Chapter 2. EMPEDOCLES
(484-424 B.C.)
[
51]
Empedocles was, according to Hippobotus,
the son of Meton and grandson of Empedocles, and was a native of
Agrigentum. This is confirmed by Timaeus in the fifteenth book of
his
Histories, and he adds that Empedocles, the
poet's grandfather, had been a man of distinction. Hermippus also
agrees with Timaeus. So, too, Heraclides, in his treatise
On Diseases,
1 says that he
was of an illustrious family, his grandfather having kept
racehorses. Eratosthenes also in his
Olympic
Victories records, on the authority of Aristotle, that the
father of Meton was a victor in the 71st Olympiad.
2
[
52]
The grammarian Apollodorus in his
Chronology tells us that
He was the son of
Meton, and Glaucus says he went to Thurii, just then founded.
3
Then farther on he
adds :
Those who relate that, being exiled from his home, he
went to Syracuse and fought in their ranks against the Athenians
seem, in my judgement at least, to be completely mistaken. For by
that time either he was no longer living or in extreme old age,
which is inconsistent with the story.
For Aristotle and
Heraclides both affirm that he died at the age of sixty. The victor
with the ridinghorse in the 71st Olympiad was
This man's namesake and grandfather,
so
that Apollodorus in one and the same passage indicates the date as
well as the fact.
[
53]
But Satyrus in his
Lives states that Empedocles was the son of
Exaenetus and himself left a son named Exaenetus, and that in the
same Olympiad Empedocles himself was victorious in the horse-race
and his son in wrestling, or, as Heraclides
4 in his
Epitome has it, in the foot-race. I found
5 in the
Memorabilia of Favorinus a statement that
Empedocles feasted the sacred envoys on a sacrificial ox made of
honey and barley-meal, and that he had a brother named
Callicratides. Telauges, the son of Pythagoras, in his letter to
Philolaus calls Empedocles the son of Archinomus.
[
54]
That he
belonged to Agrigentum in Sicily he himself testifies at the
beginning of his
Purifications6:
My friends, who dwell in the great city
sloping down to yellow Acragas, hard by the citadel.
So much
for his family.
Timaeus in the ninth book of his
Histories says he
was a pupil
of Pythagoras, adding that, having been convicted at that time of
stealing his discourses, he was, like Plato, excluded from taking
part in the discussions of the school ; and further, that Empedocles himself mentions Pythagoras in the lines
7:
And there lived among them a man of superhuman
knowledge, who verily possessed the greatest wealth of wisdom.
Others say that it is to Parmenides that he is here
referring.
[
55]
Neanthes states that down to the time of Philolaus
and Empedocles all Pythagoreans were admitted to the discussions.
But when Empedocles himself made them public property by his poem,
they made a law that they should not be imparted to any poet. He
says the same thing also happened to Plato, for he too was
excommunicated. But which of the Pythagoreans it was who had
Empedocles for a pupil he did not say. For the epistle commonly
attributed to Telauges and the statement that Empedocles was the
pupil of both Hippasus and Brontinus he held to be unworthy of
credence.
Theophrastus affirms that he was an admirer of
Parmenides and imitated him in his verses, for Parmenides too had
published his treatise
On Nature in verse.
[
56]
But
Hermippus's account is that he was an admirer not so much of
Parmenides as of Xenophanes, with whom in fact he lived and whose
writing of poetry he imitated, and that his meeting with the
Pythagoreans was subsequent. Alcidamas tells us in his treatise on
Physics that Zeno and Empedocles were pupils of
Parmenides about the same time, that afterwards they left him, and
that, while Zeno framed his own system, Empedocles became the pupil
of Anaxagoras and Pythagoras,
emulating the
latter in dignity of life and bearing, and the former in his
physical investigations.
[
57]
Aristotle in his
Sophist calls Empedocles the inventor of rhetoric
as Zeno of dialectic. In his treatise
On Poets
he says that Empedocles was of Homer's school and powerful in
diction, being great in metaphors and in the use of all other
poetical devices. He also says that he wrote other poems, in
particular the invasion of Xerxes and a hymn to Apollo, which a
sister of his (or, according to Hieronymus, his daughter) afterwards
burnt. The hymn she destroyed unintentionally, but the poem on the
Persian war deliberately, because it was unfinished.
[
58]
And in general
terms he says he wrote both tragedies and political discourses. But
Heraclides, the son of Sarapion, attributes the tragedies to a
different author. Hieronymus declares that he had come across
forty-three of these plays, while Neanthes tells us that Empedocles
wrote these tragedies in his youth, and that he, Neanthes, was
acquainted with seven of them.
Satyrus in his
Lives says that he was also a physician and an
excellent orator : at all events Gorgias of Leontini, a man
pre-eminent in oratory and the author of a treatise on the art, had
been his pupil. Of Gorgias Apollodorus says in his
Chronology that he lived to be one hundred and
nine.
[
59]
Satyrus quotes this same Gorgias as saying that he himself was
present when Empedocles performed magical feats. Nay more : he
contends that Empedocles in his poems lays claim to this power and
to much besides when he says
8:
And thou shalt learn all the drugs that are a defence
to ward off ills and old age, since for thee alone shall I accomplish all this. Thou shalt arrest the violence of the unwearied
winds that arise and sweep the earth, laying waste the cornfields
with their blasts ; and again, if thou so will, thou shalt call back
winds in requital. Thou shalt make after the dark rain a seasonable
drought for men, and again after the summer drought thou shalt cause
tree-nourishing streams to pour from the sky. Thou shalt bring back
from Hades a dead man's strength.
[
60]
Timaeus also in the
eighteenth
9book of his
Histories remarks that Empedocles has been
admired on many grounds. For instance, when the etesian winds once
began to blow violently and to damage the crops, he ordered asses to
be flayed and bags to be made of their skin. These he stretched out
here and there on the hills and headlands to catch the wind and,
because this checked the wind, he was called the "wind-stayer."
Heraclides in his book
On Diseases10 says that he furnished Pausanias with the facts
about the woman in a trance. This Pausanias, according to Aristippus
and Satyrus, was his bosom-friend, to whom he dedicated his poem
On Nature thus
11:
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61]
Give ear, Pausanias, thou son of Anchitus the
wise!
Moreover he wrote an epigram upon him
12:
The physician Pausanias, rightly so
named, son of Anchitus, descendant of Asclepius, was born and bred
at Gela. Many a wight pining in fell torments did he bring back from
Persephone's inmost shrine.
At all events Heraclides
testifies that the case of
the woman in a
trance was such that for thirty days he kept her body without
pulsation though she never breathed ; and for that reason Heraclides
called him not merely a physician but a diviner as well, deriving
the titles from the following lines also
13:
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My friends, who dwell in the grcat city sloping
down to yellow Acragas, hard by the citadel, busied with goodly
works, all hail! I go about among you an immortal god, no more a
mortal, so honoured of all, as is meet, crowned with fillets and
flowery garlands. Straightway as soon as I enter with these, men and
women, into flourishing towns, I am reverenced and tens of thousands
follow, to learn where is the path which leads to welfare, some
desirous of oracles, others suffering from all kinds of diseases,
desiring to hear a message of healing.
[
63]
Timaeus explains that
he called Agrigentum great, inasmuch as it had 800,000
inhabitants.
14 Hence Empedocles, he continues, speaking of
their luxury, said, "The Agrigentines live delicately as if tomorrow they would die, but they build their houses well as if they
thought they would live for ever."
It is said that Cleomenes
the rhapsode recited this very poem, the
Purifications, at Olympia
15: so Favorinus in his
Memorabilia. Aristotle too declares him to have
been a champion of freedom and averse to rule of every kind, seeing
that, as Xanthus relates
in his account of him,
he declined the kingship when it was offered to him, obviously
because he preferred a frugal life.
[
64]
With this Timaeus agrees, at the
same time giving the reason why Empedocles favoured democracy,
namely, that, having been invited to dine with one of the
magistrates, when the dinner had gone on some time and no wine was
put on the table, though the other guests kept quiet, he, becoming
indignant, ordered wine to be brought. Then the host confessed that
he was waiting for the servant of the senate to appear. When he came
he was made master of the revels, clearly by the arrangement of the
host, whose design of making himself tyrant was but thinly veiled,
for he ordered the guests either to drink wine or have it poured
over their heads. For the time being Empedocles was reduced to
silence ; the next day he impeached both of them, the host and the
master of the revels, and secured their condemnation and execution.
This, then, was the beginning of his political career.
[
65]
Again,
when Acron the physician asked the council for a site on which to
build a monument to his father, who had been eminent among
physicians, Empedocles came forward and forbade it in a speech where
he enlarged upon equality and in particular put the following
question : "But what inscription shall we put upon it? Shall it be
this?
Acron the eminent physician of Agrigentum, son of
Acros, is buried beneath the steep eminence of his most eminent
native city?"
16
Others give as the second line :
Is laid in
an exalted tomb on a most exalted peak. Some attribute this couplet
to Simonides.
[
66]
Subsequently Empedocles broke up
the assembly of the Thousand three years after it had been set up,
which proves not only that he was wealthy but that he favoured the
popular cause. At all events Timaeus in his eleventh and twelfth
books (for he mentions him more than once) states that he seems to
have held opposite views when in public life and when writing
poetry.
17 In some passages one may see that he is
boastful and selfish. At any rate these are his words :
18
All hail! I go about among you an
immortal god, no more a mortal, etc.
At the time when he
visited Olympia he demanded an excessive deference, so that never
was anyone so talked about in gatherings of friends as Empedocles.
[
67]
Subsequently, however, when Agrigentum came to regret
him, the descendants of his personal enemies opposed his return home
; and this was why he went to Peloponnesus, where he died. Nor did
Timon let even him alone, but fastens upon him in these words :
19
Empedocles, too, mouthing tawdry
verses ; to all that had independent force, he gave a separate
existence ; and the principles he chose need others to explain
them.
As to his death different accounts are given.
Thus Heraclides,
20 after telling the story
of the woman in a trance, how that Empedocles became famous because
he had sent away the dead woman alive, goes on to say that he was
offering a sacrifice close to the field of Peisianax. Some of his
friends had been invited to the sacrifice, including Pausanias.
[
68]
Then, after the feast, the remainder of the company dispersed and
retired to rest, some under the trees in the adjoining field, others
wherever they chose, while Empedocles himself remained on the spot
where he had reclined at table. At daybreak all got up, and he was
the only one missing. A search was made, and they questioned the
servants, who said they did not know where he was. Thereupon someone
said that in the middle of the night he heard an exceedingly loud
voice calling Empedocles. Then he got up and beheld a light in the
heavens and a glitter of lamps, but nothing else. His hearers were
amazed at what had occurred, and Pausanias came down and sent people
to search for him. But later he bade them take no further trouble,
for things beyond expectation had happened to him, and it was their
duty to sacrifice to him since he was now a god.
[
69]
Hermippus
tells us that Empedocles cured Panthea, a woman of Agrigentum, who
had been given up by the physicians, and this was why he was
offering sacrifice, and that those invited were about eighty in
number. Hippobotus, again, asserts that, when he got up, he set out
on his way to Etna ; then, when he had reached it, he plunged into
the fiery craters and disappeared, his intention being to confirm
the report that he had become a god. Afterwards the truth was known,
because
one of his slippers was thrown up in
the flames ; it had been his custom to wear slippers of bronze. To
this story Pausanias is made (by Heraclides) to take exception.
21
[
70]
Diodorus of Ephesus, when writing of
Anaximander, declares that Empedocles emulated him, displaying
theatrical arrogance and wearing stately robes. We are told that the
people of Selinus suffered from pestilence owing to the noisome
smells from the river hard by, so that the citizens themselves
perished and their women died in childbirth, that Empedocles
conceived the plan of bringing two neighbouring rivers to the place
at his own expense, and that by this admixture he sweetened the
waters. When in this way the pestilence had been stayed and the
Selinuntines were feasting on the river bank, Empedocles appeared ;
and the company rose up and worshipped and prayed to him as to a
god. It was then to confirm this belief of theirs that he leapt into
the fire.
[
71]
These stories are contradicted by Timaeus, who expressly
says that he left Sicily for Peloponnesus and never returned at all
; and this is the reason Timaeus gives for the fact that the manner
of his death is unknown. He replies to Heraclides, whom he mentions
by name, in his fourteenth book. Pisianax, he says, was a citizen of
Syracuse and possessed no land at Agrigentum. Further, if such a
story had been in circulation, Pausanias would have set up a
monument to his friend, as to a god, in the form of a statue or
shrine, for he was a wealthy man. "How came he," adds Timaeus, "to
leap into the craters, which he had
never once
mentioned though they were not far off ? He must then have died in
Peloponnesus.
[
72]
It is not at all surprising that his tomb is not found
; the same is true of many other men." After urging some such
arguments Timaeus goes on to say, "But Heraclides is everywhere just
such a collector of absurdities, telling us, for instance, that a
man dropped down to earth from the moon."
Hippobotus assures
us that formerly there was in Agrigentum a statue of Empedocles with
his head covered, and afterwards another with the head uncovered
in front of the Senate House at Rome, which plainly the Romans had
removed to that site. For portrait-statues with inscriptions are
extant even now. Neanthes of Cyzicus, who tells about the
Pythagoreans, relates that, after the death of Meton, the germs of a
tyranny began to show themselves, that then it was Empedocles who
persuaded the Agrigentines to put an end to their factions and
cultivate equality in politics.
[
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Moreover, from his abundant
means he bestowed dowries upon many of the maidens of the city who
had no dowry. No doubt it was the same means that enabled him to don
a purple robe and over it a golden girdle, as Favorinus relates in
his
Memorabilia, and again slippers of bronze
and a Delphic laurel-wreath. He had thick hair, and a train of boy
attendants. He himself was always grave, and kept this gravity of
demeanour unshaken. In such sort would he appear in public ; when
the citizens met him, they recognized in this demeanour the stamp,
as it were, of royalty. But afterwards, as he was going in a
carriage to Messene to attend some festival, he fell and broke his
thigh ; this
brought an illness which caused
his death at the age of seventy-seven. Moreover, his tomb is in
Megara.
[
74]
As to his age, Aristotle's account is different, for
he makes him to have been sixty when he died ; while others make him
one hundred and nine. He flourished in the 84th Olympiad.
22 Demetrius of Troezen in his pamphlet
Against the Sophists said of him, adapting the
words of Homer
23
:
He tied a noose that hung aloft from a tall cornel-tree and
thrust his neck into it, and his soul went down to Hades.
In
the short letter of Telauges which was mentioned above
24 it is stated that by reason of his age he
slipped into the sea and was drowned. Thus and thus much of his
death.
There is an epigram of my own on him in my
Pammetros in a satirical vein, as follows
25 :
[
75]
Thou, Empedocles, didst cleanse thy body with nimble flame, fire
didst thou drink from everlasting bowls.
26 I will not say
that of thine own will thou didst hurl thyself into the stream of
Etna ; thou didst fall in against thy will when thou wouldst fain
not have been found out.
And another
27 :
Verily there
is a tale about the death of Empedocles, how that once he fell from
a carriage and broke his right thigh. But if he leapt into the bowls
of fire and so took a draught of life, how was it that his tomb was
shown still in Megara ?
[
76]
His doctrines were as follows, that
there are four elements, fire, water, earth and air, besides
friendship by which these are united, and strife by which they are
separated. These are his words
28 :
Shining Zeus and life-bringing Hera, Aidoneus and
Nestis, who lets flow from her tears the source of mortal life,
where by Zeus he means fire, by Hera earth, by Aidoneus air, and
by Nestis water.
"And their continuous change," he says,
"never ceases,"
29 as if this ordering
of things were eternal. At all events he goes on
30 :
At one time all things uniting in one through
Love, at another each carried in a different direction through the
hatred born of strife.
[
77]
The sun he calls a vast collection of
fire and larger than the moon ; the moon, he says, is of the shape
of a quoit, and the heaven itself crystalline. The soul, again,
assumes all the various forms of animals and plants. At any rate he
says
31 :
Before now I was born a
boy and a maid, a bush and a bird, and a dumb fish leaping out of
the sea.
His poems
On Nature and
Purifications run to 5000 lines, his
Discourse on Medicine to 600. Of the tragedies we
have spoken above.