poet: one of the most important of the philosophers working before
Socrates (the Presocratics), and a poet of outstanding ability and of
great influence upon later poets such as Lucretius. His works On
Nature and Purifications (whether they are two poems or only one – see
below) exist in more than 150 fragments. He has been regarded
variously as a materialist physicist, a shamanic magician, a mystical
theologian, a healer, a democratic politician, a living god, and a
fraud. To him is attributed the invention of the four-element theory
of matter (earth, air, fire, and water), one of the earliest theories
of particle physics, put forward seemingly to rescue the phenomenal
world from the static monism of Parmenides. Empedocles' world-view is
of a cosmic cycle of eternal change, growth and decay, in which two
personified cosmic forces, Love and Strife, engage in an eternal
battle for supremacy. In psychology and ethics Empedocles was a
follower of Pythagoras, hence a believer in the transmigration of
souls, and hence also a vegetarian. He claims to be a daimôn, a divine
or potentially divine being, who, having been banished from the
immortals gods for 'three times countless years' for committing the
sin of meat-eating and forced to suffer successive reincarnations in
an purificatory journey through the different orders of nature and
elements of the cosmos, has now achieved the most perfect of human
states and will be reborn as an immortal. He also claims seemingly
magical powers including the ability to revive the dead and to control
the winds and rains.
1. Life
The most detailed source for Empedocles' life is Diogenes Laertius,
Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 8.51-75. Perhaps because of his
claims to divine status and magical powers a remarkable number of
apocryphal stories gathered around the life of Empedocles in
antiquity. His death in particular attracted attention and is reported
to have occurred in several, clearly bathetic, ways: that he fell
overboard from a ship and drowned; that he fell from his carriage,
broke his leg and died; that he hanged himself; or the most famous
account that, when he felt he was shortly to die and because he wished
to appear to have been apotheosized, he leapt into the crater of Etna.
In this story the ruse was unfortunately discovered when one of his
trademark bronze sandals was thrown up by the volcano.
From more reliable sources it seems that he was born at Acragas in
Sicily around 492 BC and died at the age of sixty. He was the son of a
certain Meton, and was from an important and wealthy local
aristocratic family: his grandfather, also called Empedocles, is
reported to have been victorious in horse-racing at the Olympic Games
in 496 BC. It is not known where or with whom he studied philosophy,
but various teachers are assigned to him by ancient sources, among
them Parmenides, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Anaxagoras and Anaximander
(from whom he is said to have inherited his extravagant mode of
dress). Whether or not he was his pupil, Empedocles was certainly very
familiar with the work of Parmenides from whom he took the inspiration
to write in hexameter verse, and whose physical system he adopts in
part, and partly seeks to rectify.
He is reported to have been wealthy and to have kept a train of boy
attendants and also to have provided dowries for many girls of
Acragas. In dress he affected a purple robe with a golden girdle,
bronze sandals, and a Delphic laurel-wreath, and in his manner he was
grave and cultivated a regal public persona. These attributes contrast
with his political outlook which is uniformly reported to have been
actively pro-democratic. He began his political career with the
prosecution of two state officials for their arrogant behaviour
towards foreign guests which was seen as a sign of incipient
tyrannical tendencies. He is also credited with activities against
other anti-democratic citizens, and even with putting down an
oligarchy and instituting a democracy at Acragas by use of his powers
of rhetorical persuasion. Two speeches of his in favour of equality
are also mentioned. His surviving poetry certainly shows considerable
rhetorical skills, and indeed he is credited by Aristotle with the
invention of rhetoric itself. Another report is of his breaking up a
shadowy aristocratic political organisation called the 'Thousand'. As
a whole the tradition presents a picture of Empedocles as a popular
politician, rhetorician, and champion of democracy and equality. This
appears to fit in with the known history of Acragas where after the
death of the popular and enlightened tyrant Theron in 473 BC his son
Thrasydaeus proved to be a violent despot. After his forcible removal
a democracy was established despite continuing political tensions.
As well as a being a philosopher, poet and politician, Empedocles was
famous for his medical skills and healing powers. In his works he
presents himself as a wandering healer offering to thousands of eager
followers 'prophecies' and 'words of healing for all kinds of
illnesses' (fr. 112 (Fragment numbers are those of Diels-Kranz)). He
also promises his addressee Pausanias 'you will learn remedies
(pharmaka) for ills and help against old age' and even 'you will lead
from Hades the life-force of a dead man'. To what degree this
represents the real Empedocles is not known, but a tradition grew up
of him as both a renowned physician and a practitioner of more magical
cures, or as a charlatan. These stories however, may well derive from
Empedocles' own words in his poetry. On the other hand his work does
show considerable interest in biology and especially in embryology and
he was eminent enough as a writer on medicine to be attack ed by the
writer of the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine who attempts to
separate medicine from philosophy and rejects Empedocles' work along
with all philosophical medical works as irrelevant. The stories of his
wonder-working such as curing entire plagues, reviving the dead and
controlling the elements are clearly exaggerated at least, but it is
becoming clearer, especially since the discovery of the Strasbourg
fragments (see below), that, contrary to many former interpretations,
Empedocles did not make a clear separation between his philosophy of
nature and the more mystical, theological aspects of his philosophy,
and so may well have seen no great difference in kind between healing
ills through empirical understanding of human physiognomy and healing
by means of sacred incantations and ritual purifications. His public
as well may have made no great distinction between 'scientific' and
sacred medicine as is suggested by the account of Empedocles curing a
plague by restoring a fresh water-supply, after which he was venerated
as a god.
2. Works
Empedocles work survives only in fragments, but luckily in a far
greater number than any of the other Presocratics. These fragments are
mostly quotations found in other authors such as Aristotle and
Plutarch. Although many works, including tragedies and a medical
treatise, are attributed to Empedocles by ancient sources no fragments
of these have survived, and the extant fragments all come from a work
of hexameter poetry traditionally entitled On Nature (Peri Phuseôs) or
Physics (Phusika) and some from a possibly separate work called
Purifications (Katharmoi). Of these two titles On Nature is by far the
better attested and nearly all the fragments which are cited by
ancient authors along with the title of the work they came from are
attributed to On Nature, while only two are attributed to the
Purifications. Because the fragments contain both material that
clearly refers to physics and cosmology – the four elements, the
cosmic cycle etc. – and also material concerning the fate of the soul,
sin and purification, traditionally the former were placed in
reconstructions of On Nature, and the latter in the Purifications.
Indeed Empedocles' writings contain ideas and themes that may seem
quite incompatible with one another. On Natureas usually reconstructed
seemed the work of a mechanist physicist which seeks to replace the
traditional gods with four lifeless impersonal elements and two cosmic
forces of attraction and repulsion, Love and Strife. The Purifications
on the other hand seemed the work of a deeply religious Pythagorean
mystic: it was often thought that Empedocles either wrote the
Purifications as a move away from the mechanistic materialist position
in On Nature, or that the Purifications were an addendum to On Nature,
looking at the world from quite a different perspective.
However there have long been doubts about whether there were really
two poems or only one poem (perhaps called On Nature and Purifications
or with On Nature and Purifications as alternative titles for the same
work) which contained both physical and religious material. First,
although we may think of a poem called Physics as restricting itself
to physical concerns alone, this may well be an anachronistic
retrojection of modern rationalistic ideas of a gulf between physics
and religion. Further, ancient book titles tend to be generic and
there is a long tradition of works called either On Nature (Peri
Phuseôs) or Physics (Physika) by various authors, with the earliest
attested title for such works being On the Nature of the Universe
(Peri Phuseôs tôn Ontôn 'On the Nature of Things that Exist'), and so
neither title may be Empedocles' own and the two may perhaps be
interchangeable different titles for the same work. Although there is
still argument on this subject the Strasbourg fragments now suggest
strongly that both physical and religious material was originally
together in On Nature.
In 1990 the first ancient papyrus fragments of Empedocles were
rediscovered at the University of Strasbourg and were published in
1999. Since these were also the first papyrus fragments of any of the
Presocratics their discovery caused considerable excitement. Among
other important new information they give about Empedocles'
philosophy, with great good fortune fr. a, the longest of the new
fragments, was found to be a continuation of the longest of the
previously known fragments (fr. 17) and thus now the two together form
a continuous text of 69 lines. Fr. 17 is cited by Simplicius as being
from book one of On Nature, and again very fortunately Strasbourg fr.
a(ii) contains a marginal note by the manuscript copyist identifying
line 30 of fr. a(ii) as line 300 of book one of On Nature. Since the
Strasbourg fragments seem to have come from a single piece of papyrus,
and they also overlap with a formerly known religious fragment usually
placed in the Purifications (fr. 1 39) it now seems very likely that
Empedocles introduced the themes of sin and purification early on in
the physical poem. In fact it can now be argued that all of the
fragments of the Purifications can be accommodated in the early part
of book one of On Nature.
3. Physics and Cosmology
a. Physics
The foundations of Empedocles' physics lie in the assumption that
there are four 'elements' of matter, or 'roots' as he calls them,
using a botanical metaphor that stresses their creative potential:
earth, air, fire and water. These are able to create all things,
including all living creatures, by being 'mixed' in different
combinations and proportions. Each of the elements however, retains
its own characteristics in the mixture, and each is eternal and
unchanging. The positing of these four roots of matter forms part of a
tradition of opposite material creative principles in Presocratic
philosophy, but it also has its origins in an attempt to counter the
theories of Parmenides who had argued that the world is single and
unchanging since nothing can come from nothing and nothing can be
destroyed into nothing: the theory known as Eleatic monism.
Empedocles' response was to appropriate Parmenides' ideas and to use
them against themselves. Nothing can come from nothing nor be
destroyed into nothing (fr. 12), and therefore, in order to rescue the
reality of the phenomenal world, there must be assumed to exist
something eternal and unchanging beneath the constant change, growth
and decay of the visible world. Empedocles then, transfers the
changelessness that Parmenides attributes to the entire world to his
four elements, and replaces the static singularity Parmenides' world
with a dynamic plurality. The four elements correspond closely to
their expression at the macroscopic level of nature, with the
traditional quadripartite division of the cosmos into earth, sea, air,
and the fiery aether of the heavenly bodies: these four naturally
occurring 'elements' of the cosmos clearly represent a fundamental
natural division of matter at the largest scale. This division at the
macroscopic level of reality is applied reductively at the microscopic
level to produce a parallelism between the constituents of matter and
the fundamental constituents of the cosmos, but the reduction of the
world into four types of material particles does not deny the reality
of the world we see, but instead validates it. Empedocles stresses
this parallel between the elements at the different levels of reality
by using the terms 'sun' 'sea' and 'Earth' interchangeably with
'fire', 'water' and 'earth'. Of the four elements, although Empedocles
stresses their equality of powers, fire is also granted a special role
both in its hardening effect on mixtures of the other elements and
also as the fundamental principle of living things.
b. Cosmology
Empedocles also posits two cosmic forces which work upon the elements
in both creative and destructive ways. These he personifies as Love
(Philia) – a force of attraction and combination – and Strife (Neikos)
– a force of repulsion and separation. Whether these cosmic forces are
to be envisaged in simply mechanistic terms as descriptions of the way
things happen, or as expressions of internal properties of the
elements, or as external forces that act upon the elements, is not
clear. It is also unclear whether the two forces are to be seen as
impersonal mechanistic physical forces or as intelligent divinities
that act in purposive ways in creation and destruction. Evidence can
be found for all these interpretations. What is clear is that these
two forces are engaged in an eternal battle for domination of the
cosmos and that they each prevail in turn in an endless cosmic cycle.
The details of this cosmic cycle are also difficult to establish, but
the most widely accepted interpretation is represented in the
following diagram:
EmpGraph
Beginning from the top of the diagram and proceeding clockwise, when
Love is completely dominant she draws all the elements fully together
into a Sphere in which, although the elements are not fused together
into a single mass, each is indistinguishable from the others. The
Sphere then, is an a-cosmic state during which no matter can exist,
and no life is possible. Then as Love's power gradually weakens and
Strife begins to grow in power, he gradually separates out the
elements from the Sphere until there is enough separation for matter
to come into existence, for the world to be created and for all life
to be born. When Strife has achieved total domination we again get an
a-cosmic state in which the elements are separated completely and the
world and all life is destroyed in a Whirl. Then Love begins to
increase in power and to draw the elements together again, and as she
does so the world is again created and life is again born. When Love
has achieved full dominan ce we return once more to the sphere. As
Empedocles puts it in fr. 17.1-8:
A twofold tale I shall tell: at one time it grew to be one only
from many, and at another again it divided to be many from one. There
is a double birth of what is mortal, and a double passing away; for
the uniting of all things brings one generation into being and
destroys it, and the other is reared and scattered as they are again
being divided. And these things never cease their continuous exchange
of position, at one time all coming together into one through Love, at
another again being borne away from each other by Strife's repulsion.
The cosmos exists in a state of constant flux then, beneath which
there is a certain sort of stability in the eternity of the elements.
The world is in a constant state of organic evolution, and there
appear to be two different creations and two different worlds which
have no direct link between them. According the most widely accepted
interpretation Empedocles considered that we ourselves inhabit the
world under the increasing power of Strife.
4. Biology
Empedocles' physics have a particularly biological focus as is
indicated by his choice of the botanical metaphor of 'roots' for what
were later called 'elements'. The term 'roots' stresses the creative
potential of the roots rather than illustrating the way they create
things by being mixed in different combinations: 'elements' (stoicheia
in Greek, elementa in Latin) is the word for the letters of the
alphabet, and is a metaphor that stresses the ability of the elements
of matter to form different types of matter by interchange of position
just as a limited number of letters are able to form all sorts of
different words on the page. To illustrate this aspect of the creative
abilities of his roots Empedocles uses an analogy with the way
painters can use a limited number of colours to create all sorts of
different colours and represent all the different productions of
nature.
Fr. 23:
As painters, men well taught by wisdom in the practice of their
art, decorate temple offerings when they take in their hands pigments
of various colours, and after fitting them in close combination – more
of some and less of others – they produce from them shapes resembling
all things, creating trees and men and women, animals and birds and
water-nourished fish, and long-lived gods too, highest in honor; so
let not error convince you in your mind that there is any other source
for the countless perishables that are seen, but know this clearly,
since the account you have heard is divinely revealed.
Among other aspects, this analogy exhibits Empedocles' tendency to
think about the creative abilities of the elements in terms of their
biological products, here a characteristically Empedoclean list of
creatures representing the different orders of nature: plants, humans,
land animals, birds, and fish, as well as gods. If painters use a
mixture of a small number of pigments to produce copies of the works
of nature, then the same process is productive of those works of
nature. In other ways as well in his presentation of the cosmic cycle
and the endless combination and separation of the elements he tends to
elide the distinction between the elements and the life-forms they
produce. Just as in the parallel he draws between the elements of the
cosmos on both microscopic and macroscopic levels, so a close parallel
is drawn between living creatures and their constituent elements.
a. Origin of Species
Empedocles presents us with the earliest extant attempt at producing a
detailed rational mechanism for the origin of species. Greek
traditions include the aetiological myths of the origin of a
particular species of animal by transformation from a human being
(many of these ancient mythological aetiologies are collected by Ovid
in the Metamorphoses). The origins of humans, or of particular heroes,
founders of cities or of races is frequently explained by what I term
a botanical analogy: they originally emerged autochthonously from the
ground just as plants do today, and this is also standard in ancient
scientific theories as well: the original spontaneous generation of
life from the earth, with all creatures emerging in their present
species. Empedocles attempts to provide a comprehensive mechanism for
the origins not simply of humans or of a particular animal but of all
animal life, including humans, and a rational mechanism that would
seem to do away with the need for any design in creatures or any
external agency to order them and separate them into their individual
species.
In Strasbourg fr. a(ii) 23-30 we now find the following lines in which
Empedocles seemingly introduces his account of zoogony:
I will show you to your eyes too, where they find a larger body:
first the coming together and the unfolding of birth, and as many as
are now remaining of this generation. This [is to be seen] among the
wilder species of mountain-roaming beasts; this [is to be seen] in the
twofold offspring of men, this [is to be seen] in the produce of the
root-bearing fields and of the cluster of grapes mounting on the vine.
From these convey to your mind unerring proofs of my account: for you
will see the coming together and unfolding of birth.
Empedocles promises an exposition of zoogony and the origin of species
which, from the examples he gives – wild animals, humans and plants –
is clearly intended to encompass all animal and plant life, including
humans. He appeals to present day species as proofs of his theories:
we can see both the products of this process of zoogony around us in
nature today and also, it seems, we can see the same processes still
going on today. That the theory refers to present day species rather
than creatures in some counter world is underlined by the stress
Empedocles puts on 'as many as are now remaining of this generation'.
So the theory is intended to explain the origin and development of all
life and refers specifically to the animals and plants around us
today, both as examples of and as proofs of the theory he will
propose. This process of generation he describes by the repeated 'the
coming together and the unfolding of birth'. This seems to posit two
processes which work, either together or separately, to produce the
life we see around us today: a process of coming together and also a
process of unfolding or perhaps more strictly 'unleafing' since the
metaphor originates from the leaves of plants. So the second part of
this process of zoogony involves a botanical metaphor: just as in the
traditional botanical analogy of the myths of autochthony, an appeal
to the development and growth of plants is used to describe the
process of the development of all life.
According to fragments B57, B59, B60, and B61, first of all individual
limbs and organs were produced from the earth. These wandered
separately at first and then under the combining power of Love they
came together in all sorts of wild and seemingly random hybrid
combinations, producing double fronted creatures, hermaphrodites,
ox-faced man creatures and man-faced ox-creatures. This weird picture
is explained by Aristotle in the Physics and later in more detail by
Simplicius in his commentary on the Physics as a theory of the origin
of species in which, as we would put it, a certain form of natural
selection is operative. The creatures assembled wrongly from parts of
disparate animals will die out, either immediately, or by being unable
to breed, and only the creatures by chance put together from
homogeneous limbs will survive and so go on to found the species that
we see today. The production of species and their ordering then is
explained by a mechanistic process long recognised as a forerunner of
Darwin's theory of natural selection. Unlike in Darwin's theory
however, there would seem to be no gradual evolution of one species
into another, and all of the variety of nature is produced in a great
burst of birth in the beginning and is then whittled down by
extinctions into the creatures we see today. That this theory intends
to account for the origins of both humans and animals is ensured by
the component parts of the ox-headed man-creatures and man-headed
ox-creatures. There will clearly also be created by this system
man-headed man-creatures and ox-headed ox-creatures, that is to say
normal oxen and normal humans, although they are not mentioned.
Further evidence that this zoogony relates to present day creatures is
given by Aristotle and Simplicius who tell us that this process is
still going on today.
However, Empedocles also adds to this theory another explanation of
the origins of humans very much along the lines of traditional myths
of autochthony. In fr. B62 and Strasbourg fr. d he describes the
'shoots' of men and women arising from the earth, drawn up by fire as
it separates out from the other elements during the creation under the
power of increasing Strife. As his choice of the word 'shoots'
indicates these are not yet fully articulated people with distinct
limbs but 'whole-nature forms' that 'did not as yet show the lovely
shape of limbs, or voice or language native to man'. We may assume
that as Strife increases in power these 'shoots' will, just as plant
buds do, gradually become fully articulated with distinct limbs and
features. So human origins are accounted for by a botanical analogy,
with humans as biological productions of the earth itself. This theory
is also intended to account for modern-day as humans, as Strasbourg
fr. d tells us 'even now daylight beholds their remains'. So both the
creation under Love and the creation under Strife refer to the origins
of modern plants, animals, and humans. This is problematic since
according to the picture of the cosmic cycle given above the world
created by Strife is quite separate from that created by Love, and two
quite different explanations are given by Empedocles for each creation
of life. Various attempts have been made to account for this,
including a radical revision of the cosmic cycle in order to allow
both creations of life to take place within the same world, and also
seeing the two different worlds of the cosmic cycle as more useful
devices for examining different aspects of creation separately than
absolutely chronologically separate phases of a cycle: the work of
Love in combining creatures and the work of Strife in articulating
them would then actually take place at the same time, but are simply
described as operative in chronologically separate phases.
b. Embryology
Empedocles is an exponent of the pangenetic theory of embryology. In
this theory inheritance of characteristics from both mother and father
is explained by each of the two parents' limbs and organs creating
tiny copies of themselves. These miniature limbs and organs then flow
together in the generative seed and when the two seeds combine in the
womb the father's seed may provide the model for the nose, while the
mother's seed the model for the eyes and so on. This is an elegant way
of accounting for inheritance of characteristics, but this is unlikely
to be the whole story. As Aristotle points out there are strong
conceptual similarities between Empedocles' embryology and the
creation under Love in which we see the coming together of pre-formed
limbs creating life. So Empedocles thinks of the original formation of
animals as a process analogous to the present day formation of the
embryo in the womb. From his description in Strasbourg fr. a (ii)
23-30 'the coming together and unfolding of birth' we seem to have two
processes that are at work in the formation of both present day
creatures and the original creation of life. The 'coming together'
describes both the original coming together of the limbs of the first
creatures and also the coming together of the tiny limbs in
conception. The other side of the creative process, the 'unfolding' is
illustrated by the creation under Strife of the 'shoots of men and
pitiable women' whose limbs are at first not fully articulated or
defined: they will undergo a process of 'unfolding' just like plant
buds and become fully developed humans. This 'unfolding' is clearly
paralleled in embryology by the gradual development and growth of the
embryo in the womb. Therefore it may be best to think of the tiny
limbs and organs contained in the generative seed not as fully
developed limbs and organs, but as the genetic material that contains
the potential for the development of limbs and organs. This is so
mewhat speculative, but would provide Empedocles with a much more
nearly truly evolutionary theory of the origin of species than had
previously been ascribed to him. Certainly the differentiation into
the two sexes is described in terms of potential: the warmth of the
womb determines whether the embryo will be male or female, cf. fr B
65: 'They were poured in pure places; some met with cold and became
women', fr. B 67: 'For the male was warmer . . . this is the reason
why men are dark, more powerfully built, and hairier'. It may be that
other characteristics are also determined or informed by environmental
factors as well.
c. Perception and thought
Empedocles seems to have been the first philosopher to give a detailed
explanation of the mechanism by which we perceive things. His theory,
criticised by Aristotle and Theophrastus, is that all things give off
effluences and that these enter pores in the sense organs. The pores
and the effluences will be of varying shapes and sizes and so only
certain effluences enter certain sense-organs if they meet pores of
the correct size and shape to admit them. Further, perception is
achieved by the attraction of similars: we perceive light colours with
fire in the eye, dark colours with water, smell is achieved by the
presence of breath in the nostrils etc.
As Theophrastus complains, perception is closely linked to thought by
Empedocles, cf. fr. B109:
With earth, we perceive earth, with water water, with air divine
fire, with fire destructive fire, with love love, and strife with
baneful strife.
fr. B 107:
All things are fitted together and constructed out of these, and
by means of them they think and feel pleasure and pain.
In B 109 Empedocles moves from perception of physical elements to
ethical perceptions using the same theory of perception by similars,
while in B 107 we can see the theory used to account more directly for
thought itself. Hence for Empedocles there is a close link between
what we perceive and what we think. Further our thoughts will also be
affected by our own physical constitutions (B 108). This process of
the attraction of like to like is operative from the most fundamental
level with the parts of the roots of matter being attracted to their
like, right up to the highest level of the purest mixture which is the
highest form of thought. Hence it seems that everything in nature has
a share in perception and intelligence, cf. fr. 110.10: 'know that all
things have intelligence and a share of thought'.
5. Ethics and the journey of the soul
a. The daimôns and transmigration of souls
Plutarch cites the following fragment as coming from 'the beginning of
Empedocles' philosophy', fr. B 115:
There is a decree of necessity, ratified long ago by gods, eternal
and sealed by broad oaths, that whenever one in error, from fear,
defiles his own limbs, having by his error made false the oath he
swore – daimôns to whom life long-lasting is apportioned – he wanders
from the blessed ones for three-times countless years, being born
throughout the time as all kinds of mortal forms, exchanging one hard
way of life for another. For the force of air pursues him into the
sea, and sea spits him out onto earth's surface, earth casts him in
the rays of blazing sun, and sun into the eddies of air; one takes him
from another, and all abhor him. I too am now one of these, an exile
from the gods and a wanderer, having put my trust in raving Strife.
Traditionally Plutarch's seeming attribution of this fragment to On
Naturewas assumed to be incorrect and it was placed in the
Purifications instead. However from the evidence of the Strasbourg
fragments it seems that it may well be that Plutarch was correct,
since they contain a description of the details of the sin Empedocles
accuses himself of in fr. 115, cf. Strasbourg fr. d lines 5-6:
'Alas that merciless day did not destroy me sooner, before I
devised with my claws terrible deeds for the sake of food'
In fr. 115 Empedocles describes himself as a 'daimôn', a being to whom
long life has been granted, but who has committed the sin of
meat-eating and bloodshed and consequently is punished by banishment
from the company of the immortal gods. The banishment lasts three
myriads of years, either 'three-times countless years' or thirty
thousand years. In either case he must atone for his sin by being
repeatedly reincarnated into all the different living forms of the
different orders of nature. Elsewhere he says: 'For before now I have
been at some time boy and girl, bush, bird, and a mute fish in the
sea' (fr. B 117). Empedocles then, has already suffered this nearly
endless cycle of reincarnations having been seemingly hurled down to
the lowest rung of the scale of nature but has worked his way up, has
been purified at last and, as he tells us in fr. B. 112, is himself
now an immortal god. There are others too numbered among the daimôns,
those who 'at the end … come among men on earth as prophets,
minstrels, physicians and leaders, and from these they arise as gods,
highest in honour.' (fr. 146). It is not entirely clear whether we are
meant to imagine the daimôns as an entirely separate class of blessed
being with a different creation and a different fate from ourselves,
the ordinary mortals, or as people who began as ordinary mortals but
who, having purified themselves and having achieved perfection, are
now approaching divine status. The latter reading would perhaps make
more sense in terms of Empedocles' didactic ethical mission: if we are
all potentially perfectable, then his purificatory teaching becomes
much more crucial. Empedocles himself, as his life shows, has achieved
all four of the states that qualify the daimôns for immortality, he is
a prophet, a minstrel, a physician and a leader, and can now pass on
his wisdom to those on earth whom he is about to leave behind when he
rejoins the company of the immortals. As can be seen from the
description above, there are strong similarities between Empedocles
and the teachings of Pythagoras on the transmigration of souls.
Empedocles is clearly a follower of Pythagoras, in his ethics and
psychology at least, and shares his vegetarianism and pacifism.
b. Meat-eating and sin
Slaughter and meat-eating are the most terrible of sins, indeed for
him animal slaughter is murder and meat-eating is cannibalism, as
shown by fr. 137:
The father will lift up his dear son in changed form, and blind
fool, as he prays he will slay him, and those who take part in the
sacrifice bring the victim as he pleads. But the father, deaf to his
cries, slays him in his house and prepares an evil feast. In the same
way son seizes father, and children their mother, and having bereaved
them of life devour the flesh of those they love.
Here, in terms reminiscent of Hesiod's description of the coming
horrors of the Iron Age in Works and Days, we see the appalling
consequences of meat-eating: murder, cannibalism, the destruction of
whole families and, by extrapolation, of entire societies. This is a
radical position in both political and religious terms. Plato's
Protagoras in the eponymous dialogue can simply assume that all men
agree that warfare is 'a fine and noble thing'. For Empedocles
warfare, one fundamental plank of the Greek city state, is the most
appalling of all evils and is punished by the immortals by hurling the
perpetrators not only out of their society, but out of human society
and even down to the level of the lowest forms of nature.
c. Theology
In religious terms as well traditional animal sacrifice, another
fundamental basis of Greek society, becomes the grossest impiety of
all. A probably apocryphal tale reports that Empedocles sacrificed an
ox made of honey and meal at Olympia, the religious heart of Greece: a
pointed act of criticism of traditional religion. Further evidence for
his radical theology lies in his appropriation of the names of the
Olympian gods for his roots of matter and his cosmic forces.
Implicitly he argues that the Olympian gods came into being as
misinterpretations of the natural world: the real 'gods' are the
elements of nature and the cosmic forces that direct their endless
evolutionary cycle. His religious and ethical teachings then are of
purification of the soul in an attempt to achieve perfection and unity
with perfect Love. He pictures a time in the past, a sort of golden
age, when this universal harmony existed, fr. B 128:
They did not have Ares as god or Kydoimos, nor king Zeus, nor
Kronos, nor Poseidon but queen Kypris [Love]. Her they propitiated
with holy images and painted animal figures, with perfumes of subtle
fragrance and offerings of distilled myrrh and sweet-smelling
frankincense, and pouring on the earth libations of golden honey.
Their altar was not drenched by the unspeakable slaughter of bulls,
but this was the greatest defilement among men – to bereave of life
and eat noble limbs.
fr. B 130:
All creatures, both animals and birds, were tame and gentle to
men, and bright was the flame of their friendship.
Originally people worshipped only one god, Love, and this resulted in
universal harmony, even between humans and animals. Implicitly the
argument runs that the worship of the Olympian gods he mentions, Ares,
Zeus and Poseidon, and the sacrifices they demand have destroyed this
harmony, resulting in worship also of Kydoimos, the personification of
the noise of battle. Traditional religion with their sacrificial
slaughter and meat-eating have had a degrading effect on society.
d. Physics and theology
As I say above it now seems very likely that Empedocles discussed
purificatory topics early on in his poem On Nature. Unlike for modern
rationalists then, it seems that for Empedocles there was no
fundamental divide between physics and religion. Indeed as can be seen
from fr. B 115 above the sin of the daimôn results in an expiatory
journey of the soul not only through the different orders of living
creatures but through the physical elements of the cosmos. Empedocles
draws a close analogy between the cycle of the soul and the cycle of
the cosmos itself. This is a hallmark of his work: frequently he uses
the same language whether describing the journey of the soul or the
cycle of the elements. Sometimes in the Strasbourg fragments the
description of the elements coming together under the power of Love is
rendered as 'we are coming together'. His sin, in fr. 115, he
describes as resulting from having put his trust in raving Strife, one
of his cosmic forces, and conversely in fr. 130 we see the people of
the golden age worshipping the other cosmic force, Love. Clearly there
is more than a little cross-over between physics and ethics for
Empedocles. How this works in detail is hard to pin down but perhaps
the best reading we can give of On Natureis that it represents the
detailed expression of the cycle of the soul at the level of the
entire cosmos. The endless evolutionary cycling of the elements is in
fact part of the cycle of the soul.
(Note: all translations are by M. R. Wright except those of the
Strasbourg fragments which are by O. Primavesi and A. Martin.)
6. References and Further Reading
a. Texts and Commentaries
* Bollack, J. Empédocle, (Paris, 1965-9), 4 vols. With Greek text,
French translation, and commentary.
* Diels, H. and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin,
1952), vol. 1, ch. 31, 276-375. Greek text of both fragments (B) and
testimonia (A) with German translation.
* Wright, M. R. (2nd edn.), Empedocles the Extant Fragments
(London, 1995). With Greek text, English translation, introduction and
commentary.
* Inwood, B. The Poem of Empedocles (Toronto, 1992). With Greek
text, facing English translation and introduction.
* Martin, A. and O. Primavesi, L'Empédocle de Strasbourg: (P.
Strasb. gr. Inv. 1665-1666) (Berlin/Strasbourg, 1998). With Greek
text, French and English translations, introduction, commentary, and
English summary.
b. Studies
* Gemelli Marciano, L. "Le 'demonologie' empedoclee: problemi di
metodo e altro", Aevum Antiquum 1 (2003), 205-35
* Gemelli Marciano, L. Le metamorfosi della tradizione: mutamenti
de significato e neologismi nel Peri physeos di Empedocle (Bari,
1999).
* Guthrie, W.K.C. A History of Greek Philosophy vol. 2 (Cambridge
1969), ch. 3
* Kingsley, P. Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic: Empedocles
and Pythagorean Tradition (Oxford, 1995)
* Kirk, G. S. and J.E. Raven, M. Schofield, (2nd edn.), The
Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge 1983), ch. 10.
* O'Brien, D. Empedocles' Cosmic Cycle (Cambridge, 1969)
* Osborne, C. 'Empedocles recycled', Classical Quarterly NS 37 (1987), 24-50
* Osbourne, C. 'Rummaging in the recycling bins of Upper Egypt: a
discussion of A. Martin and O. Primavesi, ZL' Empédocle de
Strasbourg', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 18 (Oxford, 2000),
329-56.
* Sedley, D. N. 'Empedocles' life cycles', in Proceedings of the
Symposium Tertium Mykonense (forthcoming, 2004)
* Solmsen, F. 'Love and Strife in Empedocles' cosmology',
Phronesis 10 (1965), 123-45; repr. in R.E. Allen and D.J. Furley
(eds), Studies in Presocratic Philosophy, (London, 1975), vol. 2,
221-64.
* Trépanier, S. 'Empedocles on the ultimate symmetry of the
world', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 24 (2003), 1-57
* Trépanier, S. Empedocles: An Interpretation (London, 2004)
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