.
What it means for these ever-existent things to become other objects
is hard to explain, and we may make our job easier by distinguishing
- as Empedocles did not - several senses of becoming or coming-into-
being. This will enable us to give a clear account of several aspects of
Empedocles' thought which must otherwise remain enwrapped in the
poetic paradox born of equivocation.
Becoming! is for something to begin to exist, there being no pre-
existing thing from which it came to exist, that is, ex nihilo creation.
Becoming2 is for something to come into existence from something
else, as water comes to be from hydrogen and oxygen. Becoming3 is
for something to come to be different in its external relations, but
to remain otherwise unchanged from its former self; this should be
distinguished from becoming4, qualitative change of an object which
remains substantially identical. The kinds of change we might regard
as becoming4, such as the heating of water so that it becomes warm
rather than cold, Empedocles clearly explained as cases of becoming3:
water becomes warm when more fire is mixed into it, while neither
the fire nor the water changes in itself.
Empedocles did not and probably could not explicitly draw such
distinctions. But the puzzling use he makes of the term 'become'
shows, on a charitable reading, that he did have a dim appreciation of
at least senses 1 to 3.
The becoming attributed to the roots in 25/17.35 is best explained
as a case of becoming3: the roots become3 different but never change.
But this process of becoming3 is the same process described as the
becoming2 of the mortal things (that is, compounds) produced by
them: just as destruction was explained away in 20/16 by a persuasive
account of what really happens during prima facie cases of destruction,
so here, in the wake of a proof that destruction is impossible, we
have a persuasive explanation for the phenomena which apparently
contradict this rational conclusion. What looks at first sight like the
coming-into-being of something new (and so the destruction of some-
thing old) is really the mixture and separation of the six basic entities.
Despite this, they are always 'perpetually alike' to themselves, that is,
they maintain their identity as themselves, even while mixed.
Put more clearly, the apparent coming-to-be! of something new is
really a mere coming-to-be2 of that thing, from the mixture of roots
which can only come to be in sense 3, but never in senses 1, 2, or 4.
34 The Poem of Empedocles
71 For this section, compare Mourelatos 'Quality, Structure and Emergence/ esp.
163-94. This section, indeed the whole introduction, was completed before
Mourelatos's article was available to me. I find myself in substantial agreement
with his work, and have not commented in detail on it in the discussion which
follows. His fuller discussion of the larger issues I broach here should be consulted
by all serious students of Empedocles.
72 On men as 'prisoners' of their limited perception, see also 93/106, 94/108.
73 The term $u<ris is used in 21/8, but Plutarch (CTXT-16a) notes that this term is
used for yeVecrty. Plutarch's view of the relationship of mixture and separation to
coming-into-being and passing-away seems correct.
74 It seems to me that Plutarch is quite right in his belief that Empedocles' aim is to
salvage and justify ordinary usage, rather than to abolish it.
35 Introduction
75 Note too that even a daimon is mortal, though long-lived (CTXT-lOc); it is important
to take this evidence seriously, since it is essential for understanding Empedocles'
views on reincarnation and immortality.
76 CTXT-14a claims that existent things fall into two categories, those which are
eternal and those which come into being from them. These are indeed two
'levels of being,' but both are existent.
36 The Poem of Empedocles
phrase translated 'these very things are'77 is aAA' avr' tvriv ravra, and
in Greek it recalls the common Platonic formula used for Forms, which
are the permanent quasi-Parmenidean entities of his system.78 The
emphatic adjective O.VTO serves to focus attention on the independence,
permanence, uniqueness, and full reality of the entity it attaches to.
This similarity in terminology is no accident. For Plato's Forms, like the
elements of Empedocles, are designed in part to play the role of onto-
logical anchor in a world threatened by the arguments of Parmenides.
Empedocles' elements, like the Forms, are several in number (Plato
and Empedocles must have agreed with the other post-Parmenidean
pluralists that the case for monism was unproven), invariant in quality
or character, and serve to explain the things which are observable
by the senses. And like the Forms, Empedocles' elements stand in
a highly problematic relation to the observable things which they help
to explain.
In Empedocles' response to Parmenides the relation between fun-
damental entities and observable objects is not, of course, Platonic par-
ticipation but 'mixture' or 'blending.' What we see are compounds or
blends of the roots, love, and strife. The problem corresponding to that
of participation is this: we must ask what the relationship is between
the resultant mixture and its components, if, as Empedocles insists,
only the ultimate components of these compounds are independently
real. (1) Is it then just false to say that a perceptible thing such as a
table or a man is? (2) Are we to say that Empedocles had a two-level
ontology, with different grades or levels of existence? Or (3) is that
too close to Platonism and, at any rate, impossible without a notion of
incorporeal existence?
In brief, the answers to these questions are (1) yes, (2) yes and (3)
no. Empedocles does say that only the roots, love, and strife are in the
proper sense of the word, and we must take this seriously, since it is
backed by the full weight of his Parmenidean position on genesis and
destruction. We must, then, have some sort of two-level ontology; the
status of compounds is vitally different from that of elements and is
regularly (as in 22/9-26/21) designated by words like yiyvecrdai rather
77 The intensive adjective has the sense 'by itself, in itself, unaided, alone' (H.W.
Smyth Greek Grammar 1209a). There is also, as David Gallop reminds me, a hint of
'these things are self-same.'
78 The Form of beauty, for example, is often called avro TO Ka\6v (with avro as intensive
adjective, emphasizing the autonomy of what it describes).
37 Introduction
79 The roots are mentioned again in 25/17.18, where they are further designated as
the many out of which the one grows and into which it dissolves.
80 Contra Gallavotti in his edition, fragment 1, line 5 (p. 7).
81 Contrast his weaker use of the word in 70/63 and 16/110.5; these are traditional
Homeric periphrases.
82 The text is uncertain at 22/9.5; some supplement is necessary and I follow
Wilamowitz's emendation here, which means that the convention of mortals is
incorrect. The texts of most recent editors (except Bollack, whose text and translation
38 The Poem of Empedocles
I cannot understand) give the same result: the naming conventions of mortals are
not strictly correct.
83 The text of this line is admittedly quite uncertain.
39 Introduction
84 This list is found in the painter's repertoire of 27/23 and in the list of compound
objects in 26/21. This considerably strengthens the simile. It is clear that the list is
meant to stand for all observable objects: 26/21.9 claims that everything that was,
is, or will be is derived from the roots. Cf. 39/38.
85 See below, section 1.3.7, and 27/23.11.
86 The simile used by Empedocles here gives as much information as we can have
about the question of reductionism. It would be rewarding to relate his theory to
modern varieties of reductionism, showing where his fits into a typology of such
theories. But as on so many points, his fragments simply do not give us enough
information to do that. Instead, we find this image, powerful and evocative on the
level of common experience. If we ask, 'So is Empedocles a reductionist or not? Is
his reductionism eliminative or not?' the best answer is: consider the simile of the
painter and you will see.
40 The Poem of Empedocles
87 What Empedocles says is that the roots become3 men and beasts, which I interpret
as 'men and beasts become2 from roots.'
88 Cf. too 74/71: the blending of the four roots under the influence of love produces
the becoming (note -yevoiaro, yeyaacrt) of visible mortal things.
89 This argues against Jonathan Barnes's suggestion (The Presocratic Philosophers 2:8)
that identical events occur in the various repetitions of the cosmic cycle. There
is no evidence in Empedocles for this very strong form of a doctrine of eternal
recurrence. It would, I think, have required a doctrine of causal determinism to
convert Empedocles' cycle into an eternally repeating cycle of identical events. It
is perfectly plausible, however, as is suggested by the lines under consideration,
that the roots qua roots do go through identical states once in each cosmic cycle:
the stage of total strife and of total love, the points which define the cycle, must
be indistinguishable in each turn of the cycle. But Empedocles does not need to
hold that the mortal objects produced by the intermediate stages of the eternally
repeating cycle are the same in each turn of it. Indeed, all that Empedocles
explicitly asks for is that the cycle of mixing and separation should never cease
(25/17.12) and that will be true whether or not the mixtures and their products
are indistinguishable on successive rounds or not. Compare Geoffrey Brown The
Cosmological Theory of Empedocles,' who exploits the manifest absurdities of
eternal recurrence as Barnes sketches it to argue instead for a linear interpretation
of Empedocles' cosmology. But Barnes's strong interpretation of the cycle is a straw
man and Brown's arguments have, as a result, little force.
41 Introduction
nence and their transience. Note here that the subjects of this change
are only the roots, and not love and strife, a further confirmation of
the special status of these latter principles.90
Second, these lines introduce a new element into our consideration
of the relationship between the two levels of Empedocles' system. He
here speaks of the roots from a different and important new point of
view. The proof of their permanence, from the point of view taken in
these lines, is not in their constant being (that is, not in their meet-
ing Parmenidean standards of existence), but in their regular cyclical
recurrence in similar form. From this point of view, then, the roots
'disappear' when they form compounds; the components out of which
the compounds are made seem to perish into the compound and to
re-emerge later when the compound breaks down. This point of view
is clearly not that of ultimate reality; it is the way things look from
the limited perspective of mortal beings. For men, the roots become
abrj\a when they go into a blend and a new object seems to be created.
Empedocles has already shown that this limited mortal perception is
not ultimately true, so in stressing cyclical identity as the basis for
the perfect being of the roots, as he does here, Empedocles must be
deliberately looking at the roots and their status from the point of
view of ordinary men. From the mortal perspective even the roots
can only be cyclically immortal, though by the non-empirical criteria
of Parmenidean rationalism their immortality goes far beyond that:
they simply are forever, if they are at all. Just as Empedocles must
adopt the mortal mode of speaking in referring to Averts (22/9.5), so
here he goes out of his way to describe his roots as 'unchanged in
a cycle' in order to bring home to ordinary mortals, who cannot see
the force of the Parmenidean arguments, the special standing of his
roots.
This readiness to adopt the limited mortal perspective also helps
to explain the otherwise strange way Empedocles chooses to speak
in 61/35.14-17.91 What was previously 'immortal' really is and was
always so, but can only be seen as such when fully separated. In a
mixture even an element looks mortal, from the human perspective.
90 Note too in lines 19-26 when love and strife are invoked that there is a special
emphasis on the sphere: for strife is said to be separate from the roots (St'^a T&V)
and love is among them (ei> TOIO-LV). Love is also the subject of the next few lines.
The limited perceptual abilities of men are highlighted again in lines 25-26; note
that the roots are assumed to be more accessible to normal perception than is love,
since there is an inference from the perceived world masses to the roots in 26/21.
91 Compare this to 25/17.9-13.
42 The Poem of Empedocles
92 And even this solution is vulnerable: for the language Plato uses to describe his
Forms is often borrowed from the language used to describe the real world; 'vision'
becomes a model for noetic grasp; the Forms are located in an intelligible 'place';
even participation uses a metaphor from the world of ordinary experience which
Plato must work hard to make suitable for his Forms.
43 Introduction
93 Strictly, the many could refer to all states of the world except the sphere, but the
fragments seem to assume that the one and the many are diametrically opposed
states and only complete strife would so balance complete love.
44 The Poem of Empedocles
The nature of the cycle has been, for over two decades, the subject
of the most prominent controversy in Empedoclean scholarship. In
the 1960s several serious challenges were made to the long-standing
orthodoxy which held that the cycle was more or less symmetrical,
and that in each half of the cycle (while the roots mixed more and
more during the increasing power of love and while they separated
more and more during the increasing power of strife) a world like
our own was first produced and then destroyed. Since the criticisms
by Bollack, Holscher, and Solmsen no new orthodoxy has emerged,
and carefully developed defences and revisions of the old orthodoxy
continue to compete with the various novel interpretations. Of the new
interpretations, Bollack's has been the most influential. He holds that
in only one half of the cycle is there a world created, in the world of
increasing love; when the sphere dissolves there is no gradual sepa-
ration permitting temporary stability such as we see in a developed
cosmos, but a direct return to complete separation under total strife.
All creative activity, all cosmogony and zoogony, occur under the
influence of increasing love.
There is no room here to discuss all the important arguments on this
question. My own view is that the defenders of a version of the old
orthodoxy are correct.95 I am inclined to this view for several reasons.
94 And perhaps we would want to say that their qualities are their identity.
95 Barnes in the Presocratic Philosophers and Guthrie in A History of Greek Philosophy are
the most accessible. Rosemary Wright, in the introduction to Empedocles: The Extant
Fragments, provides the most convincing discussion and restoration of the cycle. She
45 Introduction
takes due account of the secondary evidence about the fragment order, the nature
of the cycle, and the fluid style of composition which Empedocles employed. For a
clear statement of the challenge to orthodoxy, see Long 'Empedocles' Cosmic Cycle
in the Sixties.'
96 CTXT-29c is particularly clear; also CTXT-56a, CTXT-49a, CTXT-21. Wright (47)
notes that Theophrastus (A86, section 20) confirms this.
97 CTXT-49a is particularly important evidence here.
98 A42a: 'that is why Empedocles leaves out coming-into-being in [the period of]
love.'
46 The Poem of Empedocles
it is only with the complete separation under strife that the world's
superficial and underlying structures form a perfect match. If the
ultimate reality of the world is that there are four roots, love, and
strife, and if mixture is in a sense a deceptive state of affairs, then
only when mixture is completely banished is the world in its natural
and ontologically transparent state.
A rapid sketch of the growth of love's power follows. The elements
unite and strife retreats (32/36) until the blessed sphere of total love is
produced (33/27-34/29&2S). But as Aristotle observed,102 one cannot
effectively describe a cosmos emerging from many to one; it flies in the
face of a Greek tradition in cosmogony so deep that even while deny-
ing its ultimate truth103 Empedocles had to follow it for expository
purposes - the tradition that presents a manifold world as a product of
differentiation from unity.104 Besides, the world of growing strife, not
the world of growing love, is our world; and Empedocles has already
stressed the personal and moral significance of this in the proem. So in
describing the beginning of our world (35/30ff.) Empedocles takes his
beginning from the sphere he has just described, narrating the death
of this most blessed and admirable, but still mortal, god. (Fragments
37/22 and 38/20 are attempts to make some peculiar aspects of the
theory clear and palatable to men who can see only a limited part of
the world.)
The detailed account of our world's creation starts in 39/38 and this
part of the poem is preserved very bittily - but presumably a great
deal of the doxography refers to this account of the creation of our
world.105
The cosmic scale of the story returns at 61/35, which describes the
transition back to a stage of increasing love. This is a particularly good
place, then, for Empedocles to stress the power of love in creating
102 A42a.
103 Given that the cyclical nature of change is an eternal truth, there can be no real
temporal starting-point of change.
104 Hesiod is the earliest representative of this tradition. See Cornford (Principium
Sapientiae, esp. ch. 11) and Guthrie (A History of Greek Philosophy: 1, ch. 2) for
Hesiod's influence on the early philosophical cosmogonies. For the influence
of Anaximander and Anaxagoras on Empedocles, see Wright 46. Charles Kahn
(Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology) also treats the importance of
Hesiod as predecessor for the early philosophers as an important theme (passim,
but see esp. 200).
105 For the integration with the cycle of the major doxographical fragments, see
Wright 44-56.
48 The Poem of Empedocles
mortal compounds (though her activity and the tension between love
and strife are similar in our world too); to place the account of the
general power of love in the period of increasing love makes good
rhetorical sense - Empedocles has already shown his concern for aid-
ing his readers to grasp the rather baroque tale he has to tell - and also
enables Empedocles to maintain his emphasis on the grimness of the
world of familiar life. Still, the world of love is the home of monsters
too106 - the oddities of Greek myth are safely relegated to a world far
from our own.
At 67/62 the 'real' world of strife returns, and we hear of the way
living beings are created in the history of our present world, and how
sexual reproduction keeps it going (68/64). That sexual reproduction
is dealt with as part of the world of strife is in accord with Hippolytus'
description of marriage as a 'work of strife' (CTXT-lOg). Presumably
the separateness of the sexes is seen as one of strife's separative func-
tions. The futile effort to reunite with others107 is love's doing - but
love is losing power. To collaborate with love and indulge in sex is
merely to struggle against the inexorable plan of the cosmos.
This is not to say that love is powerless now. Fragments 74/71ff.
stress her considerable influence. But a wise man, who knows what
forces are at play in the world, will not be fooled. In this stage of the
cosmos, our fate lies with strife and a return to the pure existence of
separate elements. That is the ultimate purification from our mortal
lives.
Plants and animals are then described (to 87/83). The physical
account of our world must soon begin to wind down. Hence the
transition (88/89) to the interaction between objects by means of efflu-
ences cast off from things - again, only possible in the world of strife
- and via this, Empedocles' explanation of perception and wisdom.
At 92/107 man's relation to wisdom again becomes the theme. In
the context of the poem, we expect a bleak and limited picture of
ordinary mortal intelligence, with some promise of something better
for exceptional men, and this we get. Fragments 93/106 and 94/108
emphasize how fickle and dependent is the thought of men, restricted
as they are by their partial access to the world, a world which though
'real' does not portray being as it actually is. It is the blood around the
heart (96/105) which comes closest to true thought. But even that well-
blended organ of thought is limited, as is all ordinary human cognition.
112 Aristotle, in A20Ab, associates the principle of 'like to like' with the action of
love; but this is wrong; compare A37.
113 See the remarks of Aristotle in CTXT-25a for the ambivalence of love and strife:
Aristotle concludes that each is creative in its own way and that without strife our
world would be impossible. See also Simplicius CTXT-45c.
114 74/71, 75/33 in CTXT-67, 76/73, CTXT-64, 98/98, 100/86, 101/87, 102/95, 62/96,
27/23.4, 63/34.
115 See also CTXT-30 (44/37).
51 Introduction
such things are described as being very mournful, which is just what
one would expect. But still, they are born by strife, created by the
force which commentators often suppose has no creative power. The
conclusion to draw at this point is not that Empedocles' fragmentary
remains conceal from us any great interest in the creativity of strife,
but simply that strife is as necessary for an account of a cosmos of
identifiable objects as is love.116
Like the four roots, love and strife are conceived as physical stuffs.
As yet, no Greek had articulated a conception of incorporeal being,
and what evidence there is in Empedocles suggests a physical view of
these 'gods/ Fragment 25/17.19-20 and the phrase urd re -naura (line
27) make love equal in length and breadth to the roots and one must
assume that arahavTov aTravrr] has a roughly similar meaning. Love
may, according to 25/17, be invisible to the eyes, but that of course
proves nothing about corporeal status, any more than the injunction
to 'gaze on her with your understanding/ She is, moreover, held to be
part of our mortal limbs (line 22). Several references to her role in com-
pounding things suggest that her binding power is like that of glue,
that is, that she enters into the compounds which she binds together.
Strife and love both engage in spatial movements (61/35, etc.). There
can be no serious question about their corporeality. If Empedocles is
vague about the meaning and implications of corporeality and speaks
at times as though love or strife was an incorporeal power, that must
be put down to the conceptual naivety of his day. It is unreasonable
to expect a clear conception of the corporeal and its nature until the
incorporeal is invented to contrast with it.
When love alone is active among the roots a perfect compound is
produced, the sphere, a long-lived and blessed god, but a mortal god
none the less. When strife alone has control the elements are separated
completely. However, the state of the universe under complete love
and complete strife is nowhere described to our full satisfaction. It
seems that at each extreme point the world is at rest.117 When love
is in complete control (33/27, 34/29&2S), the elements are at perfect
peace, in a blend dominated by love and with strife restricted to the
outside of the sphere. Even under the rule of total love strife remains
118 The separateness of strife is implied by his attack on the sphere described in
35/30, 36/31.
119 Wright, 43-45.
53 Introduction
on the roots, placing strife on the outside (biya rcoy, 19) and love within
(ey rola-Lv, 20). There is no reference here to the compounds produced
by the roots, as Empedocles focuses instead on the Parmenidean issues
addressed by his theory.
In 26/21 we move on from the abstractions of the cycle as sketched
in 25/17. The elements are reintroduced, and their reality as elements
confirmed by the appearance in our observable world of things which
are nearly pure instances of the roots; then the separating power of
strife and the unifying power of love are restated together (7-8), and
this becomes the starting-point for the description of mixture, which
culminates in the double claim that the roots are independent realities
that become3 other things as a result of mixture (13-14).
The story of the interaction of love and strife continues for us in
28/26, with a restatement of the general pattern of change in a cycle
regulated by the now-familiar roles of love and strife (1-6); line 7,
though, adds a description of the unity which the roots achieve: their
alternate movement continues 'until by growing together as one they
are totally subordinated.' The emphasis then returns to the cyclical
nature of this change, but line 7 shows that the sphere is one of the
natural termini of the cycle of change.
Fragment 31/27 (CTXT-24) reintroduces the ontologically primary
stage of complete separation; next (32/36) the gradual unification of the
roots proceeds in concert with the withdrawal of strife from influence
over them, which is a very general account of the stage of growing
love. What follows (33/27 and 34/29&2S) is a powerful account of the
sphere. At this point, strife is able to reassert himself and to break
up the harmony of the sphere (35/30, 36/31). His action is a legiti-
mate assertion of his prerogatives in accordance with the oath which
regulates the times permitted to love and strife for their periods of
predominance (35/30.3). What follows, then, is a description of the
stage of strife's growing power, that is, a description of the world
into which the daimons are first incarnated (11/115) and in which we
ourselves live. His separative power is thus stressed in 37/22, though
it is also compared to the power of love in forming and sustaining
compounds, a comparison continued in 38/20, which notes the similar
alternation of love and strife in the life of mortal animals.
Fragment 39/38 is the beginning of a detailed description of our
world, a combination of the powers of love and strife, with strife in the
position of gradually growing dominance. This may be skipped over
quickly, until with 61/35 we find again material of interest to a study
of love and strife. We are told that 'when strife reached the lowest
54 The Poem of Empedocles
depth / of the eddy and love gets into the middle of the whirl, / there
all these come together to be one alone, / not suddenly, but voluntarily
coming together, each from a different direction' (3-6). The meaning
of this fragment has been debated extensively, but Rosemary Wright
(206-7) has provided the best solution. The situation described here
is that of total strife: being in the middle of the cosmic whirl means
having complete influence, having penetrated to the heart of the cos-
mic mass from his initial position on the outside (8i'xa rwu). The roots,
then, are completely separated until love exercises her prerogatives
and re-enters the cosmic mass and begins the process of blending
things together again. So things come together, gradually and will-
ingly. The interaction of love and strife produces mortal blends (line
7), but strife's power is still considerable and prevents many things
from becoming blended into compounds (8-13). As he gradually with-
draws, love advances to fill in the gaps and produce stable compounds;
things that had been unmixed, that is, immortal, become mortal blends
(14-17).
This fragment describes the beginning of the world of growing
love, but, more important, it confirms that it is in the period of creative
tension between strife and love that the 'ten thousand tribes of mortals
poured forth.' The creative period which is described in the following
fragments is a transitional period, not one in which love has complete
sway (CTXT-49a). Fragment 65/59 (CTXT-49a) is a description of this
same stage: the daimons which mixed more and more as time went
on must be love and strife,120 and it is their progressive interaction
which causes the emergence into being (note t^tytvovro) of a constant
stream of compounds. So once again Empedocles stresses that it is the
interaction of love and strife which is creative.
By 67/62 we have returned to our world and a greater, though not
exclusive, emphasis on strife's creative power in producing animals.
The continuing power of love is apparent at 74/71, 76/73, and 98/98-
102/95, and in the reference to 'fitting together' in 92/107, while 90/90
emphasizes the principle of like to like which strife reinforces by its
separative effects. The persistence of love in our world is also evident
120 Contra Wright, 212, who concludes that the divinities are the roots and that 'mix'
here indicates the compounding of the roots into mortals. But it seems preferable
to take 'mix' in its Homeric sense of 'mix in battle/ that is, come into conflict; for
the ravra of line 2 clearly refers to the roots and seems to be distinct from the
daimons of line 1. See too the extensive discussion of O'Brien Empedocles' Cosmic
Cycle 325ff.
55 Introduction
121 A view not unlike that expressed by Plato in the Phaedo 78c ff.
56 The Poem of Empedocles
fact that the soul pre-exists the body does not prove it immortal; and
neither does the fact that it outlasts any given body it may currently be
'wearing/
This argument is given by Plato to the Pythagorean Cebes, just as
the account of soul as harmony is given to his colleague Simmias.
Opinion varies as to how 'Pythagorean' these ideas ever were; for all
we know they may both be Platonic inventions.122 Cebes' suggestion
might or might not be Pythagorean in the strict sense. But however
that may be, it is not implausible that the theory was inspired by
Empedocles, whose unorthodox but recognizably 'Pythagorean' ideas
were certainly in the air in the late fifth century. There is good reason
to see an anticipation of Cebes' views in the work of Empedocles.123
Keeping in view, then, the 'physical' doctrines which we have been
examining, we will expect that the cycle of reincarnations for mortal
beings will be limited to rebirth within one turn of the cosmic cycle;
all through the world of growing strife 'we'124 are what Empedocles
calls long-lived 'daimons.' It is hard to say exactly what Empedocles
means by this word, which was used in earlier poetry for gods, both
Olympian and otherwise, demigods, and for divinities which seem to
modern readers more like personified powers and forces. Because of
its role here in a theory of reincarnation, it is hard not to connect the
daimon to what Plato and others called a 'soul.' I shall assume in what
follows that this is more or less right and that the daimon is the bearer
of the moral and intellectual continuity for each person.
But whatever they are, these daimons are, like everything else,
compounds, subject to dissolution when the reign of strife becomes
complete and the roots which form us become immortal again, as
they do when they are separated from their mixture. Only the wise
man can see what is coming and collaborate with it. Love is a good
force and we all should worship her, but we cannot, alas, live by
her dictates alone in our present world of strife. Our dissolution
means the extinction of our personal existence, yet it is also our
122 See Gallop Plato: Phaedo, 148 for a discussion of the harmony theory's credentials
as 'Pythagorean.'
123 For allusions to Empedocles in the Phaedo, see A76 (Phaedo 96ab), where the
suggestion that we think with our blood is an allusion to 96/105; and also Gallop,
140, commenting on the doctrine of knowing like by like at 79c2-e7.
124 It is not clear how large a group Empedocles means to include here. He may refer
only to a special subclass of human beings, those gifted with the semi-divine
status often designated by the term daimon. But more likely, as I have assumed
here, he means to refer to all human beings.
57 Introduction
where men dined with the gods, who are of course called deathless. Even on this
hypothesis, the reference to the immortality of blessed gods need be no more than
a traditional formula.
130 It is just possible that the epithet might indicate that the surrounding earth is
mortal; but in most comparable compounds the prefix an<j>i- (around, surrounding)
governs the second part of the compound; in Homer the adjective describes a
shield which surrounds (d^t) the mortal man
59 Introduction
131 This possibility is enhanced by the reference in 11/115 to the four cosmic masses
the daimon is sent to in turn - all Empedocles needs to do is pick out the places
a daimon can go to and then infer that they in fact do so, and then infer further
that he himself has done so. That is probably the best account of 11/115, and one
might be tempted to think it is also the easiest answer for 111/117.
132 Compare the story of Pythagoras recalling the shield he had used at Troy when
he was Euphorbus: A31. According to Xenophanes (B7), Pythagoras claimed to be
able to recognize the voice of a deceased friend in the yelping of the puppy into
which his soul had passed.
133 Theories abound about the character and make-up of the daimon, all complicated
by the conviction that the reincarnated daimon must be immortal in a strong
sense of the word. The most plausible theory so far is that of O'Brien (who follows
Cornford; see note 10, 325ff., in Empedocles' Cosmic Cycle), who suggests that it is
a fragment of love; but for this there is no evidence, and it is clear that O'Brien's
view reflects a belief that the daimon is immortal. // it is to be immortal, this is
the best interpretation.
134 Note Aristotle's remarks in CTXT-13a.
60 The Poem of Empedocles
135 These oaths surely include the one mentioned in 35/30.3, an oath which defines
the periods of predominance of love and strife.
136 CTXT-29c, CTXT-45b.
137 It is impossible to determine what causes the fall of the daimon, since the textual
corruption in lines 3-5 makes it unclear whose perjury and bloodshed (or fear,
if we follow the manuscripts) precipitate the exile; similarly, we are not told
which oaths are broken or how, or what is the object of the bloodshed or fear. It
is overwhelmingly likely, though, that the bloodshed (or fear) and perjury which
precipitate the fall are the works of strife.
61 Introduction
138 35/30 (CTXT-20) and CTXT-25a describe the cosmic breakup, and Simplicius in
CTXT-20 specifically connects the oaths of 11/115 with that of 35/30. Cf. CTXT-20
and 33/27.
62 The Poem of Empedocles
err and bear the responsibility for this, but this is still the working out
of necessity.
Thus we can only feel ambivalent about the necessity whose oracles
rule our world. Necessity is hated (112/116 in CTXT-92) by a force
called grace,142 presumably for forcing repeated incarnations in our
world of woe. And yet, once the cycle has begun and the daimons have
separated themselves from the sphere, the process of birth and rebirth
is not only inevitable, it is a positive thing. For rebirth is an essential
step towards further enlightenment, since only by experiencing life
- intelligently - time after time can one hope to see things as they
really are and accept them and so find the bliss available to mortal
daimons.143
There is in Empedocles a fundamental and inevitable ambivalence
about the world of our experience: it is a world of woe, but it is also
the only means we have to redeem ourselves, to enlighten ourselves,
and ultimately to restore ourselves to the ontological purity and 'im-
mortality' which is only achievable under the rule of hateful strife.144
Our reincarnations take place against the backdrop of the larger
development of the world order from a state of love towards a state of
strife. Thus the further back one goes in the cycle, the greater the influ-
ence of love in the life of men. Fragments 122/128 and 123/130 speak
of a Golden Age characterized by peace and harmony.145 From one
point of view it is obviously preferable to live in that world. Yet as in-
dividuals we cannot control the world into which we will be born. No
matter how good a life we lead and no matter how much progress we
make in improving the fate of our souls for subsequent incarnations,146
the general development of the cosmic cycle will continue according
intercourse. This certainly leaves room for much other sexual activity (as one
might expect in a poem addressed to Pausanias, Empedocles' boy-lover), and it
helps us to focus on just what was held to be wrong with sex. Modern and even
post-Platonic arguments for sexual restraint would be quite different.
150 It would be tempting to dismiss such doctrines as a product of Hippolytus' own
imagination, if not for the evidence of Gellius in CTXT-110.
151 See Osborne Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy, 123. Plutarch (CTXT-105) notes that
birth is itself a work of strife since what is born must be nourished by feeding on
its relatives: one cannot be completely just and still survive in this world.
152 Ibid.
66 The Poem of Empedocles
156 135/127 describes the earlier steps on the ladder of self-improvement; 136/146
exactly matches the lofty status Empedocles has already achieved in his own life:
a prophet, poet, doctor, and political leader.
157 // this fragment refers to this sort of divinity, which it need not do.
68 The Poem of Empedocles
138/142: the houses of Zeus and of Hades no longer hold such a man.
Only the world of the long-lived gods on 'Olympus' remains for him.
Thus the successful daimon is eventually delivered safely to the best
condition possible for a compound entity.
If we seek further description of this highest personal divinization,
we must look to Empedocles' puzzling description of godhead in
109/133 and 110/134. Our sources (CTXT-90 and CTXT-91) present
these fragments as descriptions of the divine in general, and there
is no reason to doubt this. But Ammonius in CTXT-91 a gives us
a valuable additional indication. Though speaking about the totality
of the divine, Empedocles has for his immediate topic the Olympian
god Apollo; thus the patron god of the Pythagorean movement quite
naturally becomes the typical example of divinity. What is such a god
like? He is not perceptible by ordinary mortal senses (109/133), is
non-anthropomorphic, and indeed is virtually bodiless (110/134). Like
the equally divine sphere (34/29&28) his perfection lies in physical
indeterminacy. But such a god is unlike the sphere in two respects:
his perfection is also intellectual, he is a 'sacred thought organ'; and,
unlike the sphere, he is distinct from the cosmos and an inhabitant
of it, for he darts through it with his mind. We thus have a picture
of the highest and purest divinity achievable by a mortal compound.
The intellectual cast it possesses, especially its ability to penetrate the
entire cosmos intellectually, makes it a very apt god for a philosopher
to set up as the goal for eventual human emulation. The combination
of physical simplicity and freedom from further incarnations (until the
ultimate separation under total strife) with moral purity and epistemic
excellence expresses well the ideal which Empedocles set for himself.
163 See Charlton, 121-22; also Richard Sorabji Necessity, Cause and Blame 176-81.
71 Introduction
the case of animal formation: in one respect the two are vitally differ-
ent. The component parts of an animal are for the sake of the whole
animal, which is to say that they are for the sake of achieving the form
which constitutes the animal. Aristotle consistently holds that in the
case of natural organisms the final cause is the full development of the
form which defines the nature of the organism. Since Empedocles is
describing the first generation of an animal of a given type, he cannot,
by Aristotle's theory, say that the development of the organs is for
the sake of the form which defines the species - which does not yet
exist. On Empedocles' view, the generation of an animal is a matter
of external relations among distinct objects.166 The cases are signifi-
cantly different, since there is a single form which by nature unifies
the organs of an animal and defines the species, while atmospheric
phenomena, however regular they may be, and whether or not they
are for a purpose in nature, have no such unifying form. Any sense
in which non-biological natural phenomena have a final cause is thus
very different from the sense in which plants and animals have a final
cause, and it is really only the latter kind of case which Aristotle is
interested in here.
From his own perspective Aristotle is right in his criticism of
Empedocles' theory of animal generation, since it pinpoints what is
so striking about that theory; like any explanation of the first origins
of animal species, Empedocles' theory must account for the initial
emergence of a new entity, and this cannot be done in terms of an ex-
isting form, unless one holds a Platonic position on the permanence of
uninstantiated forms. So Empedocles cannot explain animal formation
by reference to a form or species-defining type; nor could anyone who
was attempting to do what he was trying to do. It is hard to resist the
conclusion that Aristotle's main objection is to any attempt to explain
the first origins of the natural world; he, after all, believed in the
eternity of the world as we now know it and of all the species within
it.167 If he held that view and shaped his theory of causal explanation
accordingly, then the project of accounting for absolute first origins
must have seemed to be quite fruitless; certainly such a project will
inevitably come into serious conflict with Aristotle's notion of what
counts as a satisfactory explanation.
166 Hence it is much like the rainfall example interpreted minimally, rather than in
the rich way advocated by Cooper; see previous note.
167 Compare the comments of Cooper, 209 and 216, on the role played by the eternity
of animal species in Aristotle's conception of teleology.
73 Introduction
Where does this leave Empedocles and final causes? It is not true
to say that Empedocles lacks a conception of final cause; things do
happen for the sake of other things in his world. Love and strife have
effects which it is hard not to describe in terms of quasi-personal
desires and intentions. But the final causes that Empedocles might
be prepared to recognize are not those of Aristotelian biology, eter-
nally instantiated forms defining unchangeable species. Aristotle's
complaint is not really about Empedocles' appeal to chance events
and random causation, but to the whole Presocratic attempt to ex-
plain the first origins of our world.168 His attack on Empedocles is
reasonable, but only from the perspective of his own theory. From
the larger point of view, which modern readers will inevitably take,
it will appear misguided. For us, Empedocles' theory of biological
development and the emergence of new kinds of animals (together
with his comparably interesting account of the emergence of life un-
der the reign of strife) has considerable interest. It does not rely
on 'chance events' in any sense which threatens successful expla-
nation of the development of life forms. Though the resemblance of
Empedocles' theories of animal generation to Darwinian evolution
is very slender, they nevertheless represent for us the clearest and
best-attested attempt in early Greek thought to give a rule-governed
and non-theological account of the origin of animal species. It is un-
fortunate that Aristotle's discussion of this theory does not show a
very great appreciation of the importance of such an attempt, but we
must recall that, for Aristotle, this was not a job which needed to be
done at all.
The other topic on which Aristotle and his commentators conflict
with Empedocles deals with necessity and the reasons why the cos-
mogonical phases of the cycle occur when they do.169 On one level it
is hard to see why Aristotle should be concerned about Empedocles'
explanation for the timing of the origins of the world; after all, every
168 It is significant that Aristotle pays no heed to the fact that the process he criticizes
actually occurred in the counter-world of increasing love and so is of no relevance
to our world of strife; nor does he care that the zoogony he criticizes is one which
will recur in other world cycles. As so often in his discussion of predecessors,
Aristotle focuses narrowly on exactly that aspect of their theories which is of
relevance to his own intellectual concerns.
169 There are also criticisms of his use of chance within the span of one cosmogonical
phase, such as in CTXT-29 and CTXT-83. But these criticisms are based on little
more than the peculiarities of Empedocles' turns of phrase, and on the kind of
misguided critique of mechanism discussed above.
74 The Poem of Empedocles
170 Compare A32, where necessity is equated with the one, that is, the sphere,
whose forms are love and strife and whose matter is the four roots (cf. A45a);
in A45b Plutarch takes the pair, love and strife, as being equivalent with the
blend of necessity and persuasion mentioned in the Timaeus, a blend which others
identified with 'fate.' Compare also Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle's Physics
(CIAG 9, 465.12-3): '[the efficient and final principle] which Anaxagoras assigns
to mind and Empedocles to love and strife and necessity.' This kind of comment
is a relatively harmless anachronism on the part of later writers, though for our
understanding of Empedocles it is just as useless as it is harmless.
75 Introduction
offered for the timing and pattern of the cycle. Empedocles does little
more than to assert the eternal and regular repetition of the events
which create and destroy worlds and to leave it at that. But should
we share Aristotle's and Simplicius' impatience with this? I think not.
Unless one is going to abandon the project of descriptive cosmogony
and adopt the conception of an eternal and essentially unchanging
world, then some sort of initial event will have to remain unexplained,
will have to be left as a brute fact. I do not think that contemporary
cosmologists find themselves embarrassed by their inability to state a
clear causal explanation for the first event they postulate; to attempt to
do otherwise would be to fall into an infinite regress, and that would
explain nothing. We should conclude, then, as before that Aristotelian
attacks on Empedocles' misuse of causal explanations tell us more
about the distinctive features of Aristotle's rather static world-view
than about the intrinsic failings of Empedocles' thought; what will
appeal to us as modern readers is surely Empedocles' determination
to address cosmogonical questions, rather than to take refuge in the
denial of all cosmogonical evolution.
But these very things are, and running through each other
they become different at different times and are always perpetually
alike.
we come together into one cosmos
to be many from one.
Whatever the supplements needed for lines 36-37, it seems clear that
in echoing 25/17.7-8 Empedocles intends to reassert yet again that
'we' human beings are not special, that we have no exemption from
the transience that is the condition of existence for all compounds
and mixtures in this world of cyclical change. To the extent that
the lines which follow (25/17.38-56) can be read, they appear to be
a continuation of this theme. We begin (38-^41) with the formulaic
catalogue of mortal compounds (trees, humans, birds, beasts, etc.),
culminating in the defiantly paradoxical claim that even the gods are
merely long-lived rather than immortal, subject to the same mortality
as other compounds. The badly damaged lines that follow (42-53) refer
to the constancy of the transformations such compounds undergo, their
cyclical nature, and the physical circumstances of those changes (dense
eddies, the sun, the earth).
The reference to 'lifetimes before' in 45 might mean that the 'trans-
fer' of line 46 alludes to reincarnation (one might also think back to
77 Introduction
11/115). But this need not be so. Empedocles may have been referring
only to the cyclical mortality of all compounds without any allusion to
a relatively permanent bearer of identity that might take on different
outer bodies. 25/17.54-56 continue the theme of mixture and change.
We might note the use of the neuter gender to refer to the components
of such mixtures. Despite the impersonality of the components, it turns
out to be 'we' who come together to form a unity in line 56. On balance,
it seems more likely that Empedocles' main focus here is on the way
the four roots mix and separate to form any and all compounds, and
that his inclusion of 'us' and the gods is meant to emphasize in the
most dramatic way possible that there are no exceptions whatsoever
to the iron law of mortality. The claim, then, is that even daimons (if
that is what we are) are mortal; there need not be any discussion here
about how such daimons come to be clothed in 'an alien robe of flesh'
(113/126).
At 25/17.57-59 Empedocles anticipates details of the cyclical trans-
formations of the world more concretely than one might have pre-
dicted before the papyrus was found. For even without M-P's sup-
plements we can see that Empedocles mentioned not just the general
activities of love and strife but also their locations while doing so:
strife does something in the depths and love is in the midst of the
whirl. To that limited extent my account in section 1.3.5 needs to
be supplemented. Nevertheless, there is no room in the lines that
follow for a significant treatment of the movements of love and strife
in the cosmos, and the themes that follow in this immediate context
(25/17.57-69) suggest that the topic remains fairly broad at this point
in the poem. In my view, the evidence of the papyrus suggests that
the detailed account of the stages of the cycle does not begin until later
in the poem. Hence, the likeliest conclusion is that there was at this
point nothing more than a general anticipation of the fuller treatment
of the cosmic cycle that we know was more generally discussed later,
starting with 31/27. It is not until 61/35 that Empedocles comes back
to give a detailed treatment of the spatial movements of love and strife
in the evolution of the cycle. M-P emphasize the similarity of 61/35,
especially lines 3-6, to 25/17.57-59 and draw on them more closely
for supplements than I think advisable; hence, I do not accept their
suggestion of bivrjs at line 58.
My reluctance to supplement here and elsewhere along the lines
proposed by M-P stems from an unease about the degree to which
their conjectural supplements reinforce a view about the structure of
the poem, a view that in turn justifies further conjectural supplements.
78 The Poem of Empedocles
more about the contents of the proem we would be even more confi-
dent that 'religious' material was ubiquitous in Empedocles' work.) In
the debate about the number of poems it has now become unreasonable
to rely on arguments based on thematic distinctions. A conviction that
there were originally two poems must now rest almost exclusively on
the slender evidence of Diogenes Laertius' bibliographical data.171
171 M-P 119 also refer to the 'teneur du fr. 112 D.' as support for the original existence
of two poems. On 1/112 see above, pp. 17-19.
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PART 2 FRAGMENTS IN CONTEXT
CTXT-1
(a)
Diogenes Laertius 8.54 (Al). That he was a citizen of Acragas in Sicily
he himself says at the beginning of the purifications:
O friends, who dwell in the great city of the yellow Acragas, up in the
high parts of the city
(1/112.1-2). And that is the information about his family background.1
(b)
Diogenes Laertius 8.61-62 (Al). At any rate, Heracleides says that the
case of the woman who stopped breathing was like this: for thirty days
her body was preserved intact, although she neither breathed nor had
a pulse. Hence he called him both a doctor and a prophet, deriving
this also from these lines:
O friends, who dwell in the great city of the yellow Acragas,
up in the high parts of the city, concerned with good deeds,
hail! I, in your eyes a deathless god, no longer mortal,
go among all, honoured, just as I seem:
wreathed with ribbons and festive garlands.
As soon as I arrive in flourishing cities I am revered
by all, men and women. And they follow at once,
in their ten thousands, asking where is the path to gain,
some in need of divinations, others in all sorts of diseases
sought to hear a healing oracle
(l/112.1ff.).
(c)
Tzetzes Exegesis of the Iliad, 29.21-27. And Empedocles of Acragas,
when he was about to throw himself into the craters of Aetna, spoke
in a similar way to his followers:
hail! I, in your eyes a deathless god, not at all mortal
(1/112.4), i.e. 'I shall be dissolved into the impassible and immortal
elements themselves, from which I was compounded/2
(d)
Diodorus Siculus 13.83.2. Consequently Empedocles too says concern-
ing them [i.e. the Acragantines]:
respectful harbours for strangers, untried by evil ...
(1/112.3).
CTXT-2
CTXT-3
CTXT-4
CTXT-5
Plutarch Philosophers and Men in Power 777c. For he who, through phi-
losophy, finally attains virtue always makes a man who is in tune with
himself, unblamed by himself and full of peace and loving thoughts
towards himself:
There is no dissension nor unseemly battle in [his] limbs
(5/27a).
CTXT-6
CTXT-7
CTXT-8
3 The Greek word here also means 'palm' of the hand and takes on the secondary
sense of device; the point of using the word is surely that the 'palm' of the hand
grasps things, just as the sense organs, referred to here, do. It probably refers to the
pores of the sense organs.
85 Fragments in Context
(8/2.1-8). And he clarifies the point that the truth is not completely
beyond our grasp, but can be grasped as far as human reason extends,
by adding this to the lines quoted above:
But you, then, since you have stepped aside here,
you will learn. Mortal cunning has certainly gone no further
(8/2.9-10). And in what follows he criticizes those who announce that
they know more and establishes that what is grasped through each
sense is trustworthy, as long as reason is in control of the senses, even
though he had previously denigrated the confidence [one gets] from
the senses. For he says:
But gods! turn aside their madness from my tongue
and channel a pure stream from holy mouths.
And you, maiden muse of the white arms, much-remembering,
I beseech you: what it is right for short-lived creatures to hear,
send [to me], driving your well-reined chariot from [the halls of] piety
(9/3.1-5).
And do not be forced to take from mortals
the flowers of fair-famed honour, on condition that you say more than is
holy,
in boldness, and then to sit on the peaks of wisdom.
But come, consider, by every device, how each thing is clear -
not holding any sight as more reliable than what you hear,
nor the resounding hearing [as more reliable] than the clarities of the
tongue,
and do not in any way curb the reliability of the other limbs by which
there is a passage for understanding,
but understand each thing in the way that it is clear
(14/3.6-13).
CTXT-9
CTXT-10
(a)
Plutarch On Exile 607c-d. But Empedocles, making a proclamation as
a prelude at the starting-point of his philosophy:
There is an oracle of necessity, an ancient decree of the gods,
that when someone by his sins stains his dear limbs with blood
- the daimons who have won long-lasting life -
he wanders for thrice ten thousand seasons away from the blessed ones.
Now I too go this route, an exile from the gods and a wanderer
(11/115.1,3,5,6,13) reveals that not just he himself but all of us, from
himself on, are wanderers here, strangers, and exiles. For, he says, O
men, neither blood nor blended spirit provided us with the substance
and principle of our souls, but the body is shaped from these, being
earth-born and mortal, and as the soul has come here from elsewhere
he calls birth a journey abroad, using the gentlest of names as a eu-
phemism. But the profoundest truth is that the soul is in exile and
wanders, being driven by divine decrees and laws. Then, as though
on an island pounded by a powerful swell and bound in its body
'like an oyster/ in Plato's words [Phaedrus 250c], because it cannot
remember or recall
from what honour and how great a height of bliss
(114/119),4 it has departed, not exchanging Sardis for Athens nor
Corinth for Lemnos or Scyros but, exchanging heaven and the moon
for earth and life on earth, if it moves a short distance here from one
place to another it finds it hard to bear and feels like a foreigner,
withering away like an ignoble plant.
(b)
Plutarch On Isis and Osiris 361c. Empedocles says that the daimons
also pay penalties for their sins and errors: (11/115.9-12), until being
punished in this way and purified they again take their natural place
and position.
4 Cf. Clement Stromateis, 4.13.1 (II.254.8-11). '... teaching and proving: "from what
honour and how great a height of bliss" (114/119) he came here [following
Staehlen's emendation] and, as Empedocles says, passes time among mortals.'
87 Fragments in Context
(c)
Plutarch Obsolescence of Oracles 418e.5 ... but I think it is too bold and
barbaric to take from the poetry of Empedocles, by the handful as it
were, sins and madness and divinely sent exile, and to impose them
on these daimons, and to suppose that in the end they die like men.
Ibid. 420d. But the only thing I have heard the Epicureans saying
against those who bring in the daimons of Empedocles is that it is not
possible for them to be 'blessed' and 'long-lived' if they are bad and
sinful, since evil is very blind and prone to destructive forces; but this
[criticism] is silly.
(d)
Plotinus Enneads 4.8.1, 17-22. And Empedocles, by saying that there
is a law for souls, that when they sin they should fall here, and that he
himself became an 'exile from god' and arrived by 'trusting in mad
strife/ revealed as much as Pythagoras did, I think, and his followers
alluded riddlingly to this and many other doctrines.
(e)
Celsus, at Origen Contra Celsum 8.53. ... since men are born bound to
the body, whether [it is] because of the organized plan of the universe
or because they are paying a penalty for some sin or because their
soul is weighed down by some passions until it is purified in the
determined cycles. For as Empedocles said it must 'wander for thrice
ten thousand seasons away from the blessed ones' (11/115.6) becoming
all sorts of forms of mortal things throughout time (11/115.7). For we
must believe that they are turned over to certain warders [who are i
charge] of this prison.
(f)
Porphyry, at Stobaeus 2.8.42, p. 169, 3-8. It is believed that fate is like
this, being similar to the declarations of the laws, being itself a law
and
an ancient decree of the gods,
eternal, securely sealed by broad oaths
(11/115.1-2), as Empedocles says.
5 This passage and the next, from the same dialogue, are discussed by Daniel Babut
'Sur 1'unite de la pensee d'Empedocle' 150.
88 The Poem of Empedocles
(g)
Hippolytus Refutatio 7.29.9-7.30.4 (211.17-215.12). And destructive
strife is the craftsman and creator of the becoming of all things that
have come into being, as love is of the exodus, the change, and the
restoration to the one from the cosmos of things which have come
into being. Concerning the point that both of these are immortal and
uncreated and have never received a starting-point for becoming,
Empedocles says other things in roughly this fashion:
For they are, as they were before and will be, nor do I think
that endless time will ever be empty of these two
(20/16). What are 'these'? strife and love. For they never began to come
into being, but they pre-existed and will always exist, being unable
to endure destruction because of their unborn quality. But fire <and
water> and earth and air are dying and returning to life.6 For when
the things which come to be by strife's agency die, love receives them
and draws them towards, puts them with, and assimilates them to the
universe, so that the universe might remain one, always being organized
by love in one manner and form. And when love makes the one out of
many and assimilates the separated things to the one, strife again tears
them from the one and makes many, i.e. fire, water, earth, and air, the
animals and plants created from these and all the parts of the cosmos
which we conceive of. And concerning the shape of the cosmos as it is
when ordered by love, [Empedocles] speaks roughly as follows:
For two branches do not dart from its back
nor feet nor swift knees nor potent genitals
(34/29&28.1-2). But 'it was' a sphere [cr^atpo? eV] and is equal to itself
[Kai to-6? (TTLV ai>ro>];7 love produces from many a one, of roughly this
6 Cf. 61/35.
7 This paraphrase is reconstructed as line 4 of fragment 29 by D-K. See Simplicius,
Commentary on Aristotle's Physics 1124.1-2 (below CTXT-21) for the neuter form
cr<palpoi> ZTJV. The rest of fragment 34/29&2S is cited very bittily in three places:
Stobaeus 1.15.2, p. 144.19-145.2. quotes 34/29&28.S-4: 'but it indeed is equal
<to itself> on all sides and totally unbounded, / a rounded sphere rejoicing in its
surrounding solitude' [alternative translations for 'solitude' are 'oneness' and 'rest'].
There is also a quotation in an anonymous commentary on Aratus, p. 97.24-29:
'The universe revolves around itself day by day and hour by hour, as the [poet]
of Acragas also says: 34/29&2S.4, calling the sphere [sphaira] sphairos, as Homer
says hesperos for hespera [Odyssey 1.422 et al.] and [calling it] rounded because of its
sphericity and [calling] the permanence of its revolution the surrounding solitude
[or rest].'
Similarly: Achilles Introduction to Aratus 6, p. 37.11-13. 'It is preferable to
understand the heaven and the things in it as possessing the shape of a sphere,
following Empedocles, who spoke thus: 34/29&2S.4.'
89 Fragments in Context
character and a most beautiful form for the cosmos. But strife, the
cause of the organization of the individual things, wrenches [things]
away from that one and produces many.
and evil arrangements of mad strife, and hurries and labours to bring
them little by little out of the cosmos and assimilate them to the one.
Therefore because of this kind of organization of this divided cosmos,
[created by] destructive strife, Empedocles calls on his students to
refrain from all living things. For he says that the bodies of animals
which are eaten are the dwellings of punished souls. And he teaches
those who listen to such arguments to be self-controlled with respect
to intercourse with women, so that they will not collaborate with and
partake in the works produced by strife, who always dissolves and
separates the work of love. Empedocles says that this is the greatest
law of the organization of the universe, speaking roughly as follows:
There is an oracle of necessity, an ancient decree of the gods,
eternal, securely sealed by broad oaths
(11/115.1-2), calling necessity the change from one to many caused
by strife and the change from many to one caused by love.
And as I said, there are four mortal gods, fire, water, earth, and air,
and two which are immortal, unborn, and hostile to each other always,
love and strife. And strife always commits injustice and is greedy and
tears apart love's possessions and assigns them to himself, while love
who is always and forever a good deity, caring for unity, summons,
brings together, and makes one the things torn apart from the universe
and tortured and punished by the craftsman in the foundation [of the
cosmos]. According to Empedocles' philosophy, the coming into being
and destruction and composition (formed from good and bad) of our
cosmos is like this. He says that there is a third, intelligible power
which can be intuited from these, speaking roughly as follows:
For if, thrusting them deep down in your crowded thinking organs,
you gaze on them in kindly fashion, with pure meditations,
absolutely all these things will be with you throughout your life,
and from these you will <acquire> many others; for these things
themselves
will expand to form each character, according to the growth [lit. nature
of each.
But if you reach out for different things, such as blunt their meditations,
truly they will abandon you quickly, as time circles round,
desiring to arrive at their own dear kind.
For know that all have thought and a share of understanding
(16/110).8
(h)
Hippolytus Refutatio 7.30.4 (216.7-13). You [the heretic Marcion] do not
even notice that you are teaching the purifications of Empedocles. For
in truth by following him in every detail you teach your own students
to reject foods so that they will not eat a body which is the remnant
of a soul punished by strife. By following Empedocles' doctrines you
are dissolving the marriages fitted together by god, so that the work
of love will be preserved for you, one and indivisible. For marriage,
according to Empedocles, separates the one and makes many, as we
have shown.
CTXT-11
CTXT-12
(a)
Diogenes Laertius 8.59 (Al). Satyrus says that Gorgias said that he was
present while Empedocles practised wizardry. And he himself makes
this and many other announcements in his poetry, where he says:
All the potions which there are as a defence against evils and old age,
you shall learn, since for you alone will I accomplish all these things.
You shall put a stop to the strength of tireless winds,
which rush against the land and wither the fields with their blasts;
and again, if you wish, you shall bring the winds back again;
and you shall make, after dark rain, a drought timely
for men, and after summer drought you shall make
tree-nourishing streams which dwell in the aither;
and you shall bring from Hades the strength of a man who has died
(15/111).
(b)
Clement Stromateis 6.30.1-3 (11.445.11-20). Empedocles of Acragas was
called the 'wind-stopper.' For once when a wind blew from the moun-
tain of Acragas, dire and pestilential to the inhabitants and causing
92 The Poem of Empedocles
sterility in their wives too, he is said to have stopped it. That is why
he himself in his poem writes: (15/111.3-5). And he said that they
followed him, some in need of oracles, others pierced for a long time
in harsh diseases.9
CTXT-13
(a)
Aristotle De Anima 404b8-15. But those [who consider] knowledge
and the perception of things say that the soul is the principles (some
positing several, others [just] one), as Empedocles [says the soul is
made up] of all the elements, and that each of them is a soul, speaking
as follows:
By earth we see earth; by water, water;
by aither, shining aither; but by fire, blazing fire;
love by love and strife by baneful strife
(17/109).
(b)
Hippolytus Refutatio 6.11-12 (138.3-9). As Empedocles says: (17/109).
For, [Simon] says, [Empedocles] thought that all the parts of fire, <the
visible and> the invisible, have 'equal knowledge and intelligence/10
CTXT-14
(a)
Pseudo-Aristotle De Melissa, Xenophane, Gorgia 975a36-b8. Again, even
if it is totally impossible for what is not to come into being and for
what is to be destroyed, still what prevents some of them from being
[things which] become, and others eternal, as even Empedocles says?
For he too concedes all these things:
For it is impossible that there should be coming to be from what is not,
and that what is should be destroyed is unaccomplishable and unheard
of;
for it will always be there, wherever one may push it on any occasion
9 The end of the sentence seems to be corrupt in the mss of Clement. It is obviously
a paraphrase of lines 10-12 of 1/112, though the exact reconstruction of line 12 and
so of the sentence here cannot be known with certainty. I translate here the text as
printed in Staehlin.
10 A variant on 16/110.10.
93 Fragments in Context
(18/12). But nevertheless he says that of things which exist some are
eternal (fire, water, earth, and air) and others come into being and
have come into being from them. For, as he thinks, there is no other
coming into being for things which exist: (21/8.3-4).
(b)
Pseudo-Philo The Eternity of the World 5. For just as nothing comes
into being from what is not, neither is anything destroyed into what
is not: 18/12.1-2.
CTXT-15
CTXT-16
(a)
Plutarch Reply to Colotes llllf-1112a. And Colotes, as though address-
ing an illiterate king, again seizes on Empedocles, as though he were
inspired with the same view:
I shall tell you something else. There is no growth13 of each14 mortal
thing
nor any birth of destructive death,
but only mixture and interchange of what is mixed
exist, and growth is the name given to them by men
(21/8). I at least do not see how these ideas are in conflict with life
for those who believe that there is neither a coming-into-being of
what is not nor a destruction of what is, but that coming-into-being
is a name applied to the combination with one another of some
existing things, death a name applied to their separation from one
another. And Empedocles has shown that he said 'growth' [phusis]
for 'coming-into-being' by contrasting it to death. And if those who
say that comings-into-being are mixtures and destructions are dis-
solutions do not and cannot live, what are they [i.e. the Epicure-
ans] doing [that is any] different? And yet Empedocles, by gluing
and fitting the elements together with heat, softness, and moisture,
is in a way giving them mixture and a unifying coalescence, but
they ...
See also CTXT-14a.
(b)
Aristotle Metaphysics 1014b35-1015a3. Again, 'nature' [phusis] is used
in another way, [to refer to] the substance [ousia] of things which exist
by nature, as for example those who say that [something's] primary
composition is its nature,15 or as Empedocles says that:
There is no nature of any of the things which are,
but only mixture and interchange of what is mixed
exist, and nature is the name given to them by men
(21/8.1,3,4).
(c)
Aetius 1.30.1 (Dox. Gr. 326.10-21). Empedocles says that there is
growth [phusis] of nothing, but rather a mixture and separation of
the elements. For in book one of the physics he writes thus:
I shall tell you something else. There is no growth of any of all mortal
things,
nor any end in destructive death,
but only mixture and interchange of what is mixed
exist, and growth is the name given by mortal men
(21/8).
CTXT-17
16 What follows here is given by Wright as fragment 136 and by D-K as BIO.
96 The Poem of Empedocles
(24/15). For this is not what someone would say who denies that men
born and living exist, but rather it is what someone would say who
supposes that those not yet born and those already dead still exist.
CTXT-18
CTXT-19
(a)
Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics CIAG 9,157.25-161.20,
commenting on 187a21ff. See also A28b.
In book one of his physics Empedocles sets out in the following man-
ner the one and the limited many, and the periodic reconstitution,
and [the process of] coming-into-being and destruction by means of
combination and separation:
I shall tell a double tale. For at one time [they! grew to be one alone
from many, and at another, again, [theyl grew apart to be many from
one.
And there is a double coming to be of mortals and a double waning;
for the coming together of [them] all gives birth to and destroys the one,
while the other, as [they] again grow apart, was nurtured and flew away.
And these things never cease from constantly alternating,
at one time all coming together by love into one,
and at another time again all being borne apart separately by the hostility
of strife.
<Thus insofar as they have learned to grow as one from many>17
and they finish up many as the one again grows apart,
in this respect they come to be and have no constant life;
but insofar as they never cease from constantly interchanging,
in this respect they are always unchanged in a cycle.
But come! Hear my words; for learning will expand your thought organs.
For as I said before, in revealing the limits of my words,
I shall tell a double tale. For at one time [they] grew to be one alone
from many, and at another, again, [they] grew apart to be many from
one -
17 Line 9 is supplied from the quotation by Aristotle. It seems to have been missing
from Simplicius' text.
97 Fragments in Context
fire and water and earth and the boundless height of air;
and destructive strife apart from these, like in every respect,
and love among them, equal in length and breadth.
And you, gaze on her with your understanding and do not sit with
stunned eyes.
For she is deemed even by mortals to be inborn in [their] bodies
[lit. joints]
and by her they think loving thoughts and accomplish works of unity
calling her by the names Joy and Aphrodite.
Her no mortal man has perceived whirling among them [i.e. the roots].
But you, hear the undeceptive progression of [my] account.
For these things are all equal and of like age in their birth,
but each rules over a different prerogative and each has its own character,
and they dominate in turn as time circles around.
And in addition to them nothing comes into being nor ceases [to be];
for if they constantly perished, they would no longer be.
And what could increase this totality, and whence would it come?
And how would it also be destroyed, since nothing is bereft of them?
But these very things are and running through each other
they become different at different times and are always, perpetually alike
(25/17).
In these lines he says that what [comes] from the many (the four
elements) is one and he shows [that this happens] because sometimes
love predominates and sometimes strife. That he completely omits
neither of these is shown by the fact that all are 'equal and of like
age in their birth' and that 'nothing comes into being in addition or
ceases [to be].' The plurality from which the one [comes] is a many.
For love is not the one but strife too contributes to the one. After
saying quite a few other things he introduces the character of each
of the above-mentioned [elements], calling fire 'sun/ air 'gleam' and
'sky/ water 'rain' and 'sea.' He speaks as follows:
But come! Gaze on this witness to my previous words,
if anything was in my previous [remarks] left wanting in form:
the sun, bright to look on and utterly hot,
and the immortals which are drenched in heat and shining light,
and rain, in all things dark and cold;
and there flow from the earth things dense and solid.
And in wrath all are distinct in form and separate,
and they come together in love and are desired by each other.
From these all things that were, that are and will be in the future
98 The Poem of Empedocles
(b)
Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics CIAG 9, 25.21-26.4 (=
A28b). He makes the corporeal elements four, fire and air and wa-
ter and earth, which are eternal, changing in respect to manyness
and fewness through combination and separation;20 but the principles
strictly speaking by which these elements are set in motion are love
and strife. For the elements must continually move in alternation,
sometimes being combined by love, sometimes being separated by
strife. So according to him the principles are actually six. And in one
place he gives love and strife active power, when he says: (25/17.7-8),
and sometimes he arranges them too as coordinate with the four, when
he says: (25/17.17-20).
(c)
Aristotle Physics 250b23-251a5. If indeed it is possible for there to
be some time when nothing is in motion, this must happen in one
of two ways: for either [it could happen] as Anaxagoras says (for he
says that Intelligence initiated motion and made things distinct when
all things had been together and at rest for an indefinite time); or [it
could happen] as Empedocles says, that there is motion in turn and
again rest, motion whenever love makes the one out of the many or
strife [makes] the many out of one, and rest in the intervening times.
He says:
Thus insofar as they have learned to grow as one from many
and they finish up many as the one again grows apart,
in this respect they come to be and have no constant life;
but insofar as they never cease from constantly interchanging,
in this respect they are always unchanged in a cycle
(25/17.9-13).21 For one must suppose that he means by 'in so far as
they change' [a change] from this to that.
(d)
Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's De Caelo CIAG 7,93.18-294.3 (=
A52b). Others say the same cosmos comes into being and is destroyed in
alternation and that when it again comes into being it is again destroyed
and that this succession is eternal. For example, Empedocles says that
love and strife predominate in turn and the one brings everything
together into one and destroys the cosmos of strife and makes from it
the Sphere, while strife separates the elements again and makes this
sort of cosmos. Empedocles indicates this by saying: (25/17.7,8,10-13).
(e)
Plutarch Dialogue on Love 756d. But, my friend, when you hear Empe-
docles saying: (25/17.20-21), you must believe that these words are
spoken about Eros. For though we cannot see this god, we must form
the opinion that he is among the oldest gods.
21 It is impossible to be sure which fragment Aristotle means to quote here, for these
lines are virtually identical with 28/26.8-12. If one accepts that 25/17.9 is a part of
both fragments (the line is found in this quotation in Aristotle, but is omitted in
Simplicius' quotations of 25/17, though it is clearly required for the sense), then the
only difference between 25/17.9-13 and 28/26.8-12 is at the beginning of 25/17.12
= 28/26.11, which read y 8e 8iaA\a<rcroi'Ta and 77 8e rd8' aAAao-uovTa respectively.
I assume that in quoting the common passage Aristotle recalled the wording of
28/26.
101 Fragments in Context
(f)
Clement Stromateis 5.15.4 (11.335.20-22). Empedocles also includes love
among the principles, conceiving it as a sort of unifying affection
[dyd-Trry]: (25/17.21).
CTXT-20
CTXT-21
all the limbs, [that is], which have found a body,27 in the peak of
flourishing life;
at another time again, being divided by evil quarrels
they [the limbs] wander, all of them separately, about the breakers of life.
In the same way [this process operates] for bushes and fish in their watery
halls
and mountain dwelling beasts and winged gulls28
(38/20).
Aristotle, in citing the lines of Empedocles in which he thinks he
gives an account of motion and motionlessness,29 considers movement
in the coming-to-be of the one from the many and of the many from
the one; for Empedocles too clearly says: (28/26.10 = 25/17.11). For
it was stated above that movement accompanies coming-to-be, and
Empedocles seems to see motionlessness in the eternal sameness of
the mutual interchange of one and many. For that is the force of:
(28/26.11-12). Alexander knows this interpretation, but says that Aris-
totle is not interpreting it in this way, but understands even these as
being about change, when he says30 'in so far as they change from
this,' i.e. they do not stop changing from these to those.
CTXT-22
Scholiast on Plato's Gorgias 498e, p. 161. 'Twice and thrice the fair' is
a proverb, that one must speak of fair things many times. The line is
Empedocles'; hence the proverb. For he says:
For it is noble to say what one must even twice
(29/25).
CTXT-23
Plutarch The Obsolescence of Oracles 418c. But so that I will not seem,
in the words of Empedocles,
... by linking different high points to others
not to complete one path of my stories
(30/24), allow me to put a fitting conclusion to my initial remarks -
for we have already reached the conclusion.
CTXT-24
Plutarch The Face on the Moon 926d-927a. So, good sir, look out and
see to it that you do not, by moving and transferring each thing to its
natural place, produce in your philosophy a dissolution of the cosmos
and bring Empedocles' strife to bear on things; or rather that you do
not incite those ancient Titans and Giants against nature and long to
gaze on that mythical and terrifying disorder and sin, by separating
everything heavy from the light:
There the shining form of the sun is not discerned
nor indeed the shaggy might of earth nor the sea
(31/27), as Empedocles says. Earth had no share in warmth, nor water
any share in breath [i.e. air]; none of the heavy things was up nor any of
the light things down; but the principles of the universe were unblended,
unloving, and solitary, not desiring combination or communion with
one another; fleeing and not admitting of blending or communion with
one another, turning away and executing their separate and self-willed
movements, they were in the condition which Plato31 attributed to
everything from which god is absent, i.e. in the condition of bodies
when deserted by mind and soul. They were in that condition until by
providence desire came into nature because of the presence of love and
Aphrodite and Eros, as Empedocles, Parmenides, and Hesiod say, so that
[the elements] by changing places and sharing their powers among each
other, some being bound by the necessities of movement, some of rest,
[all] being forced to give in and move from their natural state towards the
better, they might create the harmony and communion of the universe.
CTXT-25
(a)
Aristotle Metaphysics 1000al8-b20. But it is not worthwhile to un-
dertake a serious consideration of those who offer their wisdom in
mythical terms, whereas it is necessary to enquire of those who speak
by way of proofs, asking why it is that, based on the same principles,
some existent things are eternal in nature and some are destroyed.
Since they do not state a cause and since it is unreasonable that matters
should be so, it is obvious that existing things would have neither the
31 Timaeus 53a-b.
105 Fragments in Context
same principles nor the same causes. For even the very person one
would think likely to speak most consistently with himself, Empedo-
cles, suffers from the same deficiency. For he posits strife as a principle
responsible for destruction, but nevertheless strife would also seem to
generate [everything] except the one. For everything else comes from
this except god. At any rate, he says,
from which all things that were, that are, and will be in the future32
have sprung: trees and men and women
and beasts and birds and water-nourished fish,
and long-lived gods
(25/17.38-41). And the point is obvious even without these lines. For
if there were no [strife] in things, everything would be one, according
to Empedocles. For when they come together, then
strife was moving out to the limit
(32/36). That is why it turns out that his most happy god is less
intelligent than the others. For he does not recognize all the elements.
For he lacks strife and like is recognized by like. For, he says,
By earth we see earth; by water, water;
by aither, shining aither ...
love by love and strife by baneful strife
(17/109).33 But the source of the argument is obvious, because strife
turns out for him to be no more a cause of destruction than of existence.
Similarly, neither is love [only] [a cause] of existence. For by bringing
[things] together into the one it destroys the others. And at the same
time he gives no cause for the change except that it is so by nature:
(35/30), as though the change were necessary. And he indicates that
necessity is responsible.34 But nevertheless about this much at least he
alone speaks consistently. For he does not make some existing things
destructible and some indestructible, but makes everything except the
elements destructible.
(b)
Stobaeus Eclogae l.lO.lla, p. 121 10-14, gives 32/36 as the fourth line
of 12/6.
32 Here I follow M-P 175-178 and use the text of Ross rather than Jaeger.
33 Cf. A86.10.
34 For Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics 1184.5-18, commenting on this
point, which is also made in Aristotle's Physics (A38), see 33/27 in CTXT-20.
106 The Poem of Empedocles
CTXT-26
CTXT-27
The two fragments which follow are preserved only in the Armenian prose
translation of Philo of Alexandria's On Providence. Abraham Terian, who has
kindly translated these texts directly from the Armenian for me, has confirmed
that the Armenian translator was rendering a direct quotation of Empedocles,
and not Philo's paraphrase, as has heretofore been assumed. Hence I print
Terian's translation as a new fragment. For the practice of including a frag-
ment not preserved in the original Greek, compare 105/94, preserved only in
Latin.35
Philo On Providence 2.60-61. The parts of the world seem to bear the
same characteristics, as Empedocles says:
For when aither separated and flew off from air and fire,36 and evolved into
a heaven revolving in a very wide orbit, then fire - which had remained a
little apart from the heaven - itself also grew into the rays of the sun. Earth
withdrew into one place and when solidified by necessity it emerged and
35 There is a recent text of the Armenian in the edition of M. Hadas-Lebel (Paris: Cerf
1973). For the details of the Armenian translation of the lost Greek original, see
Hadas-Lebel, Introduction I.
36 Does this line suggest that Empedocles actually held that there were five elements?
It is hard to say, in view of the peculiar status of this text. But if the translations
from Greek, through Armenian, to English are exactly correct, this seems a natural
reading. However, it is also possible that aither, air, and fire here designate not pure
roots, but empirically observable mixtures of the roots. If this is so, then perhaps
aither is used to designate a mixture of air and fire sufficiently stable to separate off
from them. But the question is as uncertain as it is important.
107 Fragments in Context
settled in the middle. Moreover, aither, being much lighter, moves all around
it without diversion
(40/A49a). Is the stability of the earth, then, caused by God and not
by the ever-increasing whirls, whose rounds polished its shape? For
indeed, it got locked in its orbit, a magnificent and resplendent circle
of light, wherefore it does not fall in one direction or another. Then,
reasoning about the sea, he says:
Its ferocious edge keeps swelling, as when swamps absorb the floating hail.
For all the moisture on earth tends to be driven into its hollows, being forced
by the constant whirls of the wind, by the strongest bonds, as it were
(60/A66a).
CTXT-28
(a)
Eustathius, Commentary on the Odyssey, 1.321. Some say avo-naia for
'invisible' or 'far from sight.' But others think it stands for 'upward
moving/ basing their interpretation on the words of Empedocles, who
says of fire: '[moving] quickly upwards' (41/51). Hence it is also clear
that avoTTdiov is neuter.
(b)
Scholiast on Odyssey 1.320 dyomua. Some38 say 'invisible/ others
37
CTXT-29
(a)
Aristotle Physics 196al7-24. Indeed, they did not think that chance
was one of those things - e.g. love or strife or fire or some other
such thing. So it is odd, whether they did not suppose it existed or,
thinking that it did, omitted it, especially since they sometimes use it,
as Empedocles says that air is not always separated off in the highest
37 Cited at pp. 745-6 of the Etymologicum Graecae Linguae Gudianum, ed. F. Sturz
(Leipzig 1818; repr. Olms 1973).
38 I.e. Herodian; see Grammatici Graeci pt. 3, vol. 2, p. 133.
108 The Poem of Empedocles
position, but in any chance way. In his creation of the cosmos, at any
rate, he says:
For it happened to run in this way then, but often otherwise
(42/53). And he says that most of the parts of animals came to be by
chance.39
(b)
Philoponus, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics CIAG 16, 261.17-25.
Empedocles, at any rate, says that air has occupied the upper position
by chance. For although all existing things were previously confused
together in the sphere, when they were separated by strife each was
carried to the place where it now is, not by some providential plan,
but just as it chanced to happen. At any rate he says this about the
movement of air upwards: (42/53). For now it is above earth and water,
but at another time (in another creation of the cosmos, if it should so
happen) when there comes to be a cosmos again from the sphere, it
takes another position and place.
(c)
CTXT-30
CTXT-31
CTXT-32
Aristotle De Caelo 294a21-28. For some say for this reason that what
is below the earth is indefinite, saying that it [the earth] is rooted to
an indefinite [distance], like Xenophanes of Colophon, to avoid the
trouble of seeking the cause. That is why Empedocles too made this
criticism, saying:
if indeed the depths of earth and abundant aither are unbounded,
as is poured out in a vain stream
from the tongues in the mouths of many, who have seen little of
the whole
(46/39).
CTXT-33
Plutarch The Face on the Moon 920c. ... as Empedocles too somewhere
gives a not unpleasing account of the difference between the two [sun
and moon]:
sharp-arrowed sun and gentle moon
(47/40), referring in this way to [the moon's] allure and gracidusness
and harmlessness.
CTXT-34
(a)
(b)
Suda, s.v. Helios. 'Empedocles: 38/41; Etymologicum Magnum41 s.v. He-
lios: 'said with reference to ciAi'c/o, o-waOpoifa, as Empedocles: 48/41.'
CTXT-35
CTXT-36
CTXT-37
Plutarch The Face on the Moon 929c-e. But [the moon], Democritus says,
standing in a direct line with the source of light, takes in and receives
the sun['s rays]. So it would be reasonable for [the moon] to be visible
and for [the sun] to shine through. But [the moon] is far from doing
that. For [the moon] is invisible then and has often hidden [the sun]
and made him invisible:
... it shaded its beams
(54/42.1), as Empedocles says:
on to the earth from above,43 and darkened as much
of the earth as the breadth of the grey-eyed moon
(54/42.2-3), as though the light fell into night and darkness, and not
onto another heavenly body ... So the theory of Empedocles remains,
that it is by a reflection of the sun onto the moon that the moon's
illumination reaches us. Hence it does not reach us in a hot, bright
state, as one would expect had there been a mixing of their lights, but
as reflected voices reproduce an echo weaker than the utterance and
the blows of ricocheting missiles strike more softly:
Thus the beam, having struck the broad circle of the moon
(51/43), has a weak and dim backflow towards us, its power being
dissipated by the reflection.44
CTXT-38
Achilles Introduction to Aratus 16, p. 43.2-6. Some say that the sun is
first, the moon second, and Saturn third. But the commoner opinion
is that the moon is first, since they say it is a fragment of the sun; as
Empedocles too says:
a round and borrowed light, it whirls about the earth
(52/45).
Cf. Parmenides B14.
CTXT-39
Plutarch The Face on the Moon 925b-c. [The moon] practically touches
the earth and revolving nearby, Empedocles says,
like the path of a chariot it whirls, and around the furthest point .. .45
(53/46). And often [the moon] does not get beyond the shadow of the
earth, which extends only a short way, because the source of light is
very large. But [the moon] seems to revolve so close to it, and practi-
cally in the arms of earth, that it is screened from the sun by it, unless
it rises above this shadowy and earthen and nocturnal place which is
allotted to earth. So, I think, we must take courage and say that the
moon is within the earth's bounds, being occulted by its extremities.
CTXT-40
CTXT-41
Plutarch Table Talk 720e. For the air being dark, according to Empe-
docles,
in night, blind-eyed and solitary
(56/49), gives back [to us] through our ears as much as it removes
from our eyes of the ability to see ahead.
CTXT-42
CTXT-43
CTXT-44
CTXT-45
(a)
Aristotle De Caelo 295a29-b9. Again, one could also make that point
against Empedocles. For when the elements were separated apart by
46 Compare Nicomachean Ethics 7.3, where Empedocles' verses are cited as examples
of meaningful utterances which can nevertheless be uttered uncomprehendingly by
drunkards and men in the grip of passions.
113 Fragments in Context
strife, what was the cause of the earth's stability? For surely he will
not give the vortex as the cause then too. It was also absurd not to keep
in mind that previously the parts of the earth moved to the middle
because of the vortex - and now what is the cause of all heavy objects
moving towards it? For the vortex does not come near us. Again, what
is the cause of fire moving upwards? For it is not because of the vortex.
And if fire has a natural motion, obviously one must reckon that earth
does too. But in fact heavy and light are not defined by the vortex;
rather, heavy and light things exist first, and because of the motion
some go to the middle, some to the surface. So before the vortex came
to be, heavy and light existed - and by what were they defined? How
- or where - were they naturally inclined to move? For in an indefinite
[space] there cannot be an up and a down, and heavy and light are
defined by these.
(b)
Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's De Caelo CIAG 7, 528.3-530.26,
commenting on 295a29-32. Having previously made a common re-
sponse to those who give the vortex and those who give the breadth
of the earth as the cause of its stability, he [Aristotle] also says, 'one
could also make that point against Empedocles/ adding another ar-
gument against him. He uses four lines of reasoning, of which the
first seems to have been expressed unclearly. 'For/ he says, 'when
the elements were separated apart by strife, what was the cause of
the earth's stability? For surely he will not give the vortex as cause
then too.' He seems to say 'when the elements were separated apart
by strife' as though referring to some other state distinct from that
which now exists and is brought into being by strife. And yet, Empe-
docles says that this cosmos comes into being by strife separating [the
elements] just as the sphere comes into being by love bringing them
together and uniting them. And how does [Aristotle] say there is no
vortex in the predominance of strife if this [i.e. strife's predominance]
exists [now]?
Alexander, then, thinks that he can straighten out the passage in
roughly this way: when the elements, he says, were separated by strife,
not yet having become 'apart/ i.e. not yet separated and distinguished
into this [i.e. our present] organization of the cosmos, in which the
vortex is the cause of its stability in the middle, but it was, at the
same time, when love was dominant, then whatever was the cause of
the earth's stability? For surely it was not the vortex then too. For
114 The Poem of Empedocles
then the elements did not yet stand apart, separated in this way by
strife. So either, he says, one must speak thus or say 'apart by strife/
i.e. strife not yet having been separated from them; for strife is for
him the cause of the sort of organization of the elements which now
exists, and of the vortex of the surrounding air which he says was
separated off first and moves in a circle.
And that [Alexander] interpreted and arranged the words [of Aristo-
tle] unconvincingly - understanding [them as saying] 'not yet having
become apart' - is clear to anyone; and when Aristotle clearly says
'when they were separated apart by strife' he [Alexander] distorts [the
text] and tries to make that time refer to the predominance of love.
And who would have said 'were separated by strife' instead of 'strife
being separated from them'? But he was distorting [the text], and was
forced [to do so] even more by supposing that this cosmos, according
to Empedocles, came into being by strife alone. But perhaps, even if
strife dominates in this [cosmos] just as love does in the sphere, still
both [this cosmos and the sphere] are said to come into being by both
[love and strife]. And perhaps nothing prevents [us] from citing some
of Empedocles' verses which make this point:
But I shall return again to the passage of songs
which I previously recited, channelling that account from another.
When strife reached the lowest depth
of the eddy and love gets into the middle of the whirl,
there all these come together to be one alone,
not suddenly, but voluntarily coming together, each from a different
direction.
And as they were being mixed ten thousand tribes of mortals poured
forth;
but many stood unmixed, alternating with those being blended,
the ones that strive upwards still held in check; for not yet has it
blamelessly
moved entirely out to the furthest limits of the circle,
but some of its limbs remained within, and others had gone out.
And as far as it [strife] had at any stage run out ahead,
so far did the immortal and kindly stream of blameless love then come
forward.
And immediately things which had previously learned to be immortal
grew mortal,
and things previously unblended were mixed, interchanging their paths
(61/35.1-15).
115 Fragments in Context
give the vortex as cause then too. Empedocles, I think, would say
that there is no time when the elements were separated apart, without
there also being a mutual relationship between them; for [if so] they
would not then be elements; but the argument, although intending to
reveal the nature of the facts, supposes the coming-into-being of the
ungenerated and the separation of the unified and the unification of
the separated.
(c)
And Plato followed him, or rather before Plato Timaeus, and he says that
there pre-exist in the first paradigm, the intelligible one, the four form
which get their character from the four elements and introduce this
perceptible quadripartite cosmos in the lowest [forms of being], since
strife dominates here due to the separation which descended from the
intelligible unity. And his account of both cosmoi is the same, except
that he, by treating the four elements as matter, contemplated their
opposition to love and strife. For that it is not the case, as many people
think, that according to Empedocles love alone created the intelligible
cosmos and strife alone the perceptible, but that [Empedocles] considers
both of them throughout in the appropriate manner, hear what is said in
his physics, in which he says that Aphrodite or love is the cause also of
the creative blending here [i.e. in our perceptible cosmos]. And he call
fire 'Hephaistos/ 'sun/ and 'flame'; and water 'rain'; and air 'aither.'
So he says this in many places and in these words:
And earth happened to meet with these most equally,
Hephaistos and rain and all-gleaming aither,
anchored in the perfect harbours of Kupris [Aphrodite],
either a little greater or [a little] less among the more.
From these blood came to be and the forms of other kinds of flesh
(98/98).
117 Fragments in Context
And before these lines he indicates in other lines the activity of both
in the same objects, saying:
When strife reached the lowest depth
of the eddy and love gets into the middle of the whirl,
there all these come together to be one alone,
not suddenly, but voluntarily coming together, each from a different
direction.
And as they were being mixed ten thousand tribes of mortals poured
forth;
but many stood unmixed, alternating with those being blended,
the ones that strive upwards still held in check; for not yet has it
blamelessly
moved entirely out to the furthest limits of the circle,
but some of its limbs remained within, and others had gone out.
And as far as it [strife] had at any stage run out ahead,
so far did the immortal and kindly stream of blameless love then come
forward.
And immediately things which had previously learned to be immortal
grew mortal,
and things previously unblended were mixed, interchanging their paths.
And as they were mixed ten thousand tribes of mortals poured forth,
fitted together in all kinds of forms, a wonder to behold
(61/35.3-17). In these lines, then, he clearly says that mortal things
too were fitted together because of love and that strife has not yet
entirely withdrawn from those things in which love predominates.
And in those lines in which he also states the characteristic features of
each of the four elements and of love and strife, he revealed that both
love and strife are mixed in all things. They go like this: (26/21.3-12);
and a little further on:
And in turn they dominate as the cycle goes around,
and they shrink into each other and grow in the turn[s assigned by]
destiny.
For these very things are, and running through each other
they become men and the tribes of other beasts,
at one time coming together by love into one cosmos,
and at another time again all being borne apart separately by the hostility
of strife,
until by growing together as one they are totally subordinated.
Thus insofar as they learned to grow as one from many,
and finish up as many, as the one again grows apart,
in this respect they come to be and have no constant life,
118 The Poem of Empedocles
(d)
Aristotle Poetics 1461a23-25. Some [problems] are to be solved by
division, as Empedocles:
And immediately things which had previously learned to be immortal
grew mortal,
and things previously unmixed were blended ...
(61/35.14-15).
(e)
Athenaeus Deipnosophists 423f. In his On Drunkenness Theophrastus
says that what is blended is more mixed [faportpov], citing these lines
of Empedocles:
And immediately things which had previously learned to be immortal
grew mortal,
and things previously unblended were mixed, interchanging their paths
(61/35.14-15).
(f)
Plutarch Table Talk 677d. Sosicles the poet, remembering that Empe-
docles had said that in the universal change
and things previously unblended were mixed
(61/35.15), said that the fellow meant by opo? well-mixed rather than
unmixed.
CTXT-46
CTXT-47
(a)
Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics CIAG 9, 300.19-26. For
he makes flesh and bone and each of the others by a ratio. At any rate
in book one of his physics he says:
And pleasant earth in her well-built channels
received two parts of gleaming Nestis out of the eight
and four of Hephaistos; and they become white bones
fitted together with the divine glues of harmony
(62/96), i.e. from divine causes and in particular love or harmony. For
they are fitted together by her glues.
(b)
Aristotle De Anima 410al-6. For each thing is not the elements in any
old condition, but in a certain ratio and combination, as Empedocles
says of bone: (62/96.1-3).
(c)
Paraphrased by Simplicius ad loc. (Commentary on De Anima CIAG 11,
68.2-14). He says that the sphere is god according to Empedocles, and
is itself made up of the elements. And he testifies that Empedocles too
gave the ratio of the compound for bones. And earth is said to be pleas-
ant, i.e. harmonious - as [it is] a cube according to the Pythagorean
tradition. For they called the cube a harmony since it made the har-
monic proportion, because it had twelve sides, eight angles, and six
surfaces. 'Vessels' is also in the poet [i.e. Homer], as the vessels in
which the blend of the mixed things is produced. 'And all the bellows
blew in twenty vessels' (Iliad 18.470). He [Empedocles] also calls them
'broad-bosomed' (i.e. wide) because of their capaciousness. And he
mixes four parts of fire to make bones (perhaps saying they have more
fire [than any of the other elements] because of their dryness and white
colour) and two of earth and one of air, one of water, which he calls
both 'Nestis' and 'gleaming' - 'Nestis' because of their fluidity, from
'swimming' and 'flowing' - and 'gleaming' since they are transparent.
Cf. A78.
120 The Poem of Empedocles
CTXT-48
CTXT-49
(a)
Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's De Caelo CIAG 7, 586.5-587.26,
commenting on 300b25-31 (= (b) below). [Aristotle] is bringing yet
another absurd consequence to bear on those who say there was a dis-
orderly movement prior to the cosmos; the point seems somewhat ob-
scure because of the brevity of Aristotle's expression. He asks whether
they were not then able to move in a disorderly fashion in such a way
that 'some things mixed in mixtures of the sort from which naturally
formed bodies are formed/ such as 'bones and flesh' and in general
the parts of animals and plants and the plants and animals themselves,
'as Empedocles says occurs in the [period of] love/ saying,
as many heads without necks sprouted up
(64/57.1).
Having said this he left us to figure out both the opposite part of the
question and the consequent absurdities. The opposite part is for the
things to be mixed at some time in such a way that natural bodies
could also be formed from them. And the consequent absurdities are
these. For if it were not possible for them, while moving in a disorderly
fashion, also to move in such a way as to be mixed with each other in
the aforesaid mixtures, they would not in any circumstances move in a
disorderly fashion. For the disorderly is indefinite, so that they would
be both mixed and unmixed; so that there simply would not be any
disorder. And if these things could, while moving then, produce fire
and earth and water and air and the animals and plants made up of
them (since those who say that the cosmos comes into being obviously
produce animals not from animals but from the combination of the
[four natural] bodies in their cosmogony) there would then too be
49 Or 'in his Persian works'; see the note on the Greek text of the fragment.
121 Fragments in Context
(b)
Aristotle De Caelo 300b25-31. Again, one might also ask this much,
whether it was not possible for some of the things moving in a dis-
orderly fashion still50 to be mixed in mixtures of the sort from which
naturally formed bodies are formed. I mean, e.g., bones and flesh, as
Empedocles says occurs in [the period of] love. For he says that
many heads without necks sprouted up
(64/57.1).
(c)
(d)
Philoponus, Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima CIAG 15, 545.17-
20. And thought resembles the love of Empedocles, who put together
the things separated because of strife. And anyway it was said by
Empedocles that if love did not exist there would have emerged many
neckless heads [a paraphrase of line 1], i.e. there would have come
into being heads without a neck if the love which joins them together
did not exist.
(e)
Philoponus, Commentary on Aristotle's De Generatione Animalium
CIAG 14.3, 27.31-28.14. But what Empedocles says is also impossible,
even if it is more in harmony with the phenomena. And [Aristotle]
says how it is impossible. For, he says, just as the anhomoiomerous
parts, despite their size, could not be alive when strife predominated
over love (for [Empedocles] said that the neckless heads were alive
and able to perceive) - just as those big heads could not be alive and
perceiving when separated from their entireties, and similarly neither
could those big hands and other [organs] - in this way it is impossible
too for that tiny head which comes from the father and all the other
[organs] which he says come from him, to live and perceive being
50 For this translation of /cat see O'Brien Empedocles' Cosmic Cycle 12.
51 Simplicius cites line 1 at Commentary on Categories 337.1-3 and Commentary on
De Anima 250.22-23.
123 Fragments in Context
separated from each other. ... But indeed as Empedocles said that in
[the period of] love, i.e. in the defeat of love and the predominance of
strife, heads and hands and all the other parts were gathered together
in the earth, being alive and able to perceive, and then from these as
from many animals each of the animals came to be, so this is what
those who say that all [parts of the embryo] come from all parts [of
the parents] turn out to be saying.
CTXT-50
CTXT-51
Plutarch Reply to Colotes 1123b. ... these, moreover, and many others,
even more melodramatic than these, which resemble the monsters of
Empedocles (which they laugh at) 'with twisted feet and a hundred
hands' [eiXtVoSa aKpiroxetpa] (D-K B60) and 'oxlike [animals] with hu-
man faces' [fiovyevfi avbpoirpwpa] (66/61.2).54
CTXT-52
(a)
Aelian On Animals 16.29. Even Empedocles the natural philosopher
speaks about the individual character of animals, saying that there
come into being certain coalesced animals which are different in the
blend of their form but moulded together by a unification of their
body. This is what he says:
Many with two faces and two chests grew,
oxlike with men's faces, and again there came up
(b)
(c)
CTXT-53
(a)
Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics CIAG 9, 381.29-382.18.
In book two of his physics, before the articulation of male and female
bodies, Empedocles uttered these verses:
But come now! Hear this about how
separating fire brought up the nocturnal shoots
of men and women, full of lamentations. For the story is neither wide of
the mark nor unlearned.
125 Fragments in Context
(b)
Aristotle Physics 199b7-13. Again, it is necessary that the seed come
into being first but not for the animals [to come into being] right
away, and the 'whole-natured at first' was the seed. Again, there is
also purpose in plants, although it is less articulated. So, did there
come into being in plants 'vinelike [plants] with olive faces,' like the
'oxlike [animals] with men's faces/ or not? For it is absurd. But they
should have, if it also happened in animals.
Cf. A72.
CTXT-54
Plutarch Natural Phenomena 917c. Or does the fact that males and
females are reared together and herded together remind them of sex
and stimulate desire, as Empedocles said of humans:
upon him comes also, because of sight, desire for intercourse
(68/64).
CTXT-55
Scholion to Euripides' Phoenissae 1855 ('do not sow the furrow of your
children'). Empedocles the natural philosopher says allegorically:
the divided meadows of Aphrodite
(69/66), in which children are created. Euripides says the same [as
Empedocles] and avoided the shameful thought while using appro-
priate words and technical metaphors, referring to 'sowing' and 'a
furrow.'
CTXT-56
(a)
Aristotle De Generatione Animalium 722b3-28. Again, if the seed comes
from both [parents] - and all parts of each - there will be two animals.
For it will have all the features of each. So Empedocles too seems, if
I may say so, to say things which are particularly in agreement with
this theory. For he says that [the seed] is a sort of token in the male
and female, but that it does not come complete from either:
But the nature of the limbs has been torn apart, partly in a man's ...
(70/63). For why do females not reproduce by themselves if the seed
really comes from the whole animal and has a receptacle? But as it
seems, either it does not come from the whole animal or it does so
in the manner he claims, not the same parts coming from each; and
that would be why they need sexual intercourse. But even this is
impossible. For just as it is impossible for animals which are large
to be divided and still survive and be alive, as Empedocles in [the
period of] love produces [animals], saying:
as many heads without necks sprouted up
(64/57.1), and then he says they grow together - so it is obvious that
this is impossible. For they could not survive without a soul or some
form of life, nor could they exist as several animals and [then] grow
together so as to be one again. Indeed, in just this way it turns out
that those who allege that [the seed] comes from the whole animal are
saying that just as for Empedocles seeds were then, in the [period of]
love, [formed] in the earth, so for these [theorists they are formed] in
the body. For it is impossible for the parts to become continuous and
to come together by gathering in one place.56
(b)
ibid. 764bl5-18. For it is impossible for the body of the seed to be
divided, part in the female and part in the male, as Empedocles claims,
saying: (70/63).
56 Cf. CTXT-49e.
127 Fragments in Context
CTXT-57
(a)
Aristotle De Generatione Animalium 723a23-26. In addition, if the male
and female differ at conception, as Empedocles says:
And it was poured forth in pure [places];57 some,
which meet with cold, become women ...
(71/65).
Cf. A81.
(b)
Philoponus, Commentary on Aristotle's De Generatione Animalium, CIAG
14.3, 30.1-7. He [Aristotle] has cited Empedocles' [words] unclearly
because he did not give entire verses, but only the beginnings of them
and they were not even from consecutive lines but from lines widely
separated from each other. And what is meant by: (71/65.1) would be
something like this: the male is poured out, or formed, from purer and hot-
ter blood, but other blood is cooled and turns out as and becomes women.
CTXT-58
CTXT-59
CTXT-60
CTXT-61
CTXT-62
CTXT-63
CTXT-64
58 Omitting 'the milk' with Diels; D-K and Wright emend to 'the blood.'
59 The complex numerology which follows is probably not Empedocles' work, but
Proclus'.
129 Fragments in Context
CTXT-65
CTXT-66
CTXT-67
CTXT-68
CTXT-69
(a)
Plutarch Table Talk 649c-d. For this property of being an evergreen
and, as Empedocles says, perpetual leafmess [<E/r7re86</>i;AAoy]62 is not
60 Deleting the word 'or' (TJ) with Schmidt; the text differs from Wright's and D-K's.
61 A reminiscence of 63/34 and 62/96.4.
62 Probably Empedocles' word (D-K B77-78.1).
130 The Poem of Empedocles
(b)
Theophrastus De Causis Plantarum 1.13.2,1-8. And if [mild] air were to
accompany them [trees] constantly, perhaps the utterances of the poets
would not seem so unreasonable, nor would Empedocles' claim that
evergreen [aa'^uAAa] and 'constantly bearing' [e/^TreSoKa/ma]63 trees
flourish:
with an abundance of fruit in the air all year long
(78/77-78]), supposing that a certain blend of air, the springtime air,
is common [to all seasons].
CTXT-70
(a)
Aristotle De Generatione Animalium 731al-9. In plants these powers
are mixed and the female is not separated from the male. Therefore
they produce offspring from themselves and emit not seminal fluid
but an embryo, the so-called 'seeds.' And Empedocles expresses this
well when he writes:
thus tall trees lay eggs; first olive ...
(79/79). For the egg is an embryo and the animal comes to be from
part of it while the rest is nourishment and the growing plant comes
to be from a part of the seed while the rest becomes food for the shoot
and the first root.
(b)
Theophrastus De Causis Plantarum 1.7.1,1-5. The seeds of all have some
food in them, which is brought forth together with the beginning [of
the offspring], as in eggs. And in this way Empedocles spoke aptly in
saying that 'tall trees lay eggs.' For the nature of seeds is similar to eggs.
CTXT-71
Plutarch Table Talk 683d-f. We said, then, that these statements were
reasonable. But when Empedocles said:
because late-born pomegranates and succulent apples
(80/80), the epithet of the pomegranates means that they ripen their
fruit when autumn is already passing and the sun's heat waning. For
the sun does not allow their moisture to set, because it is weak and
sticky ... But the intent with which that wise man called apples succu-
lent [vTTtptyhoia] is a matter for puzzlement, especially since he is not
accustomed to ornament things just for the sake of fine writing with
the most imposing of beautiful epithets like flowery colours, but makes
each epithet an indication of some substance or power; for example, the
body surrounding the soul is 'mortal-surrounding earth' [ap-tyLfipoTTiv
X66va] (D-K B148) and air is 'the cloud-gatherer' [ye^eATyyeperTjy]64 (D-K
B149) and the liver is 'rich in blood' [TroAuaijuaroi;] (D-K B150). So,
when I said this, some grammarians said that apples were called
succulent because of their prime. For the peak of prime and flour-
ishing is called <Aot'az; by the poets ... Since, therefore, the apple's
freshness and flourishing persists more than that of any other fruit,
the philosopher called it succulent [i.e. excessive or abundant in
<j>\oiav].
CTXT-72
(a)
Plutarch Natural Phenomena 912b-c. The ease with which rain water is
changed is indicated by its rotting, for it is more prone to rotting than
is river water or well water. And concoction seems to be a [form of]
rotting, as Empedocles testifies, saying:
Wine is water from the skin [of the grape], rotted in wood
(81/81).
(b)
Ibid. 919c-d. Or is a winelike substance naturally prone to rotting, as
Empedocles says that: 81/81.
(c)
Aristotle Topics 127al7-19. Similarly, neither is wine rotted water, as
Empedocles says 'water ... rotted in wood/ For it is not water at all.
CTXT-73
Plutarch Table Talk 685f. You could not name any of the animals them-
selves, whether a land animal or a bird, which is as prolific as all the
sea animals. And Empedocles too has written on this point:
[Aphrodite?]
leading the unmusical tribe of prolific fish
(82/74).
CTXT-74
(a)
Plutarch Table Talk 618b. And you see that god, whom our own Pindar
called the 'best at crafts/ does not put fire above in every case and
earth below, but [arranges them] as the needs of bodies demand:
This is [present] in heavy-backed, sea-dwelling shellfish
and indeed, of stone-shelled tritons and tortoises ...
(83/76.1-2); as Empedocles says,
there you will see earth lying on the outermost part of the skin
(83/76.3).
(b)
Plutarch The Face on the Moon 927f. Nor is the fire which is above,
gleaming in our eyes, natural while that in the stomach and heart is
unnatural; but rather, each is positioned appropriately and usefully.
And, as Empedocles says when observing the nature
indeed, of stone-shelled tritons and tortoises
(83/76.2) and of every crustacean,
there you will see earth lying on the outermost part of the skin
(83/76.3).
CTXT-75
CTXT-76
Plutarch On Chance 98d. For some are armed with horns and tusks
and stings, but, Empedocles says,
sharp-pointed bristles
prick up on the backs of sea urchins
(87/83).
CTXT-77
CTXT-78
Cf. A82a, A89a. Philoponus goes on to give an account like that in A82.
CTXT-79
(a)
Plutarch Table Talk 663a. For one possibility is that the nature [of the
body] takes up what is appropriate from what is like [in its food] and
134 The Poem of Empedocles
(b)
Macrobius Saturnalia 7.5.17-18. But we know that likes are nourished
by like ... That individual objects attract to themselves what is like
themselves is testified to by Empedocles, who says: 90/90.
CTXT-80
CTXT-81
(a)
Aristotle De Anima 427a21-25. The ancients say that thinking and
perceiving are the same, as Empedocles too said:
For men's cunning expands in relation to what is present [to them]
(93/106), and elsewhere:
And insofar as they change over to become different, to that extent
their thinking too provides them with different things
(94/108).
(b)
Aristotle Metaphysics 1009b 17-20. Empedocles says that when their
disposition changes, their thought changes: 93/106. And elsewhere he
also says that: 94/108.
CTXT-82
CTXT-83
CTXT-84
CTXT-85
(a)
Aristotle De Sensu 437b23-438a5. Empedocles seems to believe that we
sometimes see because light goes out [from the eye], as noted above.
At any rate he speaks thus:
As when someone planning a journey prepared a lamp,
the gleam of blazing fire through the wintry night,
and fastened linen screens against all kinds of breezes,
which scatter the wind of the blowing breezes
but the light leapt outwards, as much of it as was finer,
and shone with its tireless beams across the threshold;
in this way [Aphrodite] gave birth to the rounded pupil,
primeval fire crowded in the membranes and in the fine linens.
And they covered over the depths of the circumfluent water
and sent forth fire, as much of it as was finer
(103/84). He says that we sometimes see thus and sometimes by means
of effluences from the things seen.
(b)
Alexander, Commentary on Aristotle's De Sensu CIAG 3.1, 23.8-24.9.
And first his lines are quoted, in which he too holds that light is
fire and that this is sent out in a stream from the eyes and that see-
ing occurs by means of this. For in the lines he compares the light
sent out from the [organ of] vision to the light [passing] through
the lamp-shades. For just as someone, intending to go on a jour-
ney at night, prepares a lamp and puts it in a lamp-holder (for the
lamp-holder wards off and checks the external breezes while it passes
the finest part of the fire, which is the light, through to the outside),
137 Fragments in Context
in this way, he says, by being held back in the membranes the fire is
surrounded by fine tissues which ward off the [breezes] which strike
from outside and destroy the fire, and prevent them from troubling
the pupil, and pass the finest part of the fire through to the outside.
He might call 'screens' the lamp-holders which do the warding off
because they check the winds and protect the fire which they sur-
round; or he might call 'screens' the dense [parts] which check the
winds by their denseness. He calls 'finer' the fire which is extended
due to its fineness and is able to escape through the dense [parts]. 'On
the threshold' [means] 'in the sky'. Homer: 'he seized him and threw
him from the threshold until he arrived at the earth, powerless' [Iliad
15.23-24]. He said 'and in the fine linens she swaddled69 the rounded
pupil' instead of 'he wrapped the round pupil in fine tissues,' using
in poetic fashion 'linens' instead of 'tissues' in conjunction with the
name of the pupil. After showing that he [Empedocles] says this in
these verses, he [Aristotle] adds, 'he says we sometimes see thus and
sometimes by means of effluences from things seen' [i.e. and that]
certain things flow from [objects], which strike the [organ of] vision
when they fit into the pores in it by being symmetrical and they pass
to the inside and so seeing occurs. Plato too mentions this doctrine as
being Empedocles' in the Meno [cf . A92] and defines colour, according
to his doctrine, as an effluence from bodies symmetrical with the
[organ of] vision.
Cf. A86.
CTXT-86
Aristotle Poetics 1458a4-5. Clipped words like Kpl and 8o> and:
. . . from both there was one vision [en//]
(104/88).
Cf. Strabo 8.5.3.
CTXT-87
69 Alexander (and some mss of Aristotle) here have the word e-^vaTo; this reading
is uncertain, but clearly exe^a7"0 *s a variant. Its sense is not clear, but this guess
perhaps fits the context best.
138 The Poem of Empedocles
CTXT-88
CTXT-89
(a)
Plutarch On Being a Busybody 520e. And just as hunters do not allow
puppies to turn aside and chase every scent, but pull and check them
with leashes, keeping their sense organs clear and unblended for their
proper work so that they might be more keenly stuck to the spoor:
seeking the fragments of beasts' limbs with their nostrils
(107/101.1), so ...
(b)
Plutarch Natural Phenomena 917e. Why is the spring season bad for
tracking? Is it that dogs, as Empedocles says: (107/101.1), take up the
effluences which animals leave in the woods, and in spring the very
large number of odours from plants and shrubs dim and confuse these
effluences ...?
(c)
Pseudo-Alexander Problemata 3.102, p 22.4-11. Why do dogs not smell
the spoor when a hare dies ... ? When it is alive they smell it because
the odour from the beast is continuous, but when it is dead, [the odour]
stops flowing. For it does not leave [it] behind, as Empedocles says
that:
140 The Poem of Empedocles
(d)
Anonymous, Commentary on Plato's Theaetetus col. 70.43-71.6. Con-
cerning the other natural philosophers, it is easy to see that they say
that everything is in motion, but Empedocles admits effluences, and
he says that dogs track down the 'fragments of beasts' limbs/
CTXT-90
CTXT-91
(a)
Ammonius, Commentary on Aristotle's De Interpretation CIAG 4.5,
249.1-11. For these reasons the poet of Acragas too criticized the stories
told by the poets about the gods which presuppose that they have
human shapes and taught - primarily about Apollo [cf. Al, D.L. 8.23
& 8.57] who was the immediately relevant topic of his discourse but
in the same way also about the totality of the divine in general -
declaring:
For [it / he] is not fitted out in [its / his] limbs with a human head,
nor do two branches dart from [its / his] back
nor feet, nor swift knees nor shaggy genitals;
but it / he is only a sacred and ineffable thought organ
darting through the entire cosmos with swift thoughts
74 This is Usener's emendation; D-K and Bollack keep the ms text: 'separated, torn
away.'
75 Clement uses the neuter gender, but Empedocles' words could also indicate a
masculine deity. At any rate, the distinction between a personal and an impersonal
god is not as important for Empedocles as for the Christian Clement.
141 Fragments in Context
(b)
Tzetzes Chiliades 7.522-526. Empedocles, in the third book of his
physics, showing what the substance of god is, says this, in verse:
god is not this something, nor this and this,
but it / he is only a sacred and ineffable thought organ
darting through the entire cosmos with swift thoughts
(110/134.4-5).
CTXT-92
Plutarch Table Talk 745c-d. And Plato [Republic 617b] acts strangely
in setting the sirens instead of the muses among the eternal divine
revolutions - for the sirens are not particularly philanthropic or good
daimons - and in either omitting altogether the muses or addressing
them by the names of the fates and calling them the daughters of
necessity. For necessity is a thing untouched by the muses, but per-
suasion is 'musical' and, I think,76 is dear to the muses. Hence the
muse, much more than Empedocles's grace:
hates necessity, hard to bear
(112/116).
CTXT-93
(a)
Plutarch On the Eating of Flesh 998c. But if someone should somehow
demonstrate that souls share bodies in their reincarnations, and what
is now rational becomes irrational again, and again what is now wild
becomes tame and that nature changes and gives new homes to all
[animals],
dressing them in an alien robe of flesh
(113/126)...
(b)
Porphyry, in Stobaeus Eclogae 1.49.60, p. 446.7-11. The fate and nature
of the change of condition for souls is called a daimon by Empedocles,
76 Following the text of the Loeb edition.
142 The Poem of Empedocles
CTXT-94
(a)
Clement Stromateis 3.14.1-2 (II.201.23-202.3). Heraclitus, at any rate,
obviously criticizes birth [= coming-into-being] when he says: 'When
born they want to live and have their shares - or rather to have rest
- and they leave behind children to become their shares' (B20). And
Empedocles too manifestly agrees with him, saying:
I wept and wailed when I saw the unfamiliar place
(115/118), and again:
[he] made dead shapes from the living, changing [them]
(134/125), and once more:
Oh woe! Oh wretched and unhappy race of mortals!
You are born of such quarrels and lamentations.
(118 / 124).77
(b)
Sextus Adversus Mathematicos 11.96. But some from Epicurus' school
are accustomed ... to say that animals flee pain and pursue pleasure
by nature and without instruction. At any rate, at birth and before
it is a slave to conventional opinions, as soon as it is struck by the
unfamiliar cold of the air, it 'wept and wailed.'
CTXT-95
(a)
Hierocles, Commentary on the Carmen Aureum 24.2-3. Man goes down
and falls out of the happy place, as Empedocles the Pythagorean says:
an exile from the gods and a wanderer
trusting in mad strife
(11/115.13-14), and he ascends and assumes his ancient condition if he
flees the earthly environment and the 'unpleasant place' (116/121.1),
as the same man says:
where there are blood and wrath and tribes of other banes
77 For line 2 of 118/124 see also Porphyry De Abstinentia 3.27, p. 225.22 Nauck.
143 Fragments in Context
(b)
Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Republic 614d-e, vol. 2 157.24-28.
Empedocles saw and said that this meadow [i.e. the meadow of judg-
ment] is itself full of all sorts of evils, and when he had said so he
lamented:
where there are wrath and blood and tribes of other banes
they wander in darkness in the meadow of Ate
(116/121.2-3).
(c)
(d)
Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Cratylus p. 103. So one must say that
all the activities of this god [Apollo] are present in all the orderings of
things, from the highest to the last, but that different activities appear
to predominate more or less in different orderings. For example, the
god's medical activity [appears to predominate] more in the sublunary
region:
where there are wrath and blood and tribes of other banes
and parching diseases and rots and deeds of flux[?]
(116/121.2, 117/121).78
CTXT-96
(a)
Porphyry De Antro Nympharum 8, p. 61.17-21. The Pythagoreans too, I
think, taking this as a starting-point and after them Plato declared that
this cosmos is a cave and a grotto. For in Empedocles too the powers
which guide the soul say:
we came down into this roofed-in cave
(119/120).
(b)
Plotinus Enneads 4.8.1.33-36. And 'the grotto' means for him [Plato],
as 'the cave' does for Empedocles, I think, this universe, where he says
the journey to the intelligible is a release from bondage and a return
for the soul from the grotto.
CTXT-97
(a)
Plutarch On Tranquillity of Mind 474b-c. For it is not the case, as
Menander says, that 'a daimon stands beside each man as soon as he
is born, a good guide to the mystery of life.' But rather, as Empedocles
says, two fates and daimons take each of us as we are born and initiate
us:
where there were Earth and Sun farseeing
and bloody Battle and Harmony of solemn aspect
and Beauty and Ugliness and Speed and Delay
and lovely Truth and dark-haired Obscurity
(120/122).79 As a result, since our birth has received the blended seeds
of each of these passions, and because of this contains a great deal
of inconsistency, the intelligent man prays for the better lot but also
anticipates the other, but uses both and strips away excess.
(b)
Plutarch Isis and Osiris 370e. Empedocles calls the beneficial princi-
ple Tove' ((1X6777? and (/uA/a), and often 'Harmony of solemn aspect'
CTXT-98
CTXT-99
[her] altar was not wetted with the unmixed blood of bulls,
but this was the greatest abomination among men,
to tear out their life-breath and eat their goodly limbs
(122/128.8-10) [repeated at 2.27, p. 157.17-19]. For, I think, when love
and perception of what is like in kind controlled everything, no one
slaughtered any [animal], in the belief that the other animals are our
relatives. But when Ares and Kudoimos [the din of battle] and all
kinds of battle and the start of wars took control, then for the first
time no one spared any of his relatives at all.
Cf. Athenaeus Deipnosophists 510c-d (lines 1-7); Eustathius, Commen-
tary on the Iliad 22.116 (lines 1-3); Eusebius Preparatio Evangelica 4.14.7
(quotes Porphyry citing lines 8-10).
CTXT-100
CTXT-101
CTXT-102
(a)
Aristotle Rhetoric 1373b6-17. For, as everyone intuitively suspects,
there exists a natural and common justice and injustice, even if there
(b)
Cicero De Republica 3.11.19. Pythagoras and Empedocles announce that
there is one provision of the law for all animals and shout out that
inexpiable penalties hang over those who violate a living creature.
(c)
lamblichus Life of Pythagoras 108. [Pythagoras] commanded abstinence
from living things. For since he wished to be supremely just in his
actions, it was surely necessary to wrong none of the animals related
to him. For how could they have persuaded others to act justly if
they themselves were caught in the act of being greedy82 despite their
bond of relationship with animals which, because they share life and
the same elements and the composite blend formed from them, are
linked to us by a kind of brotherhood.
CTXT-103
(a)
Sextus Adversus Mathematicos 9.126-130. Since justice too was intro-
duced according to the relationship of men to each other and to the
gods, if there are no gods, justice too will not exist. And this is absurd.
So the followers of Pythagoras and Empedocles and the rest of the
Italian group say that we have a kind of communion not only with
each other and the gods but also with irrational animals. For there
is one spirit penetrating the entire cosmos, like a soul, which also
unites us with them. That is why if we kill them and feed on their
flesh we will be committing injustice and impiety, by destroying our
kin. So these philosophers also recommended abstinence from living
things and said that men committed impiety 'by staining red the al-
tar of the blessed ones with hot blood' and Empedocles somewhere
says:
Will you not desist from harsh-sounding bloodshed? Do you not see
that you are devouring each other in the heedlessness of your
understanding?
(126/136) and
A father lifts up his dear son, who has changed his form,
and prays and slaughters him, in great folly, and they are at a loss
as they sacrifice the suppliant. But he, on the other hand, deaf to the
rebukes,
sacrificed him in his halls, and prepared himself an evil meal.
In the same way, a son seizes his father and the children their mother,
and tearing out their life-breath devour their own dear flesh
(128/137). This, then, is what the Pythagoreans advised.
(b)
Origen Contra Celsum 5.49, p. 54.1-4. For they [the Pythagoreans]
abstain from living things because of the story that the soul passes
from body to body, and someone:
lifts up his dear son
and prays and slaughters him, in great folly
(128/137.1-2).
(c)
CTXT-104
83 Or: slinks away from you. The sense of the verb is very uncertain.
149 Fragments in Context
CTXT-105
CTXT-106
(a)
Aristotle Poetics 1457bl3-16. [On metaphor]. An example [of transfer-
ence] from species to species:
drawing off life with bronze
(129/138) and:
cutting with the long-stretched bronze
(133/143). For here drawing was called cutting and cutting drawing.
For both are forms of removing.
(b)
Theo Smyrnaeus 15.7-11. In the same fashion [as with the mysteries],
the handing on of Platonic arguments also requires, in the first place,
a kind of purification, i.e. training from childhood on in appropriate
studies. For Empedocles says, by:
cutting from five springs with the long-stretched bronze
(133/143), one must be cleansed. And Plato says one must carry out
the purification by means of five branches of study: arithmetic, plane
geometry, solid geometry, music, and astronomy.
CTXT-107
Plutarch Table Talk 728d-f. Indeed, this [that they abstain from fish] is
said about the ancient Pythagoreans, and I have also met students of
our contemporary Alexicrates who sometimes indulge in [eating] other
living creatures, in moderation - and by Zeus they even sacrifice them
84 Not in Wright; it appears as Bollack 103. I accept the emendations printed in the
Loeb edition. See also Daniel Babut 'Sur 1'unite de la pensee d'Empedocle' 141ff.
150 The Poem of Empedocles
- but cannot at all tolerate [even] to taste fish. I do not accept the expla-
nation [of this] given by the Spartan Tyndares. He said that this was a
sign of respect for their silence and that they [the Pythagoreans] call
fish 'mute' [eAAoTra?]85 on the grounds that they kept their voice [OTTGI]
shut in [l\\o{jLvqv] and restrained. And [Tyndares] said that he who
shared my name [i.e. Empedocles] advised Pausanias in a Pythagorean
way to 'hide' his teachings 'within a mute thought organ' [ureyacrcu
0pey6? eAAoTro? et'cra)]86 and in general the [Pythagorean] men consider
silence to be something divine.
CTXT-108
CTXT-109
Plutarch Table Talk 646d. And not only, as it seems according to Empe-
docles, must one
completely abstain from laurel leaves
(131/140), but one must also spare all the other trees and not adorn
oneself by stripping them, pillaging their leaves violently and unnat-
urally.
CTXT-110
Aulus Gellius 4.11.1-2. An old and false opinion has seized [men] and
prevailed, that the philosopher Pythagoras did not dine on animals
and also abstained from the bean, which the Greeks call KWJUOS. The
poet Callimachus based himself on this opinion and wrote:
And keep your hands from beans, a painful food.
And I speak as Pythagoras ordered.
4.11.9-10. It seems that the cause of the error about not dining on
beans is that in the poem of Empedocles, who followed Pythagoras'
teachings, this verse is found:
Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands off beans!
CTXT-111
Aelian On Animals 12.7. Empedocles too says that the best change of
dwelling [i.e. reincarnation] for man is to become a lion, if the lot
should transfer him to an animal, and to become a laurel, if to a plant.
This is what Empedocles says:
Among beasts they become mountain-dwelling lions with lairs on the
ground,
and laurels among fair-tressed trees.
(135/127).90
CTXT-112
CTXT-113
fashion, [we will be] blessed here, and more blessed after our transfer
hence, not possessing happiness in some time, but being able to take
our rest in eternity:
Sharing hearth and table with other immortals,
being free of manly woes, untiring
(137/147), the philosophical poetry of Empedocles says.
CTXT-114
Voll. Here. N. 1012 col. 18. For it is clear that the heralds will cry
out and that Greece will cry out. Indeed, the thing signified has one
meaning. And the same thing happened in Empedocles when it is
said:
him neither the roofed house of aegis-bearing Zeus
nor ever the house of Hades
(138/142).
PART 3 TESTIMONIA
3.1 BIOGRAPHY
Al
1 Diogenes Laertius (8.50) presents Empedocles as the first of the Pythagorean school
after its founder, whose life is given at 8.1-50.
154 The Poem of Empedocles
For Aristotle, and also Heracleides, say that he died at the age of sixty.
And the man who won a victory at the seventy-first Olympic games
for horseback riding, was his grandfather of the same name;
so that Apollodorus indicates his date too at the same time.
53. In his Biographies Satyrus says that Empedocles was the son of
Exainetus and that he himself left a son named Exainetus; and that
in the same Olympic games he won a victory for horseback riding
and his son for wrestling or (as Heracleides says in his Summary) for
foot-racing. I myself discovered, in the Notebooks of Favorinus, that
Empedocles sacrificed for the spectators an ox made of honey and
barley meal, and that he had a brother Callicratides. Telauges, the son
of Pythagoras, says in his letter to Philolaus that Empedocles was the
son of Archinomus.
54. That he was a citizen of Acragas in Sicily he himself says at the
beginning of the purifications:
O friends, who dwell in the great city of the yellow Acragas,
up in the high parts of the city
(1/112.1-2). And that is the information about his family background.
In book 9 Timaeus testifies that he was a student of Pythagoras, say-
ing that at the time when he was convicted of stealing doctrines (as
Plato was too) he was barred from sharing their doctrines; and that
Empedocles mentioned Pythagoras, saying:
There was among them a man of exceptional knowledge,
who indeed obtained the greatest wealth in his thinking organs
(6/129.1-2). But others say that he said this with reference to Par-
menides.
55. Neanthes says that until the time of Philolaus and Empedocles the
Pythagoreans shared their doctrines. But when Empedocles published
them in his poetry they passed a law that no epic poet should be given
access to them. He says that Plato received the same treatment; for he
too was barred. He did not say which of the Pythagoreans Empedocles
studied under, since the letter which circulates as Telauges', and the
story that he studied with Hippasus and Brontinus, are unreliable.
Theophrastus says that he was a devotee of Parmenides and imitated
him in his poetry, since Parmenides too published his theories about
nature in epic verse. 56. Hermippus says that he was not a devotee
of Parmenides, but of Xenophanes; and that he spent time with the
latter and imitated his epic poetry; and that he later fell in with the
155 Testimonia
60. Timaeus too says in book 18 that the man was the object of wonder
in many ways. For once when the Etesian winds were blowing very
strongly, so that the crops were ruined, he ordered asses to be skinned
and bags to be made out of their hides, and he stretched them about
the ridges and mountaintops to catch the wind; when it ceased, he was
called 'the wind-stopper/ And Heracleides in his On Diseases says that
he told Pausanias the story about the woman who stopped breathing.
Pausanias, according to Aristippus and Satyrus, was his boy-lover,
and indeed he addressed his writings on nature to him thus:
And Pausanias, son of wise Anchites, you listen!
(13/1). 61. And he also wrote an epigram for him [B156]:
Pausanias the doctor, named for his craft,4 son of Anchitus,
a man of Asclepias' lineage, was reared in Gela, his homeland;
he turned many men who were wasting with painful illnesses
away from the halls of Persephone.
At any rate, Heracleides says that the case of the woman who stopped
breathing was like this: for thirty days her body was preserved intact,
although she neither breathed nor had a pulse. Hence he called him
both a doctor and a prophet, deriving this also from these lines:
O friends, who dwell in the great city of the yellow Acragas,
up in the high parts of the city, concerned with good deeds,
hail! I, in your eyes a deathless god, no longer mortal,
go among all, honoured, just as I seem:
wreathed with ribbons and festive garlands.
As soon as I arrive in flourishing cities I am revered
by all, men and women. And they follow at once,
in their ten thousands, asking where is the path to gain,
some in need of divinations, others in all sorts of diseases
sought to hear a healing oracle
(1/112.1-10).
63. He says that he called Acragas 'great' since 800,000 people inhab-
ited it; and that hence Empedocles said, in view of their luxurious
lives, 'the citizens of Acragas live luxuriously, as though they are
about to die tomorrow, but build their houses as though they will live
forever.'
It is said that the rhapsode Cleomenes recited these very purifications
at the Olympic games, according to Favorinus too, in his Notebooks.
Aristotle too says that he was a 'free man' and hostile to all public
8 The text is corrupt here. I translate what I regard as the most plausible suggestion.
159 Testimonia
wearing solemn robes. [He also says that] a plague once afflicted
the people of Selinus, because of the foul odours from the adjacent
river, so that they died and their wives miscarried; Empedocles got
the idea of diverting, at his own expense, two of the nearby rivers;
thus by mingling their waters with those of the first river he purified
[lit. sweetened] the stream. After the plague had been stopped in this
fashion, and the people of Selinus were feasting by the river bank,
Empedocles appeared;9 they got up and bowed before him, praying
to him as though to a god. [According to Diodorus] Empedocles leapt
into the fire in order to confirm their judgment about him.
71. Timaeus denies these stories, saying explicitly that he went away
to the Peloponnese and never returned at all, which is why his death
is obscure. He makes his case against Heracleides by name in book
4;10 for he says that Peisianax was a Syracusan and did not have a
farm in Acragas; and that Pausanias would have erected a monument
for his friend, if such a story had been current, or a statue or sacred
precinct as for a god. For Pausanias was a wealthy man. 'How, then/
he says, 'did he come to leap into the craters, which he had never even
mentioned as being nearby? 72. Therefore he died in the Peloponnese.
Nor is it at all odd that his tomb is not found. That is the case for many
other men too/ After saying this Timaeus adds, 'but Heracleides is
always [showing himself to be] this sort of paradox-monger; he even
says that a man fell [to earth] from the moon!'
Hippobotus says that there used to be a hooded statue of Empedo-
cles at Acragas, and later an unhooded one before the Roman Senate
house, clearly because the Romans moved it there. Even now painted
images of him are in circulation. Neanthes of Cyzicus, who also wrote
about Pythagorean questions, says that after Meton died a tyrannical
rule began to emerge; but then Empedocles persuaded the citizens of
Acragas to stop their civil strife and cultivate political equality.
73. Moreover, he gave dowries for many female citizens who lacked
them, because of his wealth. Hence he also wore purple clothes and
a golden head-band, as Favorinus says in his Notebooks; he also wore
bronze boots and a Delphic wreath. He had thick hair; and boys as fol-
lowers. And he was himself always grave, maintaining one demeanour.
He went around like this in public and was met by citizens who took
his manner to be an indication of a kind of royalty, as it were. Later,
when he was going to Messene in a wagon because of some public
9 The word for appearance here is the one generally used of the epiphany of a god.
10 Emended by Diels to 14.
160 The Poem of Empedocles
festival, he fell and broke his thigh. He fell ill as a result and died at
the age of seventy-seven. His grave too is in Megara.
74. Aristotle disagrees about his age. For he says that he died at the
age of sixty. Others say one hundred and nine. He was in his prime
in the eighty-fourth Olympiad [444-441]. Demetrius of Troizen says
in his book Against the Sophists that he, in the words of Homer,11
fastened a noose high in a lofty cornel tree,
and hung his neck; and his soul went down to Hades.
In the letter of Telauges mentioned above it is said that he slipped
into the sea because of old age and died. These are all the stories told
about his death.
76. His views were as follows. There are four elements, fire, water,
earth, and air; and love by which they are combined and strife by
which they are separated. He says this:
gleaming Zeus and life-bringing Hera and Aidoneus
and Nestis, who moistens with tears the spring of mortals
(12/6.2-3), calling fire Zeus, earth Hera, air Aidoneus, and water
Nestis. And, he says:
And these things never cease from constantly alternating
(25/17.6), as though such an arrangement of the cosmos was eternal;
at any rate he adds:
at one time all coming together by love into one,
and at another time again all being borne apart separately by the hostility
of strife
(25/17.7-8).
11 Odyssey 11.278-9.
161 Testimonia
77. And he says that the sun is a great aggregation of fire and bigger
than the moon, that the moon is discus-shaped, and that the heaven
itself is icelike. And that the soul puts on all sorts of forms of animals
and plants. At any rate he says:
For I have already become a boy and a girl
and a bush and a bird and a fiery fish from the sea
(111/117). So his work on nature and the purifications extend to 5000
lines, and the medical treatise to 600 lines. We mentioned the tragedies
above.
A2
in the company of the gods and learned from them how it is that
they are pleased at men and how they are displeased; and he spoke
about nature on that basis. [He also said that] the others guessed about
divinity and held mutually inconsistent opinions about it, but that
Apollo came to Apollonius and acknowledged that he himself was the
god, and that, although without making this acknowledgment, Athena
and the Muse and other gods, whose forms and names men do not yet
know, also came to him. And whatever Pythagoras said his followers
took to be a law and they honoured him as being sent from Zeus,
and they practised silence for the sake of the divine. For they heard
many divine and ineffable things, which it was hard to learn for those
who did not first learn that silence is speech. And that Empedocles
too practised this way of life is shown by:
hail! I, in your eyes a deathless god, no longer mortal
(1/112.3) and by:
For I have already become a boy and a girl
(111/117.1). And the ox at Olympia which he is said to have made as
a cake and sacrificed would be the work of someone who praised the
teachings of Pythagoras.
A3
a) Pliny Natural History 29.1.4-5. Another group, which called itself the
empirical [school of doctors] because of their use of experiments, began
in Sicily when Acron of Acragas was recommended by the authority
of Empedocles the natural philosopher.
b) The Suda, s.v. Acron. A citizen of Acragas, a doctor, son of Xenon.
He was active as a sophist in Athens at the same time as Empedocles.
He is, therefore, older than Hippocrates. He wrote about medicine in
the Doric dialect, one book about the healthy elements in nutrition.
And he is one of the men who made inferences about certain winds.
Empedocles wrote a mocking epigram about him. [See Al, D.L. 8.65.]
c) Plutarch On Isis and Osiris 383d. At any rate, they say that Acron
the doctor won fame in Athens during the great plague because he
told them to light a fire near those who were sick.
d) Galen On the Technique of Healing 1.1 (10.5-6 K). And previously
there was a considerable strife among those in Cos and Cnidos who
6.6: 'When the fellow came, Apollonius performed the purification rites laid down
by Empedocles and Pythagoras ...'
163 Testimonia
were trying to outdo each other in the number of their discoveries; for
this group, viz. the Asclepiads in Asia, was still divided into two after
the branch in Rhodes died out. And the Italian doctors too, Philistion,
Empedocles, Pausanias, and their followers, competed against them
with that good strife which Hesiod praised.
A4
A5
A6
A7
A8
A9
a) Eusebius Chronica for the year 456 BC. Empedocles and Parmenides
were well known as natural philosophers.
b) Gellius 17.21.14. In those days [between 477 and 450] Empedocles
of Acragas was active in the pursuit of natural philosophy.
A10
Eusebius Chronica for the year 436 BC. Then Democritus of Abdera
was well known as a natural philosopher, and Empedocles of Acragas,
and Zeno and Parmenides the philosophers and Hippocrates of Cos.
All
A12
A13
A14
heavy and pestilential south wind onto the plains, seemed to have
shut out a plague from the region.
b) Plutarch Reply to Colotes 1126b. Empedocles exposed the leading
citizens for being violent and plundering public property, <and exiled
them>; he rid the region of crop failure and plague by walling up
gorges in the mountain through which the south wind poured over
into the plain.
c) Clement Stromateis. See CTXT-12b.
d) Philostratus Life ofApollonius 8.7.8. What wise man do you think would
omit the struggle on behalf of such a city, recalling that Democritus
once freed the people of Abdera from a plague, reflecting on Sophocles
the Athenian who is said to have charmed the winds when they blew too
strong for the season, and having heard the story about Empedocles who
checked the onslaught of the [storm] cloud which would have broken
upon the people of Acragas. Cf. 1.2. For Empedocles, Pythagoras himself,
and Democritus consorted with magi, said many divinely inspired
things, and yet never stooped to the use of [black] magic.
e) Pliny Natural History 30.1.9. Certainly Pythagoras, Empedocles, Dem-
ocritus, and Plato sailed away to study magic, undertaking what was
exile rather than a mere wandering. They announced [their skill in]
magic on their return, but kept [its details] secret.
A15
A16
a) Strabo 6.2.8. They believed, on the basis of such a sight [Aetna], that
many of the stories told are mythical, and especially the ones some
17 Odyssey 4.221.
166 The Poem of Empedocles
people tell about Empedocles: that he leapt into the crater and left
behind as a sign of the experience one of the slippers which he wore,
bronze ones; for it was found outside and a little back from the lip of
the crater as though it had been thrown back by the violence of the
fire. 6.2.10, p. 276. But if all of this is credible, perhaps we should not
even doubt the myths told about Empedocles.
b) Horace Ars Poetica 458-67. If, like a bird-catcher watching black-
birds, he falls into a well or pit, though he cry long and loud 'Help,
citizens!' no one will bother to help him out. If someone bothers to
help and lets down a rope, I will say, 'How do you know whether he
jumped down on purpose and prefers not to be rescued?' and I will
tell about the death of the Sicilian poet. While eager to be considered
immortal, Empedocles cold-bloodedly leapt into blazing Aetna.18 It
should be lawful and permitted for poets to die; he who rescues a
man against his will acts [as badly] as someone who kills him.
A17
A18
A19
to rhetoric. But the earliest technical writers were Corax and Tisias,
Sicilians; they were followed by Gorgias of Leontini, also a Sicilian,
who was according to tradition a student of Empedocles.
c) Aristotle Sophistici Elenchi 34, 183b29-32. Those rhetoricians who
are now famous have inherited as though in a succession from many
who had partially advanced the art and so have improved it. Tisias fol-
lowed the earliest [speakers, mentioned by Homer] and Thrasymachus
followed Tisias ...
d) Scholion on lamblichus Life of Pythagoras 267 (p. 198). That Par-
menides of Elea was also a Pythagorean; from which it is evident that
Zeno 'the double-tongued' was too, he who also provided the founda-
tions of dialectic. So that dialectic began with Pythagoras, and similarly
rhetoric. For Tisias, Gorgias, and Polus were students of Empedocles
the Pythagorean.
3.2 APOPHTHEGMS
A20
A20A
3.3 POETRY
A21
A22
A23
A24
A25
He who uses only metre is not a poet. For neither is Empedocles, who
wrote natural philosophy, nor the Pythian god, who gives oracles in
verse.
b) Plutarch How to Study Poetry 16c. The verses of Empedocles and
Parmenides, and the work on beasts by Nicander and the collection
of proverbs of Theognis are discourses which borrow from poetry its
solemnity and metre, as a vehicle, to avoid being prosaic.
c) Aristotle Rhetoric 1407a31-39. The second thing is to use the proper
words ... The third is not to use ambiguous words. And this [should
be done] unless one [actually] prefers the opposite course [i.e. obscu-
rity] - which is just what [speakers] do when they have nothing to
say but pretend to say something. For such men say these things in
poetry, like Empedocles. For the long, round-about expression dupes
the audience, and they experience what most people experience when
consulting prophets. For when they make ambiguous utterances, they
also agree that 'Croesus by crossing the Halys river will destroy a
great empire/
d) See 59/55 at CTXT-44.
e) Cicero De Oratore 1.217. By that argument we could say that playing
ball and '12-lines' belong to civil law, since Publius Mucius did both
of these very well. And by the same argument those whom the Greeks
call natural philosophers are also poets, since Empedocles the natural
philosopher wrote a splendid poem.
A26
A27
when you come ... If you read the Empedoclean works of Sallustius I
will think you a strong man, but not a humane one.
3.4 DOCTRINE
A28
A29
A30
and poured around in a circle; after air, fire, springing out and hav-
ing no other place [to go], springs out23 upwards [and lodges] un-
der the solidified air. There are two hemispheres moving in a cir-
cle around the earth, the one wholly of fire, the other mixed from
air and a little fire, which he thinks is night. The beginning of the
motion occurs because the aggregation meets with the downward
pressure of fire in <a certain part>. The sun is not in its nature
fire, but a reflection of fire like that from water. He says that the
moon is formed on its own from that [part of] air which is cut off by
fire. For this solidifies, just as hail also does. And it gets its light
from the sun. The mind is located neither in the head nor in the
chest, but in the blood. Hence in whatever part of the body there
is more of it diffused24 men are superior [to animals] in respect to that
part.
A31
Hippolytus Refutatio 1.3 (Dox. Gr. 558). 1. Empedocles came after them
[the Pythagoreans] and wrote a great deal about the nature of daimons
too, how they dwell in and administer affairs all over the earth, being
very numerous. He said that the principle of the universe is strife and
love and that god is the intelligent fire of the monad and that all things
are constructed from fire and will be dissolved into fire. The Stoics
too agree with roughly this doctrine, as they expect a conflagration. 2.
He assents to reincarnation more than anything else, speaking thus:
For I have already become a boy and a girl
and a bush and a bird and a mute25 fish from the sea
(111/117). He said that all souls transfer into all bodies. For Pythagoras
who taught these doctrines said that he had been Euphorbus who
campaigned against Troy, claiming that he could recognize his shield.
A32
23 The Greek word used here (exTpe'^t^) is one also used, as by Theophrastus, for
plants running or shooting upwards. This is appropriate, in view of Empedocles'
other comparisons of the elements with growing things. The repetition is a product
of the doxographical style.
24 A scholiast adds at this point: 'he thinks this is the mind.'
25 Or possibly we should translate: scaly. Other citations of the fragment also supply
the adjective 'fiery.' The line seems to have been corrupted in antiquity.
173 Testimonia
only the one is eternal and infinite. <Empedocles said>26 that the one
is necessity and that its [i.e. necessity's] matter is the four elements, its
forms being strife and love. He also says that the elements are gods
and [so is] their mixture, the cosmos, and <in addition to these the
sphere into which all these>27 will be dissolved, which is uniform.
And he thinks that souls are divine, and so are those pure men who
participate in them with purity.28
A33
26 That Empedocles is the author of the views which follow has been recognized since
Heeren. D-K and Bollack give more extensive supplements.
27 The supplement is by Diels; Bollack's text is different.
28 Note that here human beings are not identified with their souls but are said to
participate in them. Could the soul here be what Empedocles calls the daimon?
Empedocles never uses the word for soul (\l/vxfi) in what later becomes its standard
philosophical sense, but once only, in the Homeric sense, to indicate 'life' (129/138).
29 Cf. Sextus Adversus Mathematicos 10.315.
30 There is a pun on boiling and Zeus.
174 The Poem of Empedocles
A34
A35
a) Ae'tius 2.7.6 (Dox. Gr. 336). Empedocles said that the places of
the elements were not always stationary or definite, but that all the
elements occupy each other's places.
31 This etymology depends on the similarity of Aidoneus to Hades, whose name is
often interpreted to mean 'the invisible one.'
32 Again, the etymology depends on a dubious pun.
175 Testimonia
A36
A37
A38
A39
than the beautiful, for this reason someone else introduced love and
strife, one to be a cause of each set of these [opposites]. For if you
were to follow and interpret Empedocles according to his intent and
not according to his stammering expression, you will find that love is
the cause of good things, strife of bad things. So if you were to say
that in a way Empedocles said and said first that good and bad were
principles, perhaps you would be right - if, indeed, the cause of all
good things is itself good.
A40
A41
A42
A43
A43A
A44
A45
a) Ae'tius 1.26.1 (Dox. Gr. 321). Empedocles says that the essence of
necessity is [to be] a cause which employs principles and elements.
b) Plutarch On the Generation of the Soul in the Timaeus, 1026b. ...
necessity mixed with persuasion, which many people call fate and
Empedocles calls love and strife together.
A46
Aristotle Physics 1.4, 187a20-26. Some say that the opposites, which
are contained in it, are separated from the one, as Anaximander says
and all those who say that there are one and many, such as Empedocles
and Anaxagoras. For they too separate other things from the mixture.
And they differ from each other in that one says that these things occur
in a cycle and the other just once, and one makes an indefinite number
of things elements, i.e. the homoiomerous things and opposites, while
the other posits the elements [usually] so called.
A47
Ae'tius 1.5.2 (Dox. Gr. 291). Empedocles [says] there is one cosmos but
that the cosmos is not the universe, but merely a small part of the
universe and the rest of it is inert matter.
A48
Plato Laws 10.889b-c. They say that fire, water, earth, and air all exist
by nature and by chance and that none of these exists by art, and that
the bodies (of the earth, sun, moon, and stars) which are posterior to
these came into being through these [four] things, which are utterly
soulless. All of them move by the chance of their own powers and fit
179 Testimonia
A49
A50
a) Ae'tius 2.31.4 (Dox, Gr. 363). Empedocles says that the distance in
breadth is greater than the height from earth to the heaven, which is
its elevation above us; for the heaven is spread more widely in this
direction [i.e. breadth] because the cosmos is situated similarly to an
egg-33
b) Ae'tius 2.1.4 (Dox. Gr. 328). Empedocles says that the circuit of the
sun is the outline of the limit of the cosmos.
c) Ae'tius 2.10.2 (Dox. Gr. 339). Empedocles says that the cosmos's right-
hand side is towards the summer solstice, its left-hand side towards
the winter solstice.
33 P. Bicknell, 'The Shape of Empedocles' Cosmos/ explains this as meaning that the
cosmos is a sphere slightly flattened at top and bottom so that it sits like an egg on
a table. He connects to this view the claim (A47) that the cosmos is not coextensive
with the spherical universe.
180 The Poem of Empedocles
A51
a) Ae'tius 2.11.2 (Dox. Gr. 339). Empedocles says that the heaven is
solid, [being made] from air solidified in the manner of ice by fire;34
for it contains the fiery and the airy in each of its hemispheres.
b) Achilles Introduction to Aratus 5, p. 34.29-30. Empedocles says it [the
heaven] is like ice, being compounded from what is like the frozen.
c) Scholia on Basil, 22.35 Empedocles says it is like frozen water and
as it were an icy condensate.
d) Lactantius De Opificio Dei 17.6. Or if someone tells me that the
heaven is bronze or glass, or as Empedocles says, frozen air, am I to
agree immediately, just because I do not know of what material the
heaven is made?
A52
a) Ae'tius 2.4.8 (Dox. Gr. 331). Empedocles says that the cosmos <comes
to be and> is destroyed by the reciprocal predominance of strife and
love.36
b) Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's De Caelo CIAG 7, 293.18-
294.3. See CTXT-19d.
c) Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's De Caelo CIAG 7, 305.20-25.
Since Plato and Empedocles and Anaxagoras and the other natural
philosophers obviously set down the coming-into-being of compound
from simple objects in this hypothetical manner [i.e. supposing that
there was an historical origin of the cosmos], making their analysis
into simple bodies on the basis of what is now visible and investigat-
ing their composition from the simple bodies, as if that from which
generated things come into being actually pre-existed in time.
d) Aristotle Metaphysics 3.4,1000bl8-20. See CTXT-25a.
34 Longrigg ('KPTETAAAEIAH2') suggests that this odd statement is the result of
doxographical handling of an original Empedoclean comparison with the action of
the sun on sea-water to form salt.
35 See G. Pasquali 'Doxographica aus Basiliusscholien' 200. On p. 219 Pasquali
suggests, probably correctly, that the word vbpoTtayfi is Empedocles'.
36 For Sturz's supplement <comes to be and> adopted by Diels in Dox. Gr. but
abandoned in D-K, see now D. O'Brien 'Hermann Diels on the Presocratics:
Empedocles' Double Destruction of the Cosmos (Aetius ii 4.8)' Phronesis 45 (2000)
1-18.
181 Testimonia
A53
Aetius 2.13.2 (Dox. Gr. 341). Empedocles says that [the stars are] fiery,
from the fire-like element which air contained in itself and squeezed
out during the initial separation.
A54
Aetius 2.13.11 (Dox. Gr. 342). Empedocles says that the fixed stars are
fastened to the ice and that the planets are free.
A55
A56
a) Aetius 2.20.13 (Dox. Gr. 350). Empedocles [says there are] two suns.
One is an archetype, being fire in the other hemisphere of the cosmos,
filling the hemisphere, always positioned directly opposite its own
reflection. The other is the sun we observe, a reflection in the other
hemisphere (the one which is filled with air mixed with heat) which
is produced by a reflection from the earth, which is round, onto the
icy sun and is carried around with the movement of the fiery [one].
In brief, the sun is a reflection of the fire around the earth.
b) Aetius 2.21.2 (Dox. Gr. 351). The [sun] caused by reflection is equal
[in size] to the earth.
A57
A58
a) Ae'tius 2.8.2 (Dox. Gr. 338). Empedocles says that the poles inclined
because the air yielded to the force of the sun, and the northern parts
were raised, the southern parts lowered; accordingly the entire cosmos
[inclined].
b) Ae'tius 2.23.3 (Dox. Gr. 353). Empedocles says [that the sun] goes
straight ahead as far as possible, given that it is checked by the sphere
which surrounds it, and [that it turns] because of the tropic circles.
A59
Ae'tius 2.24.7 (Dox. Gr. 354). [The sun eclipses] when the moon moves
beneath it.
A60
a) Ae'tius 2.25.15 (Dox. Gr. 357). Empedocles says [the moon] is con-
densed air, cloud-like, hardened by fire, so that it is mixed.
b) Plutarch The Face on the Moon 922c. Indeed, they carp at Empedocles
who makes the moon a coagulation of air, like hail, surrounded by the
sphere of fire.
38 Folio 110 recto of an early-eighteenth-century ms on optics.
183 Testimonia
A61
Aetius 2.31.1 (Dox. Gr. 362). Empedocles says that the moon is twice
as far from the sun as from the earth [Pseudo-Plutarch version].39
A62
Hippolytus Refutatio 1.4.3 (Dox. Gr. 559). As Empedocles said that the
entire region where we are is full of evils and that the evils reach
to the moon extending from the terrestrial region, but go no further,
since the entire region above the moon is more pure. Heraclitus also
held this opinion.
A63
A64
A65
Ae'tius 3.8.1 (Dox. Gr. 375). Empedocles and the Stoics [say that] winter
occurs because the air, dominating due to its condensation, forces its
way to the upper part; summer because fire [dominates] when it forces
its way to the lower part.
A66
A67
Aristotle De Caelo 2.13, 295al3-21. That is why all those who generate
the heaven say that the earth too comes together in the middle. They
185 Testimonia
look for the cause of its staying there and some say it is like this, that
its breadth and size are the cause, but others such as Empedocles [say
it is] the movement of the heaven, which, since it goes around in a
circle and moves faster, checks the movement of the earth - like the
water in cups. For this too, when the cup is moved in a circle, often
stays at the bottom of the bronze vessel and does not move down
(although it tends to do so by nature) because of the same cause.40
A68
A69
A69A
A70
a) Aetius 5.26.4 (Dox. Gr. 438). Empedocles says that trees were the
first animals to grow up from the earth, before the sun was unfolded
around it and before night and day were separated; because of the
symmetry of their blend they include the nature [logos] of male and
female. They grow by being raised out by the heat in the earth,42 so
that they are parts of the earth, just as embryos in the abdomen are
parts of the womb. And fruits are excesses of the water and fire in
the plants. Those [plants] which are deficient in moisture because it
is evaporated by heat in summer drop their leaves; those which have
excessive moisture43 keep them, as in the case of the bay tree, olive,
and date palm. Differences in flavours are produced by the variations
of the manypartedness of the <earth>44 and because the plants draw in
different ways the homoiomeries from their source of nutrition, as in
the case of vines. For it is not the differences in the vines which make
the wine good but the differences in the soil which nourishes them.
b) Theophrastus De Causis Plantarum 1.12.5. For there is a single source
of generation, not as Empedocles divides and partitions, [assigning]
earth to the roots and aither to the shoots, each [source of generation]
being separate for each;45 but [generation comes] from one matter and
one generative cause.
c) Aristotle De Anima 2.4, 415b28-416a2. Empedocles did not describe
this properly, adding that plants grow on the one hand by putting
roots down because earth moves naturally in this direction and on
the other [growing] upwards because fire moves similarly.
d) Plutarch Table Talk 688a. Plants preserve their nature unconsciously,
as Empedocles says, because they draw46 their appropriate nutrition
from their environment.
e) Pseudo-Aristotle De Plantis*7 (i) 1.1, 815al5-18 (Bollack no. 577).
But Anaxagoras and Empedocles say that plants are moved by desire
42 Following the text of Diels.
43 Following the text of Diels.
44 Following the text of Diels.
45 Reading exarepw with Einarson.
46 The Greek word suggests liquid nutrition.
47 This is actually a commentary on a lost work of Aristotle's about plants, compiled by
Nicolaus of Damascus. It is preserved only in Arabic and other oriental languages,
not in Greek, though a Greek version appears in the Corpus Aristotelicum. The
Greek text is itself a translation from the Latin translation of the Arabic version;
187 Testimonia
and assert that they also perceive and feel joy and sadness ... (ii)
815a20-21. But Empedocles thought they were of mixed sex ... (iii)
1.2, 815bl6-17. But Anaxagoras and Democritus and Empedocles said
they had mind ... (iv) 1.6, 816b40-817a3 (Bollack no. 573). What is to
be investigated most thoroughly and most properly in this science is
what Empedocles claimed, i.e. whether there is found in plants both
the female and the male sex or rather a type mixed from both sexes
... (v) 817a9-ll. And we must investigate whether those two types
[male and female] are found joined together into one organism in
plants, as Empedocles says.48 (vi) 1.6,817a36-38 (Bollack no. 586). And
Empedocles spoke correctly [when he said] that trees produce young
...49 (vii) 1.7, 817b35-38 (Bollack no. 572). And Empedocles was right
in his assertion that plants were born when the world was as yet
deficient and had not reached completion. But when it was perfected
and completed, animals50 were born.
A71
consequently it has no independent value. I work from the Latin translation of the
Arabic first published by Meyer and Bussemaker, in the version found in the Didot
edition (Paris 1857) of Aristotle's complete works (4: 16-44). It is clear that the text
could still be improved considerably. See Drossart Lulofs 'Aristotle's OEPI 4>TTiiN,'
who points out (p. 75) that the Didot edition incorporates improvements to Meyer's
edition. Professor Drossart Lulofs has been generous in considering the proper
translation of these fragments in light of the Arabic text, and I have incorporated
his suggested improvements in my translation of the Latin. In correspondence
Drossart Lulofs expresses uncertainty about the meaning of the fragments on sex
in plants.
On (vi) there is disagreement; Bollack would retain the negation deleted by
Meyer, Diels, and now Drossart Lulofs, who take the fragment as a reference
to 79/79 and Nicolaus' text as a paraphrase of the Aristotelian context of 79/79
(CTXT-70a); Bollack argues that even if the 'not' is deleted, the text of Nicolaus
does not capture Aristotle's sense properly. The uncertainty is worsened by the
ambiguity of the Arabic term used for 'producing young.' In the text I give what I
take (with some uncertainty) to be Drossart Lulofs's interpretation; Bollack's would
yield: 'And Empedocles spoke correctly [when he said] that trees do not produce
live young, because what is born is only born [if] from a part of a seed ...' For (vii)
I give Drossart Lulofs' translation from the Arabic.
48 Cf. 79/79 at CTXT-70.
49 The sense of what follows, in Drossart Lulofs's interpretation, is uncertain; he
describes it as a continuation of the quotation from Aristotle (CTXT-70a).
50 Lit. 'the animal was born.'
188 The Poem of Empedocles
A72
a) Ae'tius 5.19.5 (Dox. Gr. 430). Empedocles says that the first gen-
erations of animals and plants were not at all whole, but were dis-
jointed with parts not grown together; and the second generations
were like dream images, with the parts growing together; the third
were whole-natured;51 the fourth were no longer [produced] from
homoiomerous substances like earth and water, but at this stage they
were produced by each other - [the cause being] the condensation of
the nourishment for some, while for others the beauty of the women,
which produced stimulation of the reproductive movement [lit. move-
ment of the seed], also [functioned as a cause]. The species of all the
animals were distinguished according to the character of the blends
[of elements]; some are more properly inclined to the water, others
(whichever ones have a predominance of the fiery element) fly into the
air, the heavier ones go to the ground, while those equally balanced
in their blend ... [corrupt text].52
b) Censorinus 4.7-8. But Empedocles states ... in his splendid poem
... something like this. First, single limbs issued from everywhere in
the earth - as though it were pregnant - and then came together and
produced the stuff of a solid man, being mixed out of fire and water
together. Cf. Parmenides A51.
c) Varro Menippean Satires: Eumenides fr. 150 (vol. 4). Empedocles says
that men are born from the earth, like blite [a kind of spinach].
51 For 6\o(j>v)v, as in D-K; the mss read a\\-ri\o(f>vuv, and Bollack follows them; but
cf. fragment 67/62.4.
52 I have translated the text in D-K, which is heavily emended. Bollack stays much
closer to the mss, but the sense of the resulting text is hard to discern.
189 Testimonia
A73
A74
Ae'tius 4.22.1 (Dox. Gr. 411-412). Empedocles says that the first breath-
ing of the first53 animal occurred when the moisture in newborns
retreated and the outer air made its entrance into the empty space
through the open vessels. Directly after this the inborn heat squeezed
out the airy element by its rush to the exterior [and this was] exha-
lation; and by its retreat to the interior it caused the airy element to
re-enter, [which was] inhalation. But, [he says], the breathing which
now goes on [works like this]: exhalation occurs when blood moves to
the surface and by its influxes during its outward movement squeezes
the airy element through the nostrils,54 and inhalation occurs when
the returning air enters back into the rare spaces in the blood. And he
mentions what happens in the case of the clepsydra. Cf. 106/100.55
A75
Aetius 5.18.1 (Dox. Gr. 427). Why are seven-month foetuses viable? Empe-
docles [said that] when the human race was born from the earth the
day was as long as a ten-month period is now, because of the slow
progress of the sun. And as time progressed the day was as long
as a seven-month period is now. This is why there are ten-month
and seven-month foetuses, the nature of the cosmos having contrived
things so that the foetus should grown in one day ... [corrupt text] the
night on which it is born.56
A76
Plato Phaedo 96a-b. [Socrates] said, 'for I, Cebes, was extremely eager,
when I was young, for the kind of wisdom which they call "inquiry
about nature." For it seemed to me a splendid thing for a man to know
the causes of each thing: why each thing comes to be, why it passes
away, and why it exists. And many times I turned myself upside down
by investigating these kinds of question first: Is it when the hot and
cold acquire a sort of putrefaction that animals are produced, as some
used to say? And is it blood by which we think or air or fire? or none
of these, but ...?'
A77
a) Ae'tius 5.27.1 (Dox. Gr. 440). Empedocles says that animals are nour-
ished by the settling of appropriate [material], grow because of the
presence of heat, and shrink and decline because of the deficiency of
both. And men now, compared to the first men, are like infants.
55 There is another version at 5.15.3 (Dox. Gr. 425-26): 'Empedocles says that the
embryo is not an animal, but does not breathe while in the womb. The first
breathing of the animal occurs during delivery, as the moisture around the child
retreats and the external airy [element] makes its entry into the empty space, i.e. the
vessels which have been opened up.' Diels deleted the first 'not.'
56 The textual corruption obscures the exact character of the correlation intended to
hold between days in the primeval period and months in the contemporary world.
191 Testimonia
A78
a) Ae'tius 5.22.1 (Dox. Gr. 434). Empedocles [says that] flesh is pro-
duced from the four elements blended in equal parts, sinews from
fire and earth mixed with double the amount of water; animals' claws
are produced from sinews which are cooled off as they meet the air,
bones from two parts of water and earth, four of fire, these parts being
blended within the earth. Sweat and tears occur when blood dissolves
and pours out to become thinner.57
b) Aristotle De Partibus Animalium 1.1, 642al7-22. For nature is more
of a principle than matter is, and in some places Empedocles stumbles
into it, being led by the truth itself, and is forced to say that substance
and nature are the ratio, as when he defines what bone is; for he says
not that it is some one of the elements or two or three or all of them,
but a ratio of their mixture.
c) Aristotle De Anima 1.4, 408al3-23. Similarly it is odd that soul
should be the ratio of the mixture. For the mixture of the elements
which makes flesh is not in the same ratio as that which makes bone.
So it will turn out that [an animal] has many souls all through its
body, if indeed all things are a result of the mixture of the elements
and the ratio of the mixture [of the elements] is a harmony and soul.
Someone might ask this of Empedocles too, since he says that each
of them exists by virtue of a ratio: so, is the soul the ratio or is it
rather as some other thing that it is present in the limbs? Again, is
love responsible for any chance mixture or only mixture according to
ratio? And is love the ratio or something besides the ratio?
Cf. Metaphysics 1.10, 993al5-24: For early philosophy seemed to stam-
mer on all topics, since it was young and just starting out. For even
Empedocles says that bone exists in virtue of the ratio and that this
is the essence and the substance of a thing. Yet it is just as necessary
that flesh too and each of the other [natural parts] exist <because of>
the ratio, or that none of them should. Therefore, flesh and bone and
each of the others will exist because of this [ratio] and not because of
the matter, which he says is fire, earth, water, and air. But, if someone
else had said this, he would necessarily have agreed to it, though he
himself did not express [the idea] clearly.
d) Pseudo-Aristotle On Breath 9, 485b26-29. So Empedocles too de-
scribes the nature of bone too simply, <since> if they indeed all had
the same ratio of mixture, there should be no difference between those
of a horse, a lion, and a man.
e) Plutarch Natural Phenomena 917a. Some, such as Empedocles, say
that tears are driven out from blood when it is disturbed, as whey is
from milk.
f) Michael of Ephesus, Commentary on Aristotle's De Partibus Animal-
ium CIAG 22.2, p. 29,9-10 just as the marrow is the nourishment for
the bones, even if Empedocles does say that the marrow is produced
by the bones.
g) Pseudo-Aristotle On Breath 484a38-b2. Empedocles [says that] the
claws are produced from the sinews by hardening. So is this the rela-
tionship of the skin to flesh?
A79
A80
A81
from the left. Although their views on this issue agree, they differ on
the question of the similarity of children. On this issue, Empedocles'
opinion is given in detail as follows. If the seeds of the parents are of
equal heat, a male similar to the father is produced; if of equal coolness,
a female similar to the mother. But if the father's is warmer and the
mother's cooler, a boy will be produced with facial resemblances to
his mother; but if the mother's is warmer and the father's cooler, a girl
who looks like her father. 6.9-10. The next point concerns twins, the
eventual birth of which Hippon thought was caused by the condition
of the semen; for it is divided in two if it is more abundant than suffices
for one child. Empedocles seems to have more or less suspected this
very point. For he did not set down causes for the division; he said
only that it was divided and that if both seeds settled in equally warm
places, both would be born male, if in equally cool, both female, and
that if one was warmer and one cooler, the offspring would be of
different sexes.
A82
A83
a) Ae'tius 5.21.1 (Dox. Gr. 433). How long does it take animals in the
womb to be shaped? Empedocles says that in the case of humans [the
foetus] begins to be articulated from the thirty-sixth day and that it is
completed with respect to its parts from the forty-ninth day.
195 Testimonia
A84
A85
a) Ae'tius 5.24.2 (Dox. Gr. 435). Empedocles [says that] sleep occurs
by a moderate cooling of the heat in the blood, and death by a total
cooling.
b) Ae'tius 5.25.4 (Dox. Gr. 437). Empedocles says that death is a separa-
tion of the fiery58 from the things whose combination was compounded
for man. Thus according to him death is common to soul and body.
And sleep occurs by a separation of the fiery.
A86
58 Diels supplements the text at this point and his text would yield: '<and the airy and
the watery and the earthy> from which things there was a combination to produce
a man.' I translate the text of one of the mss with a minor emendation. Bollack's
text is quite different.
59 I.e. of what is similar to the perceiving organ.
196 The Poem of Empedocles
60 Presumably effluences.
61 A supplement, '<water and>/ was made by Diels, D-K; Bollack omits it; see O'Brien
The Effect of a Simile: Empedocles' Theories of Sensing' 163.
62 By 'it' Theophrastus means the fire in the eye; see fragment 103/84 at CTXT-85. But
this may not be a correct interpretation.
63 Cf. section 91: 'On colours, he [Plato] speaks just about as Empedocles does; for
having parts symmetrical with the [organ of] vision comes about by means of [the
effluences] fitting into the pores.'
64 The supplement is by Diels, D-K.
197 Testimonia
- the ones with less fire by day (for their internal light is equalized
by the external light), the ones [with less] of the opposite [see better]
at night (for they too have their deficiency supplemented). And each
kind [has the] opposite [characteristic] in the opposite conditions. Fo
those who have too much fire have dim vision (for being further
increased in the daytime it covers over and blocks up the pores of
water), while for those [with too much] water this same [problem]
occurs at night (for the fire is blocked by the water). <And this goes
on>65 for the one group until the water is dissipated by the external
fire, and for the other until the fire is dissipated by the air. For the
opposite is the cure66 for each group. The [organ of vision] which
is constructed with an equal amount of both [fire and water] is op-
timally blended and best. And this is roughly what he says about
vision.
(9) Hearing, [he says], occurs as a result of interior sound, for when it
is moved by the voice,67 it echoes internally. For the [organ of] hearing
(which he calls a 'fleshy shoot') is like a 'bell' for echoes equal to those
it received:68 when set in motion it drives the air against the solid parts
and makes an echo.
Smell, [he says], occurs by inhalation. That is why those in whom the
movement of the breath is most vigorous smell most acutely. And the
strongest odour comes as an effluence from fine, light objects.
Concerning taste and touch he gives no individual account of either
the manner or means of their operation, except the general point that
sense-perception occurs by fitting into pores. And pleasure occurs by
means of things which are like in both their parts and in their blend,
and pain by the opposite.
He speaks similarly of thought and ignorance. (10) For thinking is by
like things and ignorance by unlike things, on the assumption that
thinking is either the same as or very similar to sense-perception. For
69 A reference to 17/109.
70 Accepting the emendation of A. Frenkian (Theophrast De Sensu Kap. 10'), iva. for
eari. The translation here is difficult, but it seems best to take judAiora with T&V
jue/Dwy, despite the hyperbaton.
71 A reference to 89/91.
199 Testimonia
72 Cf. 19/13.
200 The Poem of Empedocles
A87
A88
A89
says that the iron moves toward the stone because of the effluences
from both and because the pores of the stone are symmetrical with
the effluences from the iron. For the effluences from it displace and
move the air in the pores of the iron which covers them. When this is
removed the iron follows the effluence which flows all at once. And
when the effluences from the iron move to the pores of the stone, be-
cause these effluences are symmetrical with and fit into the pores, the
iron too follows along with the effluences and moves. Even if one were
to concede the point about the effluences, one might further enquire
why the stone does not follow its own effluences and move towards
the iron. For on the theory as stated, there is no more reason for the
stone to move towards the iron than for the iron to move towards the
stone. Again, why will the iron not sometimes move toward something
else, even without the stone, when the effluences from it move all at
once. For why is it that only the effluences from the stone are able
to move the air which covers the pores of the iron and checks the
effluences? Again, why does nothing else move towards anything else
in this fashion, although he says that many things have pores which are
mutually symmetrical with another's effluences? At any rate he says:
[Water is] more easily fitted to wine, but with oil
it does not want [to mix]
(89/91).
b) Psellus De Lapidibus 26 (p. 247.24-28). Many have had the temerity
to state causes for these powers in stones, among the older sages
Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and Democritus, and, among those [who
lived] not so long before us, Alexander of Aphrodisias.
A90
A91
a) Aristotle De Sensu 2, 437b9-14 [on the fire in the eye]. The eye itself
sees itself in the same way as it also does in reflection, since if it were
205 Testimonia
fire (as Empedocles says and as is written in the Timaeus [45c]) and if
seeing also occurred when light proceeded [from the eye] as from a
lantern, why would the eye not also see in the dark?
b) Aristotle De Generatione Animalium 5.1,779bl5-20. To suppose, then,
that blue-grey [eyes] are fiery, as Empedocles says, and that dark eyes
have more water than fire and that this is why some eyes [viz. blue-
grey ones] do not see sharply in the daytime because of their lack of
water, and that the others do not see sharply at night because of their
lack of fire, this is not a good theory, if indeed one must assign vision
in all animals to water, not to fire.77
A92
A93
Ae'tius 4.16.1 (Dox. Gr. 406). Empedocles says that hearing occurs by
the contact of air on the cartilaginous part which he says is suspended
within the ear, swinging and being struck like a bell.
A94
a) Aetius 4.17.2 (Dox. Gr. 407). Empedocles says that odour enters along
with breathing from the lung. At any rate, when breathing becomes
heavy we do not sense [odour] because of the roughness, as happens
in the case of those with runny noses.
b) Aristotle De Sensu 4, 441a3-7. Taste is a kind of touch. Now the
nature of water tends to be without flavour. And it is necessary either
for water to contain in itself the [different] kinds of flavours, which are
imperceptible because of their smallness, as Empedocles says, or ...
A95
a) Aetius 4.9.14 (Dox. Gr. 398). Parmenides and Empedocles say that
desire occurs because of a deficiency of nutriment.
b) Aetius 4.9.15 (Dox. Gr. 398). Empedocles says that things have plea-
sures because of things similar to themselves, and that [they aim] at a
refilling in accordance with the deficiency; so that the desire for what
is similar is caused by the deficiency. And pains occur by means of
opposites. For things which are different in the combination and the
blend of the elements are hostile to one another.
c) Aetius 5.28 (Dox. Gr. 440). Empedocles says that animals have de-
sires according to their deficiencies in those elements which complete
each one, and that pleasures come from what is congenial according
to the blends of related and like [elements], while disturbances and
<pains from what is uncongenialx78
A96
A97
a) Aetius 4.5.8 (Dox. Gr. 391). Empedocles says that [the mind is] in
the compound of blood.
b) Theodoretus 5.22 (Dox. Gr. 391 n.). Empedocles and Aristotle and
the Stoic school assigned the heart to this, [i.e. the mind]. And again
of these men some said it is in the ventricle of the heart, others in the
blood.
A98
... he says that souls transmigrate from one body to another after they
first perish82 and that this happens indefinitely.83 As though someone
would not say to him: Empedocles! If souls can survive on their own
and you do not ... them in an animal nature and transfer them for
this reason, how, I ask you, is the transmigration possible?84 For in the
intervening time, during which they suffer transmigration, and which
interrupts their animal nature, everything will be dissipated. But if
they do somehow have [an animal nature during transmigration] (for
they must) while bodiless, why on earth do you trouble yourself -
and them even more so - by shifting them and transferring them
from one animal to another? And these ... [three lines missing] For it
1/112
10
2/114
3/4
211 Fragments: Translation
1/112
O friends, who dwell in the great city of the yellow Acragas,
up in the high parts of the city, concerned with good deeds,
<respectful harbours for strangers, untried by evil,>
hail! I, in your eyes a deathless god, no longer mortal,
5 go among all, honoured, just as I seem:
wreathed with ribbons and festive garlands.
As soon as I arrive in flourishing cities I am revered
by all, men and women. And they follow at once,
in their ten thousands, asking where is the path to gain,
10 some in need of divinations, others in all sorts of diseases
sought to hear a healing oracle,
having been pierced <about by harsh pains> for too long a time.
2/114
O friends! I know that truth attends the words
which I will speak. But it is very hard indeed
for men, and resented, the flow of persuasion into their thought organ.
3/4
But bad men are strongly inclined to disbelieve the strong.
And [you], know in the way that the assurances given by our muse urge,
by dividing up the discourse in your heart.
212 Fragments: Text
4/132
5/27a
6/129
7/113
8/2
5
213 Fragments: Translation
4/132
Blessed is he who obtained wealth in his divine thinking organs,
and wretched is he to whom belongs a darkling opinion about the gods.
5/27a
There is no dissension nor unseemly battle in [his] limbs.
6/129
There was among them a man of exceptional knowledge,
who indeed obtained the greatest wealth in his thinking organs,
master of all kinds of particularly wise deeds;
for whenever he reached out with all his thinking organs
5 he easily saw each of all the things which are
in ten or twenty human lifetimes.
7/113
But why do I press these points, as though doing some great thing
if I am better than mortal men who die [lit. are destroyed] many times?
8/2
For narrow devices are spread throughout their limbs,
but many wretched things strike in, and they blunt their meditations.
And having seen [only] a small portion of life in their experience
they soar and fly off like smoke, swift to their dooms,
5 each one convinced of only that very thing which he has chanced to meet,
214 Fragments: Text
10
9/3
10/131
11/115
5
215 Fragments: Translation
as they are driven in all directions. But <each> boasts of having seen
the whole.
In this way, these things are neither seen nor heard by men
nor grasped with the understanding
But you, then, since you have stepped aside here,
10 you will learn. Mortal cunning has certainly gone no further.
9/3
But gods! turn aside their madness from my tongue
and channel a pure stream from holy mouths.
And you, maiden muse of the white arms, much-remembering,
I beseech you: what it is right for ephemeral creatures to hear,
5 send [to me], driving your well-reined chariot from [the halls of] piety.
10/131
For if, immortal muse, for the sake of any ephemeral creature,
<it has pleased you> to let our concerns pass through your thought,
answer my prayers again now, Calliopeia,
as I reveal a good discourse about the blessed gods.
11/115
There is an oracle of necessity, an ancient decree of the gods,
eternal, sealed with broad oaths:
whenever one, in his sins, stains his dear limbs with blood
. . . [the text is corrupt here] by misdeed swears falsely,
5 [of] the daimons [that is] who have won long-lasting life,
he wanders for thrice ten thousand seasons away from the blessed ones,
216 Fragments: Text
10
12/6
13/1
14/3
5
217 Fragments: Translation
12/6
First, hear of the four roots of all things,
gleaming Zeus and life-bringing Hera and Aidoneus
and Nestis, who moistens with tears the spring of mortals.
13/1
And Pausanias, son of wise Anchites, you listen!
14/3
And do not be forced to take from mortals
the flowers of fair-famed honour, on condition that you say more than is
holy,
in boldness, and then to sit on the peaks of wisdom.
But come, consider, by every device, how each thing is clear
5 not holding any vision as more reliable than what you hear,
nor the echoes of hearing than the clarities of the tongue,
218 Fragments: Text
15/111
16/110
10
219 Fragments: Translation
and do not in any way curb the reliability of the other limbs by which
there is a passage for understanding
but understand each thing in the way that it is clear.
15/111
All the potions which there are as a defence against evils and old age,
you shall learn, since for you alone will I accomplish all these things.
You shall put a stop to the strength of tireless winds,
which rush against the land and wither the fields with their blasts;
5 and again, if you wish, you shall bring the winds back again;
and you shall make, after dark rain, a drought timely
for men, and after summer drought you shall make
tree-nourishing streams which dwell in the air;
and you shall bring from Hades the strength of a man who has died.
16/110
For if, thrusting them deep down in your crowded thinking organs,
you gaze on them in kindly fashion, with pure meditations,
absolutely all these things will be with you throughout your life,
and from these you will acquire many others; for these things themselves
5 will expand to form each character, according to the growth [lit. nature]
of each.
But if you reach out for different things, such as
the ten thousand wretched things which are among men and blunt their
meditations,
truly they will abandon you quickly, as time circles round,
desiring to arrive at their own dear kind [lit. birth or generation]
10 For know that all have thought and a share of understanding.
220 Fragments: Text
17/109
18/12
19/13
20/16
21/8
221 Fragments: Translation
17/109
By earth we see earth; by water, water;
by aither, shining aither; but by fire, blazing fire;
love by love and strife by baneful strife.
18/12
For it is impossible that there should be coming to be from what is not,
and that what is should be destroyed is unaccomplishable and unheard of;
for it will always be there, wherever one may push it on any occasion.
19/13
Nor is any of the totality empty or in excess.
20/16
For they are, as they were before and will be, nor do I think
that endless time will ever be empty of these two.
21/8
I shall tell you something else. There is no growth of any of all mortal
things
nor any end in destructive death,
but only mixture and interchange of what is mixed
exist, and growth is the name given to them by men.
222 Fragments: Text
22/9
23/11
24/15
25/17
5
223 Fragments: Translation
22/9
And they [men], when the things mixed [to make up] a man arrive in the
aither,
or [the things mixed] [to make up] the race of wild beasts or bushes
or birds, then they say that this is coming to be; but when they are
separated, this again [they call] miserable fate.
5 It is not right, the way they speak, but I myself also assent to their
convention.
23/11
Fools - for their meditations are not long-lasting -
are those who expect that what previously was not comes to be
or that anything dies and is utterly destroyed.
24/15
A man wise in his thoughts would not divine such things:
that while they live what they call life
for so long they are, and have good and evil things,
but before they are formed as mortals and <when> they are dissolved,
they are nothing.
25/17
I shall tell a double tale. For at one time [they] grew to be one alone
from many, and at another, again, [they] grew apart to be many from one.
And there is a double coming to be of mortals and a double waning;
for the coming together of [them] all gives birth to and destroys the one,
5 while the other, as [they] again grow apart, was nurtured and flew away.
And these things never cease from constantly alternating,
at one time all coming together by love into one,
224 Fragments: Text
10
15
20
25
30
225 Fragments: Translation
and at another time again all being borne apart separately by the hostility
of strife.
<Thus insofar as they have learned to grow as one from many>
10 and they finish up many as the one again grows apart,
in this respect they come to be and have no constant life;
but insofar as they never cease from constantly interchanging,
in this respect they are always unchanged in a cycle.
But come! Hear my words; for learning will expand your thought organs.
15 For as I said before, in revealing the limits of my words,
I shall tell a double tale. For at one time [they] grew to be one alone
from many, and at another, again, [they] grew apart to be many from one -
fire and water and earth and the boundless height of air;
and destructive strife apart from these, like in every respect,
20 and love among them, equal in length and breadth.
And you, gaze on her with your understanding and do not sit with
stunned eyes.
For she is deemed even by mortals to be inborn in [their] bodies [lit. joints]
and by her they think loving thoughts and accomplish works of unity
calling her by the names Joy and Aphrodite.
25 Her no mortal man has perceived whirling among them [i.e. the roots].
But you, hear the undeceptive expedition of [my] account.
For these things are all equal and of like age in their birth,
but each rules over a different prerogative and each has its own character
and they dominate in turn as time circles around.
30 And in addition to them nothing comes into being nor ceases [to be];
for if they constantly perished, they would no longer be.
And what could increase this totality, and whence would it come?
And how would it also be destroyed, since nothing is bereft of them?
226 Fragments: Text
35
a(i) 7
a(i) 7
a(i) 8
a(i) 9
40 a(ii) 1
a(ii) 2
a(ii) 3
a(ii) 4
a(ii) 5
45 a(ii) 6
a(ii) 7
a(ii) 8
a(ii) 9
a(ii) 10
50 a(ii) 11
a(ii) 12
a(ii) 13
a(ii) 14
a(ii) 15
55 a(ii) 16
a(ii) 17
a(ii) 18
a(ii) 19
a(ii) 20
60 a(ii) 21
227 Fragments: Translation
But these very things are, and running through each other
35 they become different at different times and are always, perpetually alike.
we come together into one cosmos,
to be many from one,
from which all things that were, that are, and will be in the future
have sprung: trees and men and women
40 and beasts and birds and water-nourished fish,
and long-lived gods first in their prerogatives.
.... they never cease from constantly darting
in the dense eddies ....
unceasingly, nor ever ...
45 .... lifetimes before ...
... transferring from them ...
... darting ...
For neither the sun ...
.... there [or: thus] ... full
50 nor any of the others ...
but interchanging .... in a circle ...
... for on the one hand impassable earth and the sun run,
... as large as even now for men
In the same way all these things through each other
55 ... other .... places ...
... and in the very middle ... we come together to be one alone.
But when indeed strife the depths passed over
and love in the midst of the whirl
.... indeed all these things come together to be one alone.
60 ... so that not through ears alone ...
228 Fragments: Text
a(ii) 22
a(ii) 23
a(ii) 24
a(ii) 25
65 a(ii) 26
a(ii) 27
a(ii) 28
a(ii) 29
a(ii) 30
26/21
10
229 Fragments: Translation
26/21
But come! Gaze on this witness to my previous words,
if anything was in my previous [remarks] left wanting in form:
the sun, bright to look on and hot in every respect,
and the immortals which are drenched in heat and shining light,
5 and rain, in all things dark and cold;
and there flow from the earth things dense and solid.
And in wrath all are distinct in form and separate,
and they come together in love and are desired by each other.
From these all things that were, that are, and will be in the future
10 have sprung: trees and men and women
and beasts and birds and water-nourished fish,
and long-lived gods first in their prerogatives.
For these very things are, and running through each other
they become different in appearance. For the blending changes them.
230 Fragments: Text
27/23
10
28/26
10
231 Fragments: Translation
27/23
As when painters adorn votive offerings,
men well-learned in their craft because of cunning,
and so when they take in their hands many-coloured pigments,
mixing them in harmony, some more, others less,
5 from them they prepare forms resembling all things,
making trees and men and women
and beasts and birds and water-nourished fish
and long-lived gods, first in their prerogatives.
In this way let not deception overcome your thought organ
10 [by convincing you] that the source of mortal things, as many as
have become obvious - countless - is anything else,
but know these things clearly, having heard the story from a god.
28/26
And in turn they [the four elements] dominate as the cycle goes around,
and they shrink into each other and grow in the turn[s assigned by]
destiny.
For these very things are, and running through each other
they become men and the tribes of other beasts,
5 at one time coming together by love into one cosmos,
and at another time again all being borne apart separately by the hostility
of strife,
until by growing together as one they are totally subordinated.
Thus insofar as they learned to grow as one from many,
and finish up as many, as the one again grows apart,
10 in this respect they come to be and have no constant life,
but insofar as they never cease from constantly interchanging,
in this respect they are always unchanged in a cycle.
232 Fragments: Text
29/25
30/24
31/27
32/36
33/27
34/29&2S
233 Fragments: Translation
29/25
For it is noble to say what one must even twice.
30/24
by linking different high points to others
not to complete one path of my stories.
31/27
There the shining form of the sun is not discerned
nor indeed the shaggy might of earth nor the sea.
32/36
And while they were coming together strife was moving out to the limit.
33/27
There the swift limbs of the sun are not discerned, [nor]
34/29&2S
For two branches do not dart from its back
nor feet nor swift knees nor potent genitals,
but it indeed is equal <to itself> on all sides and totally unbounded,
a rounded sphere rejoicing in its surrounding solitude.
234 Fragments: Text
35/30
36/31
37/22
38/20
5
235 Fragments: Translation
35/30
But when strife had grown [lit. been nourished] great within its limbs
and leapt up to its prerogatives, as the time was being accomplished
which has been established for each in turn by a broad oath
36/31
For one after another all the limbs of the god were being shaken.
37/22
For all these things - the [sun's] gleam and earth and sky and sea -
are fitted together with their own parts,
which were separated from them and born among mortal things.
In the same way, as many as are more apt for blending
5 have come to be loved by each other, made alike by Aphrodite;
but those are most hostile which are most separate from each other
in birth and blend and moulded forms,
completely unaccustomed to come together and very mournful
due to their birth in strife, since their births were in anger.
38/20
This is very clear in the bulk of mortal limbs:
at one time we come together into one by love,
all the limbs, [that is], which have found a body, in the peak of
flourishing life;
at another time again, being divided by evil quarrels,
5 they [the limbs] wander, all of them separately, about the breakers of life.
236 Fragments: Text
39/38
40/A49a
This fragment is preserved only in the prose translation into Armenian of
41/51
42/53
237 Fragments: Translation
In the same way [this process operates] for bushes and fish in their watery
halls
and mountain-dwelling beasts and winged gulls.
39/38
Come then! I shall tell you first the source from which the sun in the
beginning
and all other things which we now see became clear:
earth and billowy sea and fluid air
and the Titan aither squeezing all of them around in a circle.
40/A49a
For when aither separated and flew off from air and fire, and evolved
into a heaven revolving in a very wide orbit, then fire - which had
remained a little apart from the heaven - itself also grew into the rays
of the sun. Earth withdrew into one place and when solidified by ne-
cessity it emerged and settled in the middle. Moreover, aither, being
much lighter, moves all around it without diversion.
41/51
[fire] quickly upwards
42/53
For [air] happened to run in this way then, but often otherwise.
238 Fragments: Text
43/54
44/37
45/52
46/39
47/40
48/41
49/44
239 Fragments: Translation
43/54
[aither] sank below the earth with its long roots.
44/37
And earth expands its own bulk and aither [expands] aither.
45/52
and many fires burn below the earth.
46/39
... if indeed the depths of earth and abundant aither are unbounded,
as is poured out in a vain stream
from the tongues in the mouths of many, who have seen little of the
whole
47/40
sharp-arrowed sun and gentle moon
48/41
but it [the sun], having been assembled, moves around the great heaven.
49/44
[the sun] shines back to Olympus with fearless face.
240 Fragments: Text
50/47
51/43
52/45
53/46
54/42
55/48
56/49
241 Fragments: Translation
50/47
it [the moon] gazes directly at the shining circle of its lord.
51/43
Thus the beam, having struck the broad circle of the moon
52/45
a round and borrowed light, it whirls about the earth.
53/46
like the path of a chariot it whirls, and around the furthest point
54/42
it shaded its beams
on to the earth from above, and darkened as much
of the earth as the breadth of the grey-eyed moon.
55/48
earth makes night by intercepting its [the sun's] light.
56/49
of night, blind-eyed and solitary
242 Fragments: Text
57/50
58/56
59/55
60/A66a
See 40/A49a above. This fragment too was recovered by Terian from the
Armenian of Philo's O Providence.
61/35
5
243 Fragments: Translation
57/50
And Iris brings wind or great rain from the sea.
58/56
Salt congealed, being pushed by the blows of the sun.
59/55
60/A66a
Its [the sea's] ferocious edge keeps swelling, as when swamps absorb the
floating hail. For all the moisture on earth tends to be driven into its
hollows, being forced by the constant whirls of the wind, by the strongest
bonds as it were.
61/35
But I shall return again to the passage of songs
which I previously recited, channelling that account from another.
When strife reached the lowest depth
of the eddy and love gets into the middle of the whirl,
5 there all these come together to be one alone,
not suddenly, but voluntarily coming together, each from a different
direction.
And as they were being mixed ten thousand tribes of mortals poured
forth;
but many stood unmixed, alternating with those being blended,
the ones that strife above still held in check; for not yet has it blamelessly
244 Fragments: Text
10
15
62/96
63/34
64/57
245 Fragments: Translation
62/96
And pleasant earth in her well-built channels
received two parts of gleaming Nestis out of the eight
and four of Hephaistos; and they become white bones
fitted together with the divine glues of harmony.
63/34
gluing barley-meal with water
64/57
as many heads without necks sprouted up
and arms wandered naked, bereft of shoulders,
and eyes roamed alone, impoverished of foreheads
246 Fragments: Text
65/59
66/61
67/62
68/64
247 Fragments: Translation
65/59
But when daimon mixed more with daimon,
and these things came together as each happened to meet
and many others in addition to these constantly emerged [into being].
66/61
Many with two faces and two chests grew,
oxlike with men's faces, and again there came up
androids with ox-heads, mixed in one way from men
and in another way in female form, outfitted with shadowy limbs.
67/62
But come now! Hear these things about how
separating fire brought up the nocturnal shoots
of men and women, full of lamentations. For the story is neither wide of
the mark nor unlearned.
First there came up from the earth whole-natured outlines
5 having a share of both water and heat;
fire sent them up, wanting to reach its like,
and they did not yet show any lovely frame of limbs,
nor voice nor again the organ [lit. limb] specific to men.
68/64
upon him comes also, through sight, desire for intercourse.
248 Fragments: Text
69/66
70/63
71/65
72/67
73/68
74/71
249 Fragments: Translation
69/66
the divided meadows of Aphrodite
70/63
But the nature of the limbs has been torn apart, partly in a man's ...
71/65
And it was poured forth in pure [places]; some,
which meet with cold, become women ...
72/67
For the masculine type came to be in the warmer part of the earth,
and because of this men are dark and sturdier of limb
and more shaggy.
73/68
A white pus [i.e. milk] was formed on the tenth [day] of the eighth month.
74/71
And if, concerning these things, your conviction is in any way wanting,
as to how from the blending of water and earth and aither and sun
the forms and colours of [all the] mortals came to be,
which have now come to be, fitted together by Aphrodite
250 Fragments: Text
75/33
76/73
77/72
78/77-78
79/79
80/80
81/81
251 Fragments: Translation
75/33
as when rennet riveted white milk and bound it...
76/73
As Kupris [Aphrodite] then, when she had moistened earth in rain,
gave it to fierce fire to strengthen, while preparing shapes
77/72
how tall trees too and fish in the sea
78/77-78
with an abundance of fruit in the air all year long
79/79
so first tall trees lay olive eggs
80/80
because late-born pomegranates and succulent apples
81/81
Wine is water from the skin, rotted in wood.
252 Fragments: Text
82/74
83/76
bO
bl
b2
b3
5 b4
b5
b6
84/75
85/Wright 152
86/82
253 Fragments: Translation
82/74
leading the unmusical tribe of prolific fish
83/76
This [i.e. fire] is in heavy-backed, sea-dwelling shellfish
where you will see earth lying on the outermost part of the skin
strong-backed
5 and indeed, of stone-shelled tritons and tortoises
of horned stags
saying
84/75
As many as are dense within, while their outsides have been formed to
be rare
having received such a softness in the devices of Kupris [Aphrodite]
85/Wright 152
For as many of them as are formed with denser roots below
flourish with rarer shoots [above].
86/82
Hairs and leaves and the dense feathers on birds are the same
and the scales on stout limbs.
254 Fragments: Text
87/83
88/89
89/91
90/90
91/93
92/107
255 Fragments: Translation
87/83
But for sea urchins,
sharp-pointed bristles prick up on their backs.
88/89
there are effluences from all things that have come to be
89/91
[Water is] more easily fitted to wine, but with oil
it does not want [to mix]
90/90
Thus sweet grasped sweet and bitter rushed to bitter,
sharp went to sharp and hot mated with hot.
91/93
and the brightness of pale saffron mixes with linen
92/107
[from the elements] all things have been fitted together and are
formed,
and by these they think and feel pleasure and pain.
256 Fragments: Text
93/106
94/108
95/103
96/105
97/104
98/98
5
257 Fragments: Translation
93/106
For men's cunning is expanded in relation to what is present [to them].
94/108
And insofar as they change over to become different, so far do they always
find their thinking too providing different things.
95/103
Thus, then, by the will of chance all [things] have thought.
96/105
[the heart] nourished in seas of blood which leaps back and forth,
and there especially it is called understanding by men;
for men's understanding is blood around the heart.
97/104
And insofar as the rarest things chanced to meet and fall together
98/98
And earth happened to meet with these most equally,
Hephaistos and rain and all-gleaming aither,
anchored in the perfect harbours of Kupris [Aphrodite],
either a little greater or [a little] less among the more.
5 From these blood came to be and the forms of other kinds of flesh.
258 Fragments: Text
99/85
100/86
101/87
102/95
103/84
10
104/88
259 Fragments: Translation
99/85
And kindly flame met a little bit of earth
100/86
from which divine Aphrodite fashioned tireless eyes
101/87
Aphrodite wrought [them] with the dowels of love
102/95
when they first grew together in the devices of Kupris [Aphrodite]
103/84
As when someone planning a journey prepared a lamp,
the gleam of blazing fire through the wintry night,
and fastened linen screens against all kinds of breezes,
which scatter the wind of the blowing breezes
5 but the light leapt outwards, as much of it as was finer,
and shone with its tireless beams across the threshold;
in this way [Aphrodite] gave birth to the rounded pupil,
primeval fire crowded in the membranes and in the fine linens.
And they covered over the depths of the circumfluent water
10 and sent forth fire, as much of it as was finer.
104/88
from both there was one vision
260 Fragments: Text
105/94
et niger in fundo fluvii color exstat ab umbra,
atque cavernosis itidem spectatur in antris.
106/100
10
15
20
261 Fragments: Translation
105/94
And in the depths of the river a black colour is produced by the shadow,
and in the same way it is observed in cavernous grottoes.
106/100
And all [animals] inhale and exhale thus: all have channels
empty of blood in the flesh, deep inside the body,
and at their mouths the extreme surface of the nostrils is pierced right
through
with close-packed furrows, so that
5 they cover over the blood but a clear passage is cut in channels for aither.
Next, when the smooth blood rushes back from there,
seething air rushes down in a raging billow;
and when it [blood] leaps up, it exhales again -
as when a little girl plays with a clepsydra of gleaming bronze:
10 when she puts her fair hand over the passage of the pipe
and dips it into the smooth frame of shining water,
no water [lit. rain] enters the vessel, but it is checked by
the bulk of air from within, which falls against the close-packed holes,
until she uncovers the dense flow. But then,
15 when the breeze leaves it, water enters in turn.
In the same way when she holds water in the depths of the bronze,
plugging the passage and pore with her mortal hand,
and aither is outside longing to enter, and checks the water [lit. rain]
around the gates of the harsh-sounding strainer by controlling the
extremities,
20 until she releases her hand; then again, conversely to before,
when the breeze enters it water in turn runs out.
In the same way, when smooth blood surging through the limbs
262 Fragments: Text
25
107/101
108/102
109/133
110/134
5
263 Fragments: Translation
107/101
seeking the fragments of beasts' limbs with their nostrils,
108/102
Thus, then, everything has a share of breath and odours.
109/133
It is not achievable that we should approach [it / him] with our eyes
or grasp [it / him] with our hands, by which the greatest road
of persuasion extends to men's thought organ.
110/134
For [it / he] is not fitted out in [its / his] limbs with a human head,
nor do two branches dart from [its / his] back
nor feet, nor swift knees nor shaggy genitals;
but it / he is only a sacred and ineffable thought organ
5 darting through the entire cosmos with swift thoughts.
264 Fragments: Text
111/117
112/116
113/126
114/119
115/118
116/121
117/121
265 Fragments: Translation
111/117
For I have already become a boy and a girl
and a bush and a bird and a fish [corrupt text] from the sea
112/116
hates necessity, hard to bear
113/126
[she] dressed [him / it] with an alien robe of flesh
114/119
from what honour and how great a height of bliss
115/118
I wept and wailed when I saw the unfamiliar place.
116/121
an unpleasant place
where there are blood and wrath and tribes of other banes
117/121
and parching diseases and rots and deeds of flux[?]
266 Fragments: Text
118/124
119/120
120/122
121/123
122/128
5
267 Fragments: Translation
118/124
Oh woe! Oh wretched and unhappy race of mortals!
You have come to be from such quarrels and lamentations.
119/120
we came down into this roofed-in cave
120/122
where there were Earth and Sun far-seeing
and bloody Battle and Harmony of solemn aspect
and Beauty and Ugliness and Speed and Delay
and lovely Truth and dark-haired Obscurity
121/123
and Birth and Waning and Repose and Waking
and Movement and Stability and much-crowned Greatness
and Barrenness and Silence and Prophecy.
122/128
They had no god Ares or Battle-Din,
nor Zeus the king nor Kronos nor Poseidon;
but Kupris the queen [Aphrodite]
10
123/130
124/139
dl
d2
d3
d4
5 d5
d6
d7
d8
d9
10 dlO
dll
d12
d13
d!4
15 d!
d!6
269 Fragments: Translation
[her] altar was not wetted with the unmixed blood of bulls,
but this was the greatest abomination among men,
10 to tear out their life-breath and eat their goodly limbs.
123/130
All were tame and gentle to men,
both beasts and birds, and loving thoughts blazed on.
124/139
to fall and meet their fate separately from each other,
very unwillingly, because of baneful necessity,
rotting; and despite now having love and ....
the Harpies will be present... with lots [to be cast] for death.
5 Woe is me! That the pitiless day did not destroy me
before I devised with my claws terrible deeds for the sake of food.
... in vain in this .... I wet my cheeks
very deep I think
... despite unwillingness, pains will be present in the heart.
10 .... But we shall set forth again [or: later] upon our accounts
an untiring flame happened to meet...
bringing a mixture of much woe
things able to be parents were born ...
even now dawn gazes on their remains
15 I entered the final place
with a cry and a shout
270 Fragments: Text
d!7
d!8
125/135
126/136
127/145
128/137
129/138
271 Fragments: Translation
attaining
around ... earth
125/135
But what is lawful for all extends continuously
through the wide-ruling aither and through the boundless gleam.
126/136
Will you not desist from harsh-sounding bloodshed? Do you not see
that you are devouring each other in the heedlessness of your
understanding?
127/145
For indeed, mad with harsh evils
you will never relieve your heart[s] from wretched griefs.
128/137
A father lifts up his dear son, who has changed his form,
and prays and slaughters him, in great folly, and they are at a loss
as they sacrifice the suppliant. But he, on the other hand, deaf to the
rebukes,
sacrificed him in his halls, and prepared himself an evil meal.
5 In the same way, a son seizes his father and the children their mother,
and tearing out their life-breath devour their own dear flesh.
129/138
drawing off life with bronze
272 Fragments: Text
130/144
131/140
132/141
133/143
134/125
135/127
136/146
273 Fragments: Translation
130/144
to fast from wickedness
131/140
.... completely abstain from laurel leaves
132/141
Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands off beans!
133/143
cutting from five springs with the long-stretched bronze
134/125
[he] made dead shapes from the living, changing [them]
135/127
Among beasts they become mountain-dwelling lions with lairs on the
ground,
and laurels among fair-tressed trees.
136/146
And finally they become prophets and singers and doctors
and leaders among men who dwell on earth;
thence they sprout up as gods, first in their prerogatives.
274 Fragments: Text
137/147
138/142
275 Fragments: Translation
137/147
Sharing hearth and table with other immortals,
being free of manly woes, untiring.
138/142
him neither the roofed house of aegis-bearing Zeus
nor ever the house of Hades
TEXTUAL NOTES
1/112
3 A separately transmitted line usually inserted here by editors, quoted by
Diodorus Siculus at 13.83.2. See Wright ad loc. for discussion.
5 eot/<a mss, D-K; eot/cey Greek Anthology, editors.
7 Tratrt 8' a//' eur' av Wright; rolcriv aju' av, afj.' eur' av mss; vracrt 8e rot? av
Wilamowitz; rolcnv <ap'> dju<$'> av Gallavotti.
12 xaAeTrfycn, Bergk; xateiroicri, mss; <dju<' 6$vvr](nv> add. Bergk; <d/x(i
<}>6{3oi<nv> Gallavotti.
3/4
1 Tre'Aet mss; jue'Aet Herwerden, D-K.
3 8iacrcr?7$eWos D-K.
5/27a
<8e re> Xylander. dfat'o-tjuo? the obvious and traditional correction of dyeVt/xo?
in one ms; haiai^o^ some mss, Bollack.
6/129
3 (rotywv r' Wilamowitz, D-K, Zuntz; Zuntz reverses the order of lines 2 and
3.
5 /oet' o ye Cobet, D-K, Zuntz, van der Ben; petd ye mss, Wright.
6 So mss; tv re 8eK* avOpunruiv van der Ben; /cat eet'/cocrty Diels, van der Ben.
8/2
1 Ke'^wrai mss, reVavrat Pap. Here. 1012; see Gallavotti, 'Empedocle nei
papiri ercolanesi/
3 8' kv <afjo-L fiiov Wilamowitz, D-K; 8e (cor/crt fiiov mss.
6 <?ra?> add. Bergk; <ou8et?> Bollack;<rt? a/)'> Frankel.
8 Most editors do not indicate a lacuna after this line. Sextus breaks his
quotation at this point.
9 So mss; the punctuation is Bollack's; ov -n\eov OVTL Frankel; ov TrAe'oy ?}e
Karsten, Stein, D-K.
9/3
Most editors print 14/3 as the continuation of 9/3.
277 Fragments: Notes
10/131
2 <a8e rot> supp. Wilamowitz, Maas.
11/115
3 </>6yoj tyiXa yvla JUITJ^TJ Stephanus, other edd. incl. D-K; ^6/3w c/uAa yuta /^if
mss.
4 <yei'/cei'0f > os K' tiriopKOv eTrojuoacrrj Diels, D-K; opKCW cm? K' eTUO/DKOy d/^ajOTTjera?
Wright; kiro^oaari Schneidewin; os Key <TTjy> ... eTro/^oa-cn} van der Ben; <eor(.
ro8'-> o? K' Gallavotti; Zuntz deletes the whole line.
5 Scujuoye? oiVe Plutarch; baL^ovioi re Hippolytus; Sat'/^cof otre Heeren, Zuntz.
7 yjiovov Bergk, editors; yj>6vov mss, van der Ben. The mss of Origen also have
^povov, which was emended to ypovov by early editors.
11 So Hippolytus; Plutarch has aKa^avros, which Zuntz and Gallavotti adopt.
811^77? van der Ben, based on Plutarch's 81^17?, other mss' 8tWts.
13 Tcoy ... et/^t Hippolytus, D-K; TTJV ... ei/^t Plutarch, Zuntz; rr) ... ei/it
Gallavotti, who places 13-14 after 8.
14/3
See note on 9/3.
3 Qoafav Fabricius, editors, D-K; 0oaa Sextus, Proclus, Bollack; Qa^L^iv
Plutarch.
5 TTLO-TYIV Bergk; Tuorei mss.
15/111
5 Some mss omit K'.
8 TO. T' alBf.pi vauraovaL Bollack; raj' aiOzpL va^aovTaL the best of the mss;
ra T' aiBepL va^aovTai D-K dubitanter; rd T' alOtp(i) diWoyrat Wilamowitz,
Gallavotti.
16/110
1 Key Schneidewin, D-K.
2 eTTOTrrewet? Wright; eTTOTrreuet? mss, Bollack; eTTOTrreucrT]? Schneidewin, D-K.
3 re Schneidewin, Diels, D-K, Wright; 5e mss, Bollack.
4 Tcoy8e KT<7Jo-e>at Marcovich, Wright; Tcoy8eKr(7].7])rat mss; ra>y8' eKTT/creat
Diels, D-K; ra>y8e KT7]aeTat Bollack.
7 a r 1 D-K, Wright, Bollack.
18/12
1 So Wright; eK re jurj WTOS, eK TOV yap ovba^fi ovros mss; eK TOV yap JUTJ eoyro?
Bollack; ex re yap oi)8dju' ewro? Diels, D-K.
278 Fragments: Notes
2 KCU T' tbv Stein, D-K, Wright; TO re oV mss, Wilamowitz; TO r' eoy Bollack.
CLTTVO-TOV Mangey, D-K, Wright; airp^Krov some mss, Bollack; airavo-rov other
mss. e6\\vo-6ai some mss, Bollack.
3 rfj y' ea-rai Panzerbieter, D-K; Oijcreo-Oai mss.
20/16
1 e<(7T>t yap 009 vrapo? ^y Lloyd-Jones; ei (or 77^) yap xat irapos rjv mss; 77
yap Kai ?rapo? e<TK D-K dubitanter. eWeTai, oufie TTOT' otco Miller; KOI ZVTQ.I
ovbeTTu) TOtco mss.
21/8
1 a-jravTiav Aetius; kbviu>v Aristotle; emorou Plutarch
2 TeAeyTT? Aetius, most editors; yve6\-rj Plutarch, van der Ben ('Empedocles'
Fragments 8, 9, 10 DK' 200-1). His discussion of the whole fragment is
interesting but unconvincing. Line 2 is omitted by Aristotle.
4 5e /3poTot? Aetius, Bollack.
22/9
1 p.tye'f T' et? aWe'p t</ca)i;Tat> D-K; /xtyey 0aJs alOlpi ....... mss; juiyey ^>o)9 aiOepL
<K.vpcrri> Burnet, van der Ben, for whose comments on the whole fragment
see 'Empedocles' Fragments 8, 9, 10 DK' 207-9.
3 To<6e (/>acn> Bernardakis; rov ....... mss; Ta<8e 0ao-t> Xylander; TO <ye $a<n>
Panzerbieter, Wright; TO <Ae'you<rt> Reiske, D-K. See O'Brien Empedocles'
Cosmic Cycle 165.
4 To8' av scripsi (Woodbury monente); TOL 8' av mss; TO 5' av Reiske, D-K,
Wright.
5 oi) 0e'/xt? rj KaAe'oucrt Wilamowitz; 77 ^e'/xt? KaAe'owcrt Plutarch; etVat KaAeoucrt
mss; 77 0e'juis <ou> xaAeouo-t Wyttenbach, D-K; 77 fo'/it? <av6pMiroi(n> van der
Ben; 77 0e'/it? <ou> KaAe'oucrt Burnet.
24/15
3 8etAa Bergk, D-K, Wright; 8am mss, Bollack.
4 <e7rei> XvQtv Reiske, editors; \vQtvr' mss.
25/17
5 6pt(j)6da-a, bicTTTT] Panzerbieter, Scaliger respectively; 6pv<f)Qticra SPCTTTT) mss;
bpvtyOela' aTroSpvTTTei Bollack.
8 After this line O'Brien (Empedocles' Cosmic Cycle 323-4) would insert
28/26.7. 25/17.9 is identical to 28/26.8. 28/26.5-6 are nearly identical to
25/17.7-8.
279 Fragments: Notes
9 Supplied from Aristotle Physics 250b30 by D-K also; not by Bollack. See
CTXT-19a,c and nn.17, 21.
10 r\ 8e mss, Bollack.
14 fj.ldr] Simplicius.
30 Many editors have thought this line to be corrupt; the sense is not in doubt.
31 OVK ay CT' r/aav papyrus; oixceV av i]<jav mss.
33 KT^avroAotTo Diels; Ke KCU K.TJpv aTroAoiTO mss; Ke KT)P' aTroAotro Bollack;
Kaa7roAotro M-P.
34 For 8e the papyrus appears to offer ye.
From 25/17.36 (=a(i) 1) to 25/17.69 (=a(ii) 30), except for 38-41, the text is
based solely on the newly discovered papyrus (see Preface). I print only
text that I regard as certain or highly probable, but the reader should be
aware that such judgments of probability are subjective. For fuller and more
adventurous supplements and for detailed discussion, the reader should
consult M-P. In this section I use square brackets to indicate a supplement
that I believe to be reliable and an underdot to indicate a damaged letter
restored with confidence by the editors.
very probable, but M-P's choice of the imperfect tense over the present is
more contentious, as it is supported solely by the presence of verbs in the
imperfect in the previous two lines - both of which are also supplements
by M-P, made in accordance with their reconstruction of the argument.
My weak preference for the present tense is, I confess, not based on
anything stronger than the similarity of this line to lines 36 above and 59
below.
57 The reconstruction here is made more plausible by the fact that 61/35 seems
to refer back to these lines; see M-P ad loc. The Greek word for 'passed over'
is v-nepftara, which M-P translate 'violees,' 'violated.' Their commentary
makes it clear that this translation, though possible, is something they are
driven to by their supplement for the end of the line fitv{6' i'/c^rai]. This
supplement is strongly influenced by 61/35.3. But if we confess uncertainty
about the final word of the line, probably a verb, then we need not adopt
this somewhat strained translation for the adjective. Hence I suggest
'passed over' or 'passed by,' since the passive meaning is more likely
for verbal adjectives of this type. But another plausible translation would
presume an active sense and so yield 'going beyond,' 'extravagant,' or
'excessive.'
63 It is tempting to accept the supplement yeve6\T]s at the end of the line, to
match 69 below.
65-67 M-P support their more ambitious supplements by noting the similarity
of these lines to Lucretius De Rerum Natura 2.1080-83.
26/21
1 rovb' Wilamowitz, D-K; r&vb' mss.
3 Ka^-npov Simplicius, (Plutarch, Galen), O'Brien; AeuKOf Aristotle, Wright,
D-K.
4 ocrcr' er5et re Wackernagel; oacr' erai / oVcre 8e re mss.
6 6e\v[j.va. Diels, Bignone, O'Brien (266-7);tfeATjjuare,tfeAry/xaramss; Oek^va
Wilamowitz. For recent discussion see R. Janko 'Hesychius 6 216 and
Empedocles Fragment 21.6.'
9 So Wright; CK TOVTWV yap iravQ' 6Va T' rjv 6Va r" ecrrt /cat eorcu Bollack, D-K;
manuscript readings vary widely.
14 TO. yap 5ta Kprjcri? Wright; royov 5ta.KjOtcrt? / 8taKpacrt9 mss; roaov 8ta npiiais
D-K, Bollack.
27/23
10 ytyaaiv acxo-Trera Bergk; yeyaacrii; mss, Bollack; ytydKaaw Diels, D-K
dubitanter.
281 Fragments: Notes
28/26
7 For fv the mss also give ov and ov; av Bywater.
30/24
2 /AT/ reAe'eiy Knatz, D-K; jUT/re Ae'yeiy mss, Bollack; JUT/T' eA$dy Lloyd-Jones.
31/27
1 8iei'8eTai D-K from 33/27; D-K conflates these two fragments (one from
Plutarch, the other from Simplicius), which is not necessary in view
of how often Empedocles repeats himself; the correct reading for this
word is found only in Simplicius (33/27); Plutarch's mss (31/27) give the
obviously wrong SeSureTcu.
2 /AC'VOS Bergk, D-K, Wright; yeVo? mss, Bollack, van Groningen ('Trois notes
sur Empedocle,' 221-2).
33/27
See note on 31/27.
3 TrepiyT/fc'i mss, Bollack, O'Brien; Trepir/yet (from 34/29&2S) D-K, Wright.
34/29&2S
D-K print lines 3-4 as fragment 28, lines 1-2 as fragment 29, and to the
latter add the line:
dAAci <T$at|00? er/v KCU <TravTo6ev> tcros eawa>,
which is made up from an unmetrical paraphrase by Hippolytus of lines
3-4.
3 <eot> Maas, D-K, Wright; <eu>i Grotius, Bollack; <T/ef > tcros Gallavotti.
4 yaLuv Diels (from 33/27.3); yalpuv mss, Bollack.
37/22
3 aiio'nXa.yyQiwra some mss, Sider ('Textual Notes on Parmenides' Poem'
365); dvroTrAax&Wa other mss, edd. The word <$>iv may well be corrupt and
its sense is somewhat uncertain; it may mean 'for' or 'from,' and I have
somewhat arbitrarily suggested the latter.
6 exfya TrAetoroy avr" dAAr/Acoy biiypvai /AaAiora mss; <8' a> Panzerbieter,
D-K; t)(Gpa. judAicr' [sic] <6<ra> TrAetfrroy dvr' dAAT/Awy 8te')(oucrt Wright;
Bollack prints the mss' reading with no supplement.
9 yeiKeoyeiwT/TT/cri Karsten; ieiKeoyewecrTT/<ni> mss; yeiKeo? vvecrir)<nv Panzer-
bieter, D-K. yivvai kv opyfi Wright; yivvav opya mss; yivvav eo/oyey Diels, D-K
dubitanter; ytvvav <av>opya Gallavotti. The corruption here is deep-seated,
and even Wright's emendation should be regarded with some doubts.
282 Fragments: Notes
38/20
An unusable first line is visible in the papyrus; see M-P.
2 avvepxpiJitO' papyrus; o-vvp\6p.v' Simplicius
3 The papyrus appears to have BriXovvTO?, a synonym for Qa\t6ovjos.
6 cocrauTco? mss, Bollack; GO? <8'> O.UTGO? editors.
7 optiKtyttcnv Schneidewin, D-K, Wright; o/aa^eAeWo-iy some mss, Bollack, M-P.
39/38
1-2 Trpcor' ef u>v r/Ato? a.f>xnv / TaAAd re fir) A' Wright; TTpu>6' ^Atof a.f>yj]v /1 ^>v ty
mss; T/AtKa r" dp^y/ef coy 87)A' Diels; tr/Atof dp^ft/e^ cof 8i)A' D-K.
44/37
For Se'/xa? some mss and Bollack have ye'w?.
46/39
2 yAoxrcra? Wilamowitz, D-K.
47/40
6u/3eAr/s editors; o^ujueAr;? mss, Bollack.
48/41
The Etymologicum Magnum reads jueVoy for jue'yay.
53/46
Diels, followed by Gallavotti, proposed Trap' aKpryy for the last two words.
54/42
1 o.TTf.a'K.ia.a'f.v Bergk; a.Trea~Kvao~ev mss; aTrecrre'yacref Diels, D-K; a7re<TKe'5acref
Xylander, Bollack; a-nto-KtTrao-fv Wenskus.
2 COT' dy ITJ coni. Diels, D-K.
55/48
In D-K Kranz supplies <r]c\iov> as the start of a second line.
59/55
Reconstructed by editors from Aristotle Meteorology 2.3 357a24-25 (see
A25d and A66c).
61/35
2 Aoyou Bergk, Stein, D-K, Wright; Aoyw mss, Bollack.
6 dAA' d0eA77jud Kingsley, accepit Osborne.
7 So also D-K, dubitanter.
283 Fragments: Notes
10 TTCO some mss, Wright; rwv Diels, D-K; TO, OUTTCO other mss.
15 o>pa Tf TO. -jrpiv a/c/oTyra Athenaeus, Plutarch, D-K, Bollack; fapa re irpiv
K(K.pr]TO Wright; C^P^ Te T& "n")0^ aKjOtra other mss; wa re vrptf KC'KJCHTO / (ceKTTjTo
Aristotle; ^copd ve ra vrpty, e/cpr/ro Diels; C^P^ Te '"'P'1' T^ KtupyTo Bergk; C^P^
0' a Trptf Ke'/cpTjro Gomperz.
62/96
For the text see David Sider 'Empedocles B 96 (462 Bollack) and the
Poetry of Adhesion.'
1 euruKTots some mss of Alexander and Simplicius, Sider; euore'/wot? Aristotle
and other mss of the commentators, most editors.
2 ra? Bollack, Sider; row, ra?, ra mss; TOO Steinhart, D-K, Wright, /xotpacoy some
mss, Bollack, Sider; juepe'ow other mss.
4 Qtcrntairicriv Sider; Oeo-Trecri-qOev mss.
63/34
David Sider ('Empedocles' Persika') argues that this fragment came from
the otherwise completely lost Persika of Empedocles.
66/61
1,2 Karsten, followed by Wright, emends to a/^iorep ' tyvovro, e^aye'reAAoy;
I follow the mss and D-K.
4 The word ovaepots is often thought to be corrupt; various emendations have
been made.
67/62
8 our' av Aldine edition; our' / oi.'a r' mss; otoz; r' Diels, D-K; oi.'rj r' Bollack.
yvlov Stein, D-K; yucoy mss; yuicoy Bollack; yypvv Aldine edition.
68/64
TOJ 8' em xat TTO^O? etre t8ta 7re\|/ew?t aju/itVyajf mss. Various emendations
have been made to this line; D-K print etVi 8t' o\//t09 a/ujut/LtyrjcrKcoy with
hesitation. It should be observed that the fragment context seems to support
the reading dju/.ujui'Tjo-Kcoi'. I print the reconstruction of Robert Dyer.
71/65
2 Diels, D-K add <ra 8' e/iTraAty apptva $ep|uoi)>.
72/67
1 TO KOT' . . . yatrj? mss; TOKa? . . . yaorrjp Diels, D-K; TOKOL? appeyo? evrAeTO yata
Deichgraber, followed by Longrigg, 'Galen on Empedocles (fr. 67).'
2 a8pojueAe'ore/ooi Karsten, D-K, Wright; ay8p&o8e'cnrepoi mss, Bollack.
284 Fragments: Notes
74/71
4 TOCTO-' ocra Karsten, D-K, Wright; roi'a ova mss; rot' 6Va Bollack.
78/77-78
1 I follow Wright in giving only the second line of the fragment as it appears
in D-K (where a first line, reconstructed by Karsten from the context, is
supplied).
83/76
Line 1 is known only through the indirect tradition (Plutarch, CTXT-74a);
3 and 5 are transmitted by Plutarch and the papyrus. Since the indirect
tradition confirms the supplements in those lines, I dispense with editorial
apparatus for them. For lines known only from the papyrus, note that I print
only text that I regard as certain or highly probable; the reader should be
aware that such judgments of probability are subjective. For fuller and more
adventurous supplements and for detailed discussion, the reader should
consult M-P. In this section I use square brackets to indicate a supplement
that I believe to be reliable and an underdot to indicate a damaged letter
restored with confidence by the editors.
The main contribution of the papyrus to this fragment is the change to
the order of the lines that it necessitates. The other novelty is the reference
to 'horned stags' in line 6, which seems to broaden the point Empedocles
is making about animals with hard external parts: as M-P point out (pp.
251-2), he cannot be limiting himself to shelled animals like the shellfish
and tortoises that Plutarch selects for emphasis.
85 / Wright 152
Gallavotti's text is: TU>V yap 6V <ey> pt^buy juey irao'(rvTtp[ov, rocr'] evrep^e
/uai'OTe'jOour' [6]p[/xa], /IT? cnrooTr) Tr)Xf.6[a6vTu>v]
86/82
Aem'Se? mss; $Aoin'5ey Karsten, Bollack.
88/89
D-K and Bollack print the introductory words of Plutarch (yvovs on) as part
of the fragment.
285 Fragments: Notes
89/91
1 iva.p6jjLi.ov Karsten, editors; evapl.9p.iov mss. The subject of this fragmentary
sentence is uScop, water, as is clear from the introductory remarks of
Philoponus and Alexander, who quote the fragment.
90/90
The correct readings [em] and <e/3?]> are found in Macrobius.
2 batpbv 8' evro^euero 8aepo> Maas; SaAepw 8aAepoi) Aa/3eY(o? mss; baepbv 8'
evro)(tTO baripS) Diels, D-K; aAepoy 8' e7ro)(eue0' a\ripa) Bollack dubitanter.
91/93
yAcukoto KPOKOV Bennet; yAau/crj? xpoKOv mss; jSuuo-aj 8e yAauK??? KOKKOS
KarajutVyerat aKTTjs D-K; yAauKi)? Kopzov Bollack. See also Millerd 38n-39.
92/107
1 Following Barnes (in his review of Wright, 194) I assume that the
words ex TOVTWV, which are usually supposed to begin this fragment, are
in fact those of Theophrastus introducing his quotation. After TOVT<DV ms P
indicates a lacuna of 14 letters, and most editors assume that e* TOVTWV is part
of the quotation and try to fill the lacuna. Karsten added yap and printed
line 2 as the completion of line 1 (followed by D-K and Bollack); Lloyd-Jones
(followed by Wright) would add Jj? and print line 2 as the completion of
line 1. Theophrastus probably began his quotation in mid-verse; hence the
short lacuna assumed here.
93/106
evauercu some mss, Bollack.
94/108
1 5' add. Diels; y' add. Sturz, D-K; T' add. Stein, Bollack.
96/105
1 r6pa[j.^vt] Grotius; avTiOopovros Scaliger; rer/oa/xjueVcKO dim 6' opcoyro?
Gallavotti; Terpa/i/ieya azmfl/ooofTO? mss.
98/98
4 etr' ei; -nXtovta-aiv Dodds; eire -nKtov ecrrlv mss, Bollack; etre irheoveao-iv
eAdcraajy Panzerbieter, D-K dubitanter.
5 So Wright; cu/xa re yevro Sturz, D-K, Bollack; atjua re'yeyro ms D; at/xar' eye^ro
ms E; at/^ar' tytvovro ms F.
286 Fragments: Notes
103/84
5 TTvp some mss, Bollack.
7 eeA/xeVoj> some mss, Bollack.
8 Xoyti)(ra.To Forster, Sedley (private correspondence); Aoxatero most edd.,
some mss; tytvaro some mss, Alexander.
9 a^ivaovTos Bekker, Wright; a^ivatvTO? mss, D-K.
10 SiaOp&crKov some mss, Bollack.
After line 8 a new line has been reconstructed by Blass from garbled words
in line 5 of ms P; it is omitted by Wright and Bollack, printed by D-K: <at>
Xpavr](rL biavTa rer/o^aro Ofo-TTfairjcnv
105/94
This is an unreliable Renaissance translation into Latin of the lost Greek
original quoted by Plutarch. Several attempts have been made to turn it
back into Greek.
106/100
1 Gallavotti prints 108/102 as the first line of this fragment, and follows
the reading of Demetrius Lacon for the second (= line 1 above): oo
5' avcnrvtiovcn KOL en-nvdovvi Ai'$ai/uoi; but Aristotle's text is to be
preferred.
3 TruKiycus some mss, D-K, Bollack.
8 e/cTj-ye'et Diels, D-K; e/cOTet mss, Bollack.
9 K\f\l/vbpr] Diels, D-K, Wright; K\\l/vbpriv mss, Stein, Wilamowitz, Bollack.
StetTrere'o? Diels's obvious correction for some mss' SuTrere'o?; 8t' euTrereo?
some mss, Bollack, Gallavotti.
12 oufiels Wilamowitz, D-K; ouSeV e?, ou8' on es mss; ou8e ris Bollack.
16 e^ry Aldine edition, D-K, Bollack.
19 icrOfjioio some mss, Bollack.
22 8t' dyuicoy Bollack, Gallavotti.
23 a7rai.'eie Stein, D-K. eK-rrvfei Diels, D-K; eKTr^et mss, Bollack.
107/101
2 irepl Troi-rj Diels, D-K, Bollack, Wright; Tre/oiVoia mss. D-K fills the lacuna at
the beginning of this line with <<aovd'> oua\ but hesitantly; Diels supplied
TTvcvfj.ci.Ta. 6' ova'.
109/133
2 fj-ntp re D-K; TJirep re mss, Zuntz; rj^ep ye Karsten.
287 Fragments: Notes
110/134
2 Wright deletes this line as an intrusion from S4/29&28. Some mss read
diWoyrai; the sense is unaffected.
3 Other mss read crr^ea; Zuntz accepts this, apparently reasoning that p-qbea
is carried over from 34/29&2S. He may well be right.
111/117
2 e o.A.6? e/iTTopos most ancient sources; e^aAo? e/xTrupo? Diogenes Laertius,
Anth. Pal.; dv dAi, eAAoTros Clement. It is clear that the correct reading here
was lost quite early; it is probably beyond recovery. D-K and Wright print
eaAo? lAAoTro?; Gallavotti prints e dAo? eAAovro?.
113/126
Van der Ben includes the word lai^v in the fragment.
114/119
oao-ov editors, for ocrov, oiov of the mss. Van der Ben emends to ocrov
Trept/in^Keos.
116/121
2 tvOa KOTOS re (|>6yoj re Theon.
3 av Aet/xajya Bentley (followed by most editors), based on ava Aa/iowa in one
source; kv Aetjuwyt some mss and Wilamowitz; some mss also have O-K.OTOV
for OXOTO?. Van der Ben prints both these readings.
After line 2 editors, including D-K and Wright (the latter hesitantly), add
fragment 117/121; Zuntz does not accept it as Empedoclean. He prints the
following as fragment 5, a combination of D-K 118 and 121:
117/121
This line is quoted by Proclus together with line 2 of fr. 116/121, but without
attributing it to any particular author. The last phrase is often considered
to be corrupt and emended (as to u8ari peuorai by van der Ben).
118/124
2 o'uoy Clement, van der Ben; TOUOZ; Porphyry, Eusebius, D-K, Zuntz,
Wright.
288 Fragments: Notes
121/123
Some editors join 120/122 and 121/123 into one fragment.
3 KafyopiT] van der Ben; /cat (f)opir)v Cornutus; /cat (fropvri G, most editors,
including D-K, Wright and Gallavotti; /cat ^o/otr/y. /cat (fropirj most mss;
/cat 'A(opi?7 Bergk.
122/128
8 d/c/OT/rotcri D-K; d/cprjTOtcrcri Scaliger; d/cprroicri mss.
10 ee'8//eyat mss; eWfyneyai Diels, D-K.
124/139
Lines 5 and 6 are well known from the indirect tradition (see CTXT-101),
and for that material I dispense with the special editorial sigla appropriate
to the papyrus text. The papyrus, however, establishes a larger context for
the lines and also corrects a reading in line 6 that clearly became corrupt
in antiquity; compare the ancient corruption of crvvepyo^Qa to arvvepypiJitva
at 38/20.2. d also confirms the testimony of Plutarch (CTXT-97b) that
Empedocles used the form </>iAi'r/ as well as the more common (^tAorr/?. For
lines known from the papyrus, I print only text that I regard as certain or
highly probable, but the reader should be aware that such judgments of
probability are subjective. For fuller and more adventurous supplements
and for detailed discussion, the reader should consult M-P. In this section
I use square brackets to indicate a supplement that I believe to be reliable
and an underdot to indicate a damaged letter restored with confidence by
the editors.
128/137
2 cr^dfa Origen; oi b' aTropewrcu Diels, D-K; 01 6e Tropewrcu mss; oi6a one ms;
oiKTpa TOptvvra Zuntz; oi>6' aTropeOfrai Cataudello; oi 5' eTropeOyrcu Gallavotti.
3 6 8' av Z/TJKOUOTOS Diels, D-K; 6 5' dfTjKouoro? mss; 6 8e VIJK.OVO-TOS Bergk, van
der Ben. Xiaaop-evov OVOVTCS mss; Aitrcrojueyoi, Atufjo/ieyoy, &VOVTO.S, Bvovros
various editors.
132/141
This line is attributed to Empedocles by Aulus Gellius at 4.11.9; Wright
denies its authenticity on the grounds that it is elsewhere attributed to
Orpheus and is reminiscent of Pythagorean doctrines. Neither reason seems
to be adequate, and (like Diels, D-K, and Zuntz) I accept the fragment.
133/143
D-K prints the line as follows, basing the text on an apparently later
ancient variant of the text as printed here: Kpyvawv O.TTO vreyre rajnoyr'
<ev> aretpe't ^aAxa). Hiller, in his edition of Theon of Smyrna, prints: 6
p.ev yap 'E/r/reSoKAijs K.pr}va.u>v airb Tre'yr' din/xawTd ty-qaiv dretpe't ^aA/co) bdv
aTTOppV7TTCr6a.L.
134/125
Kranz supplies the beginning of a second line in D-K: <CK 8e v(K.p&v (JAOVTO.>.
The sense is probably more or less right. Zuntz follows Kranz, and suggests
that $ueo-0cu was the last word of the restored second line.
137/147
1 a.vTOTpa.TT(oi Dindorf, editors; avTOTpairefyv Eusebius; tv re T/oa7re'cu? Clement;
v T TjoaTre'^? van der Ben. Eusebius, who is quoting Clement, seems to
preserve a better tradition of his text than our surviving mss of that author.
2 The suggestion of Wright; edfres, avbpeitnv d^e'coy aTTOKAr/pot, dretpets mss;
various other emendations have been tried to repair the metre. Van der Ben
prints Tcpirovr' dy8peuoy d^e'coy aTTOKArjpoi dretpet?. Zuntz joins 136/146 and
137/147 into one fragment.
290 Fragments: Notes
138/142
2 There are many restorations for the second line; Zuntz prints oulre TTOT'
'At'Seoj Several. ..]*[... lore'yo?. D-K has ou> re TTOT' 'Ai'Seoj Se^er* 778'
oi>KT<p>r)s re'yo? <au>5<r)?. Van der Ben has <ov>r' <apa> Trlco]? 'At'8eco
8e'[)(erat] /cara [y]?)? reyo? [ey]5[oy]; most recently Gallavotti has in his
edition:
r6f 8' OUT' ap re A to? re'yeoi 8d/xoi aiydd^oto,
o{5]r [K' e]j "AiSou SelKT1 apa xaAJKfet]^? reyo? [au]A[779
and a slightly different restoration in 'Empedocle nei papiri ercolanesi.'
Barnes, in his review of Wright, 196, gives the bare transcription from
which Gallavotti created this line.
Concordances
Sources and Authorities
Bibliography
General Index
Index of Passages Translated
This page intentionally left blank
CONCORDANCES
LOCATIONS OF FRAGMENTS
85 152 17 25 8
A49a 40 18 CTXT-97b
A66a 60 19 CTXT-46 137
1 13 4 20 38 26
2 8 1 21 26 14
3 9&14 2&5 22 37 25
4 3 6 23 27 15
5 CTXT-107 134 24 30 18
6 12 7 25 29 17
7 CTXT-18 135 26 28 16
8 21 12 27 31&33 19&21
9 22 13 27a 5 98
10 CTXT-17 136 28 34 22
11 23 104 29 34 22
12 18 9 30 35 23
13 19 10 31 36 24
14 CTXT-15 32 CTXT-50 138
15 24 106 33 75 61
16 20 11 34 63 49
296 Concordances
35 61 47 74 82 68
36 32 20 75 84 70
37 44 31 76 83 69
38 39 27 77 78 64
39 46 33 78 78 64
40 47 34 79 79 65
41 48 35 80 80 66
42 54 41 81 81 67
43 51 38 82 86 71
44 49 36 83 87 72
45 52 39 84 103 88
46 53 40 85 99 84
47 50 37 86 100 85
48 55 42 87 101 86
49 56 43 88 104 89
50 57 44 89 88 73
51 41 28 90 90 75
52 45 32 91 89 74
53 42 29 92 A82a 143
54 43 30 93 91 76
55 59 46 94 105 90
56 58 45 95 102 87
57 64 50 96 62 48
58 CTXT-49a 97 CTXT-63 144
59 65 51 98 98 83
60 CTXT-51 140 99 A86.9 145
61 66 52 100 106 91
62 67 53 101 107 92
63 70 56 102 108 93
64 68 54 103 95 81
65 71 57 104 97 82
66 69 55 105 96 94
67 72 58 106 93 79
68 73 59 107 92 78
69 CTXT-61 141 108 94 80
70 CTXT-62 142 109 17 77
71 74 60 109a
72 77 63 110 16 100
73 76 62 111 15 101
297 Concordances
I omit the dubious fragments printed in D-K as numbers 154-154d. For B155
see Diogenes Laertius 8.43; for B156 see Al sec. 61; for B157 see Al sec. 65.
Note that Zuntz prints as his fragment 4 of the purifications D-K 158, which is
generally taken to be spurious: cuowos djue/ofci? / 6A/3t'ou = CTXT-95a; and as his
fragment 14 D-K 154a: co8t^a? <r'> 68was <re> HVKCUV aTrara? re ydou? re. B159
appears as A43Ab.
9 3 2 48 41 35
10 131 3 49 44 36
11 115 107 50 47 37
12 6 7 51 43 38
13 1 4 52 45 39
14 3 5 53 46 40
15 111 101 54 42 41
16 110 100 55 48 42
17 109 77 56 49 43
18 12 9 57 50 44
19 13 10 58 56 45
20 16 11 59 55 46
21 8 12 60 A66a
22 9 13 61 35 47
23 11 104 62 96 48
24 15 106 63 34 49
25 17 8 64 57 50
26 21 14 65 59 51
27 23 15 66 61 52
28 26 16 67 62 53
29 25 17 68 64 54
30 24 18 69 66 55
31 27 19 70 63 56
32 36 20 71 65 57
33 27 21 72 67 58
34 29&2S 22 73 68 59
35 30 23 74 71 60
36 31 24 75 33 61
37 22 25 76 73 62
38 20 26 77 72 63
39 38 27 78 77-78 64
40 A49a 79 79 65
41 51 28 80 80 66
42 53 29 81 81 67
43 54 30 82 74 68
44 37 31 83 76 69
45 52 32 84 75 70
46 39 33 85 152
47 40 34 86 82 71
299 Concordances
EUSEBIUS, bishop of Caesarea, lived in the late second and early third
centuries. A scholar as well as a Christian apologist, his Chronica (ed.
A. Schoene, A. Petemann, E. Roediger, Weidmann 1866, reprinted
Zurich 1967; also vol. 47 of Die griechische christlichen Schriftsteller der
ersten drei Jahrhunderte, ed. R. Helm, Berlin 1956) gave an outline of
history from the time of Abraham. The Praepamtio Evangelica is edited
by J. Sirinelli and E. des Places (Paris 1974).
HIPPOLYTUS, bishop of Rome in the late second and early third cen-
turies. Book one of his Refutation of All Heresies is edited in Doxographi
Graeci 551-76. The whole work is edited by P. Wendland (Leipzig 1916
= Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller, Hippolytus vol. 3; repr. Hil-
desheim 1977).
HORACE, an Augustan Latin poet; his Ars Poetica was very influential
for later literary theory.
MACROBIUS, a Latin writer of the early fifth century AD. His works are
edited by J.A. Willis (Leipzig 1963).
PLATO (ca 429-347 BC), the Athenian philosopher and founder of the
Academy; his dialogues are cited from standard texts and the scholia
on them are found in Scholia Platonica, ed. W.C. Greene (Haverford Pa,
1938; repr. Scholars Press 1981). The anonymous commentary on the
Theaetetus is preserved only on a papyrus and is published in Corpus
del papiri filosofici greci e latini Parte in (Firenze 1995), ed. G. Bastianini.
Note: The index does not include the textual notes to part 4.
natural bodies and body parts 120- 206; response to, 24-30. See also
24 Eleatics
natural place (or lack of) 75, 104, particles 26n55, 174, 177-78, 203
113, 131-32, 174-75 Pasquali, G. 180n35
nature 101-102, 178-79; by nature passing away. See coming-into-being,
175. See also phusis becoming
Neanthes 154, 159 Pausanias 13, 15n34, 16, 19, 39, 46,
necessity 49, 62, 63, 64, 67, 74, 86, 90, 64nl49, 91, 150, 156, 158, 159, 163
101, 104-105, 141, 173, 178, 179 Peisianax 158, 159
Nestis 119, 160, 173, 174 perception 48, 59, 84&n3, 85, 92,
Nicander 170 134, 195-203; by mortals 34&n72,
Nicolaus of Damascus 186n47 37-41; in plants 186-87. See also
night 111-12. See also vision understanding
not-being 24-27, 33, 34, 92-93 permanence, temporal 35, 40
Nussbaum, M. 71nl65 Persephone 156
nutrition 130, 134, 174, 190-91, 200; Persian works 120n49
of plants 186 personal identity. See daimon
persuasion. See belief
oaths 53, 60, 74, 87, 89-90, 101- Philistion 163
102 Philo 111n44
O'Brien, D. 3, 7nll, 12n27, 16-19, Philolaus 14n30, 154
26n54, 51nll7, 54nl20, 59nl33, Philoponus 125, 133
103n27, 122n50, 163, 196n61 philosophy 83-84
oil 133, 204 Philostratus 82n2, 161nl3
old age 129 phusis 37, 41, 93-95
olives 130 Pindar 132, 170, 205
one and many. See cycle planets 181
opposites 171, 173, 178 plants 76, 129-30, 186-87; generation
Orpheus 151n87, 151n90, 169 of 186, 188. See also zoogony
Osborne, C. 6, 12n23, 13n29, 14-15, Plato 11, 23, 69, 72, 116, 143, 149,
31n68, 65-66, 161nl2 154, 165, 166, 169, 180, 195, 186n63,
overfull 27 207n80; Sophist 25; Symposium
Owen, G.E.L. 46nl01 48nl07, 65; Phaedo 55-56; Timaeus
74nl70, 84, 104, 177; Phaedrus
pain. See pleasure and pain 86; Meno 137; Republic 141;
painting 38-39, 188. See also reality, interpretation of Empedocles 31-
levels of 32; Forms 36, 39, 42&n92
Pantheia 158 pleasure and pain 142, 167, 197-200,
Parmenides 7, 11n21, 22-30, 57, 76, 202
104, 127, 154, 155, 161, 163, 164, Plutarch 11, 12n24, 17-18, 21, 23n48,
167, 169, 170, 183, 188, 195, 204, 31, 34, 62, 74, 75, 93nnl3-14, 98nl8
326 General Index
Timaeus (historian) 153, 154, 156, 205; day and night vision 192-93,
157, 158, 159 200, 205; visual rays 204
Timaeus of Locri 116 void 27, 30, 93, 199, 203
time 101 vortex 113-16, 179
Timon 158
Timpanaro Cardini, M. 123nn52-53 water 196-97, 204. See also roots
Tisias 167 whole-natured 125
Titans 104, 145 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von
tortoises 132 37n82
totality 28, 93, 97 winds 156, 161, 183
touch 197, 200-201 wine 131, 133, 186, 204
tracking dogs 139 wisdom 48, 63, 67-68, 82-83, 90;
transmigration and afterlife 24, 55- wise man 48, 83, 95, 104, 144, 151.
68, 83, 89-91, 141-49, 151, 161-62, See also purity, understanding
172, 207-208; body as clothing for wizardry and magic 7, 91, 155-56,
soul 55-56, 58, 67, 76, 77, 141; 161, 164-65
hierarchy of lives 151 womb 127
triplets 193 Wright, M.R. 3, 6, 7nlO, 10nl6,
tropic circles 182 12n24, 18n41, 20, 21, 31n65,
truth 82, 84-85 44nn95-96, 46n99, 47nnl04-105,
tusks 133 48nl06, 49nlll, 51nll6, 51nll7,
twins 193 52nll9, 54&nl20, 95nl6, 129n60,
Tyndares 150 161nl2
Tzetzes 5n4, 82n2
Xanthus 157
umbilical cord 192 Xenocrates 177
understanding 90, 97; limits of Xenophanes 23-24, 59nl32, 109, 154,
human 46, 48, 62, 63&nl43, 84-85, 167nl9, 171
93, 140, 151 Xerxes 155
universe 178
Usener, H. 140n74, 197n65 Zeno of Elea 25n52, 26&n53, 155,
163, 164, 167, 172
van der Ben, N. 17n37 Zeus 131n64, 145, 152, 160, 162, 169,
van Groningen, B.A. 13n28 173, 174
Varro 169 zoogony 69-73, 88-90, 108, 119-26,
vision 136-37, 196-97, 200-201, 204; 187-92. See also cosmogony
the eye 115, 136-37, 196-97, 204- Zuntz, G. 12n23
INDEX OF PASSAGES TRANSLATED
Gr. 438): A70a. 5.27.1 (Dox. Gr. 440): 25: CTXT-81a. 430a28-30: CTXT-
A77a. 5.28 (Dor Gr. 440): A95c 49c
Alexander De Sensu 437b9-14: A91a.
Quaestiones 2.23, CIAG Supp. 2.2, 437b23^38a5: CTXT-85a. 441a3-7:
72.9-27: A89a A94b. 446a26-27: A57b
Comm. on Aristotle's De Sensu De Respiratione 473al5-474a6:
CIAG 3.1, 23.8-24.9: CTXT-85b CTXT-88. 477a32-b2: A73a
Ammonius, Comm. on Aristotle's De De Partibus Animalium 640al9-22:
Interpretation CIAG 4.5, 249.1-11: CTXT-63. 642al7-22: A78b
CTXT-91a De Generatione Animalium 722b3-28:
Anecdota Graeca 1.337.13-15 (Bekker): CTXT-56a. 723a23-26: CTXT-57a.
CTXT-36 731al-9: CTXT-70a. 747a24-b3:
Anonymous, Comm. on Plato's A82a. 764al-15: A81a. 764bl5-18:
Theaetetus col. 70.43-71.6: CTXT- CTXT-56b. 765a8-10: A81b.
89d 777a7-12: CTXT-60. 779bl5-20:
Aristotle A91b
Topics 127al7-19: CTXT-72c Metaphysics 984a8-ll: A28a.
Sophistici Elenchi 183b29-32: A19c 984all-13: A6. 984b32-985alO:
Physics 52a5-10: A38. 187a20-26: A39. 985a21-b3: A37. 993al5-24:
A46. 196al7-24: CTXT-29a. A78c. 1000al8-b20: CTXT-
198b29-32: CTXT-52c. 199b7-13: 25a. 1009bl7-20: CTXT-81b.
CTXT-53b. 250b23-251a5: CTXT- 1014b35-1015a3: CTXT-16b
19c Nicomachean Ethics 1155a32-b8:
De Caelo 295al3-21: A67. A20Ab
284a24-26: A49c. 294a21-28: Eudemian Ethics 1235alO-12: A20Aa
CTXT-32. 295a29-b9: CTXT-45a. Rhetoric 1373b6-17: CTXT-102a.
301al4-20: A42a. 305al-4: A43Aa. 1407a31-39: A25c
300b25-31: CTXT-49b Poetics 1447bl7-20: A22.
De Generatione et Corruptione 1457bl3-16: CTXT-106a. 1457b22-
324b26-35: A87a. 325bl5-25: 25: CTXT-65. 1458a4-5: CTXT-86.
A43Ab. 330bl9-21: A36. 1461a23-25: CTXT-45d
333a35-b3: CTXT-30. 333bl9-21: Athenaeus Deipnosophists 3e: All.
A40. 334al-7: CTXT-29c. 334b: CTXT-68. 423f: CTXT-45e.
334a26-31: A43a 620d: A12
Meteorologica 357a24-28: CTXT-44. Aulus Gellius 4.11.1-2: CTXT-110.
369bl2-14: A63a. 381b31-382a2: 17.21.14: A9b
CTXT-48. 387bl-6: CTXT-75
De Anima 404b8-15: CTXT-13a. Caelius Aurelianus, Chronic Diseases
405bl-5: A4. 408al3-23: A78c. 1.5 (144-45): A98
410al-6: CTXT-47b. 415b28-416a2: Celsus, at Origen Contra Celsum 8.53:
A70c. 418b20-26: A57a. 427a21- CTXT-lOe
331 Index of Passages Translated
Censorinus 4.7-8: A72b. 5.4, 6.6-7: For the year 456 BC: A9a
A81h. 6.1: A84. 7.5: A83c Preparatio Evangelica 10.14.15:
Cicero A8
De Oratore 1.217: A25e Eustathius, Comm. on the Odyssey,
De Republica 11.19: CTXT-102b 1.321: CTXT-28a
ad Quintum fratrem 2.10[9].3:
A27 Galen
Clement On the Substance of the Natural Powers
Protrepticus 2.27.3 (1.20.13-18): 4.762 K: A43d
CTXT-104 On the Technique of Healing 1.1
Stromateis 3.14.1-2 (II.201.23-202.3): (10.5-6 K): A3d
CTXT-94a. 4.13.1 (II.254.8-11): p. Comm. on Hippocrates' Aphorisms
86n4. 4.150.1 (11.314.25-29): CTXT- 1 (18A.8 K): A77c
112. 5.9.1 (11.331.12-16): CTXT- Comm. on Hippocrates' Epidemics
2. 5.15.4 (11.335.20-22): CTXT- 6, 2.46, CMC 5.10.2.2,119.12-120.2
19f. 5.18.4 (II.338.1-5): CTXT-3. (17a, 1002 K): CTXT-58
5.48.2-3 (11.358.15-23): CTXT-26. Comm. on Hippocrates' On the
5.81.2 (II.380.5-9): CTXT-90. 5.122.3 Nature of Man 15.32 K, CMC 5.9.1,
(II.409.8-13) from Eusebius Prep. Ev. 19.7-12: A34. 15.49 K, CMC 5.9.1,
13.13.49 (684d-685a): CTXT-113. 27.22-27: A34
5.140.5 (11.420.28-421.4): CTXT- Gnomologium Parisinumn. 153: A20a.
4. 6.30.1-3 (11.445.11-20): CTXT- n. 158: A20b
12b
Cod. Ath. 1249: A57d Hephaestion Handbook 1.3, p. 2.13-14:
Cornutus Theologiae Graecae CTXT-43
Compendium 17, p. 30.2-8: CTXT- Herodian General Accentuation: CTXT-
98 82
Hesychius s.v. dyewr/Ta: CTXT-18.
Diodorus Siculus 13.83.2: CTXT-ld s.v. /3au/3co: CTXT-66
Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Hierocles, Comm. on the Carmen
Philosophers 8.51-77: Al. 8.54: Aureum 24.2-3: CTXT-95a
CTXT-la. 8.59: CTXT-12a. 8.60: Hippocrates On Ancient Medicine 20:
CTXT-11. 8.61: CTXT-lb A71
Diogenes of Oenoanda, New Fragment Hippolytus Refutatio 1.3 (Dox. Gr.
2 and Fragment 34 Chilton: pp. 207- 558): A31. 1.4.3 (Dox. Gr. 559):
208. A62. 6.11-12 (138.3-9): CTXT-
Dionysius De compositione verborum 13b. 7.29.5-6 (211.1-8): A33c.
22 (150): A26 7.29.9-7.30.4 (211.17-215.12): CTXT-
lOg. 7.30.4 (216.7-13): CTXT-lOh.
Eusebius 7.31.3-4 (216.21-217.4): CTXT-9
Chronica for the year 436 BC: A10. Horace Ars Poetica 458-67: A16b
332 Index of Passages Translated
6 Eros and Psyche: Studies in Plato, Plotinus, and Origen John M. Rist
7 Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism J.A. Philip
8 Plato's Psychology T.M. Robinson
9 Greek Fortifications F.E. Winter
10 Comparative Studies in Republican Latin Imagery Elaine Fantham
11 The Orators in Cicero's 'Brutus': Prosopography and Chronology
G.V. Sumner
12 'Caput' and Colonate: Towards a History of Late Roman Taxation
Walter Goffart
13 A Concordance to the Works of Ammianus Marcellinus Geoffrey Archbold
14 Fallax opus: Poet and Reader in the Elegies of Propertius John Warden