CHAPTER V EMPEDOKLES OF AKRAGAS · 1

97. The belief that all things are one was common to the philosophers we have hitherto studied; but now Parmenides has shown that, if this one thing really is, we must give up the idea that it can take different forms. The senses, which present to us a world of change and multiplicity, are deceitful. From this there was no escape; the time was still to come when men would seek the unity of the world in something which, from its very nature, the senses could never perceive.

We find, accordingly, that from the time of Parmenides to that of Plato, all thinkers in whose hands philosophy made real progress abandoned the monistic hypothesis. Those who still held by it adopted a critical attitude, and confined themselves to a defence of the theory of Parmenides against the new views. Others taught the doctrine of Herakleitos in an exaggerated form; some continued to expound the systems of the early Milesians. This, of course, showed want of insight; but even those thinkers who saw that Parmenides could not be left unanswered, were by no means equal to their predecessors in power and thoroughness. The corporealist hypothesis had 228proved itself unable to bear the weight of a monistic structure; but a thorough-going pluralism such as the atomic theory might have some value, if not as a final explanation of the world, yet at least as an intelligible view of a part of it. Any pluralism, on the other hand, which, like that of Empedokles and Anaxagoras, stops short of the atoms, will achieve no permanent result, however many may be the brilliant aperçus which it embodies. It will remain an attempt to reconcile two things that cannot be reconciled, and may always, therefore, be developed into contradictions and paradoxes.

98. Empedokles was a citizen of Akragas in Sicily, and his father’s name, according to the best accounts, was Meton.[501] His grandfather, also called Empedokles, had won a victory in the horse-race at Olympia in Ol. LXXI. (496-95 B.C.),[502] and Apollodoros fixed the floruit of Empedokles himself in Ol. LXXXIV. 1 (444-43 B.C.). This is the date of the foundation of Thourioi; and it appears from the quotation in Diogenes that the almost contemporary biographer, Glaukos of Rhegion,[503] said Empedokles visited the 229new city shortly after its foundation. But we are in no way bound to believe that he was just forty years old at the time of the event in his life which can most easily be dated. That is the assumption made by Apollodoros; but there are reasons for thinking that his date is too late by some eight or ten years.[504] It is, indeed, most likely that Empedokles did not go to Thourioi till after his banishment from Akragas, and he may well have been more than forty years old when that happened. All, therefore, we can be said to know of his date is, that his grandfather was still alive in 496 B.C.; that he himself was active at Akragas after 472, the date of Theron’s death; and that he died later than 444.

Even these indications are enough to show that he must have been a boy in the reign of Theron, the tyrant who co-operated with Gelon of Syracuse in the repulse of the Carthaginians from Himera. His son and successor, Thrasydaios, was a man of another stamp. Before his accession to the throne of Akragas, he had ruled in his father’s name at Himera, and completely estranged the affections of its inhabitants. Theron died in 472 B.C., and Thrasydaios at once displayed all the vices and follies usual in the second holder of a usurped dominion. After a disastrous war with Hieron of Syracuse, he was driven out; and Akragas enjoyed a free government till it 230fell before the Carthaginians more than half a century later.[505]

99. In the political events of the next few years, Empedokles certainly played an important part; but our information on the subject is of a very curious kind. The Sicilian historian Timaios told one or two stories about him, which are obviously genuine traditions picked up about a hundred and fifty years afterwards; but, like all popular traditions, they are a little confused. The picturesque incidents are remembered, but the essential parts of the story are dropped. Still, we may be thankful that the “collector of old wives’ tales,”[506] as sneering critics called him, has enabled us to measure the historical importance of Empedokles for ourselves by showing us how he was pictured by the great-grandchildren of his contemporaries.

We read, then,[507] that once he was invited to sup with one of the “rulers.” Tradition delights in such vague titles. “Supper was well advanced, but no wine was brought in. The rest of the company said nothing, but Empedokles was righteously indignant, and insisted on wine being served. The host, however, said he was waiting for the serjeant of the Council. When that official arrived, he was appointed ruler of the feast. The host, of course, appointed him. Thereupon he began to give hints of an incipient tyranny. He ordered the company either to drink or have the wine poured over their heads. At the time, Empedokles said nothing; but next day he led both 231of them before the court, and had them condemned and put to death—both the man who asked him to supper, and the ruler of the feast.[508] This was the beginning of his political career.” The next tale is that Empedokles prevented the Council from granting his friend Akron a piece of land for a family sepulchre on the ground of his eminence in medicine, and supported his objection by a punning epigram.[509] Lastly, he broke up the assembly of the Thousand—perhaps some oligarchical association or club.[510] It may have been for this that he was offered the kingship, which Aristotle tells us he refused.[511] At any rate, we see that Empedokles was the great democratic leader at Akragas in those days, though we have no clear knowledge of what he did.

100. But there is another side to his public character which Timaios found it hard to reconcile with his political views. He claimed to be a god, and to receive the homage of his fellow-citizens in that capacity. The truth is, Empedokles was not a mere statesman; he had a good deal of the “medicine-man” about him. According to Satyros,[512] Gorgias affirmed that he had 232been present when his master was performing sorceries. We can see what this means from the fragments of the Purifications. Empedokles was a preacher of the new religion which sought to secure release from the “wheel of birth” by purity and abstinence; but it is not quite certain to which form of it he adhered. On the one hand, Orphicism seems to have been strong at Akragas in the days of Theron, and there are even some verbal coincidences between the poems of Empedokles and the Orphicising Odes which Pindar addressed to that prince.[513] There are also some points of similarity between the Rhapsodic Theogony, as we know it from Damaskios, and certain fragments of Empedokles, though the importance of these has been exaggerated.[514] On the other hand, there is no reason to doubt the statement of Ammonios that fr. 134 refers to Apollo;[515] and, if that is so, it would point to his having been an adherent of the Ionic form of the mystic doctrine, as we have seen (§ 39) that Pythagoras was. Further, Timaios already knew the story that he had been expelled from the Pythagorean Order for “stealing discourses,”[516] and it is probable on the whole that fr. 129 refers to Pythagoras.[517] It would be very hazardous to dogmatise on this subject; but it seems most likely that Empedokles had been influenced by Orphic ideas in his youth, and that, in later life, he preached a form of Pythagoreanism which 233was not considered orthodox by the heads of the Society. In any case, it seems far more probable that his political and scientific activity belong to the same period of his life, and that he only became a wandering prophet after his banishment, than that his scientific work belonged to his later days when he was a solitary exile.[518]

We hear of a number of marvels performed by Empedokles, which are for the most part nothing but inferences from his writings. Timaios told how he weakened the force of the etesian winds by hanging bags of asses’ skins on the trees to catch them. He had certainly said, in his exaggerated way, that the knowledge of science as taught by him would enable his disciples to control the winds (fr. 111); and this, along with the fabled windbags of Aiolos, is enough to account for the tale.[519] We are also told how he brought back to life a woman who had been breathless and pulseless for thirty days. The verse where he asserts that his teaching will enable Pausanias to bring the dead back from Hades (fr. 111) shows how this story may have arisen.[520] Again, we hear that he sweetened the pestilent marsh between Selinous and the sea by diverting the rivers Hypsas and Selinos into it. We know from coins that this purification 234of the marshes actually took place, but we may doubt whether it was attributed to Empedokles till a later time.[521]

101. Aristotle said that Empedokles was the inventor of Rhetoric;[522] and Galen made him the founder of the Italian school of Medicine, which he puts on a level with those of Kos and Knidos.[523] Both these statements must be considered in connexion with his political and scientific activity. It seems to be certain that Gorgias was his disciple in physics and medicine, and some of the peculiarities which marked his style are to be found in the poems of Empedokles.[524] It is not to be supposed, of course, that Empedokles wrote a formal treatise on Rhetoric; but it is in every way probable, and in accordance with his character, that the speeches, of which he must have made many, were marked by that euphuism which Gorgias introduced to Athens at a later date, and which gave rise to the idea of an artistic prose. The influence of Empedokles on the development of medicine was, however, far more important, as it affected not only medicine itself, but through it, the whole tendency of scientific and philosophical thinking. It has been said that Empedokles had no successors,[525] and the remark is 235true if we confine ourselves strictly to philosophy. On the other hand, the medical school which he founded was still living in the days of Plato, and it had considerable influence on him, and still more on Aristotle.[526] Its fundamental doctrine was the identification of the four elements with the hot and the cold, the moist and the dry. It also held that we breathe through all the pores of the body, and that the act of respiration is closely connected with the motion of the blood. The heart, not the brain, was regarded as the organ of consciousness.[527] A more external characteristic of the medicine taught by the followers of Empedokles is that they still clung to ideas of a magical nature. A protest against this by a member of the Koan school has been preserved. He refers to them as “magicians and purifiers and charlatans and quacks, who profess to be very religious.”[528] Though there is some truth in this, it hardly does justice to the great advances in physiology that were due to the Sicilian school.

102. In the biography of Empedokles, we hear very little of his theory of nature. The only hints we get are some statements about his teachers. Alkidamas, who had good opportunities of knowing, made him a 236fellow-student of Zeno under Parmenides. That is both possible and likely. Theophrastos too made him a follower and imitator of Parmenides. But the further statement that he had “heard” Pythagoras cannot be right. Probably Alkidamas said “Pythagoreans.”[529]

Some writers hold that certain parts of the system of Empedokles, in particular the theory of pores and effluvia (§ 118), which do not seem to follow very naturally from his own principles, were due to the influence of Leukippos.[530] This, however, is not necessarily the case. We know that Alkmaion (§ 96) spoke of “pores” in connexion with sensation, and it may equally well be from him that Empedokles got the theory. It may be added that this is more in accordance with the history of certain other physiological views which are common to Alkmaion and the later Ionian philosophers. We can generally see that those reached Ionia through the medical school which Empedokles founded.[531]

103. We are told that Empedokles leapt into the crater of Etna that he might be deemed a god. This appears to be a malicious version[532] of a tale set on foot by his adherents that he had been snatched up to heaven in the night.[533] Both stories would easily get 237accepted; for there was no local tradition. Empedokles did not die in Sicily, but in the Peloponnese, or, perhaps, at Thourioi. He had gone to Olympia to have his religious poem recited to the Hellenes; his enemies were able to prevent his return, and he was seen in Sicily no more.[534]

104. Empedokles was the second philosopher to expound his system in verse, if we leave the satirist Xenophanes out of account. He was also the last among the Greeks; for the forged Pythagorean poems may be neglected.[535] Lucretius imitates Empedokles in this, just as Empedokles imitated Parmenides. Of course, the poetical imagery creates a difficulty for the interpreter; but it would be wrong to make too much of it. It cannot be said that it is harder to extract the philosophical kernel from the verses of Empedokles than from the prose of Herakleitos.

There is some divergence of opinion as to the poetical merit of Empedokles. The panegyric of Lucretius is well known.[536] Aristotle says in one place that Empedokles and Homer have nothing in common but the metre; in another, that Empedokles was “most Homeric.”[537] To my mind, there can be no question that he was a genuine poet, far more so than Parmenides. No one doubts nowadays that Lucretius was one, and Empedokles really resembles him very closely.

238105. We have more abundant remains of Empedokles than of any other early Greek philosopher. If we may trust our manuscripts of Diogenes and of Souidas, the librarians of Alexandria estimated the Poem on Nature and the Purifications together as 5000 verses, of which about 2000 belonged to the former work.[538] Diels gives about 350 verses and parts of verses from the cosmological poem, or not a fifth of the whole. It is important to remember that, even in this favourable instance, so much has been lost. Besides the two poems, the Alexandrian scholars possessed a prose work of 600 lines on medicine ascribed to Empedokles. The tragedies and other poems which were sometimes attributed to him seem really to belong to a younger writer of the same name, who is said by Souidas to have been his grandson.[539]

I give the remains as they are arranged by Diels:—

And do thou give ear, Pausanias, son of Anchitos the wise!

For straitened are the powers that are spread over their bodily parts, and many are the woes that burst in on them and 239blunt the edge of their careful thoughts! They behold but a brief span of a life that is no life,[540] and, doomed to swift death, are borne up and fly off like smoke. Each is convinced of that alone which he had chanced upon as he is 5 hurried to and fro, and idly boasts he has found the whole. So hardly can these things be seen by the eyes or heard by the ears of men, so hardly grasped by their mind! Thou,[541] then, since thou hast found thy way hither, shalt learn no more than mortal mind hath power. R. P. 163.

... to keep within thy dumb heart.

But, O ye gods, turn aside from my tongue the madness of those men.[542] Hallow my lips and make a pure stream flow from them! And thee, much-wooed, white-armed Virgin Muse, do I beseech that I may hear what is lawful for the children of a day! Speed me on my way from the abode of 5 Holiness and drive my willing car! Thee shall no garlands of glory and honour at the hands of mortals constrain to lift them from the ground, on condition of speaking in thy pride beyond that which is lawful and right, and so to gain a seat upon the heights of wisdom.

Go to now, consider with all thy powers in what way each thing is clear. Hold not thy sight in greater credit as 10 compared with thy hearing, nor value thy resounding ear above the clear instructions of thy tongue;[543] and do not withhold thy confidence in any of thy other bodily parts by which there is an opening for understanding,[544] but consider everything in the way it is clear. R. P. 163.

But it is ever the way of low minds to disbelieve their betters. Do thou learn as the sure testimonies of my Muse bid thee, dividing the argument in thy heart.[545]

Hear first the four roots of all things: shining Zeus, life-bringing Hera, Aidoneus, and Nestis whose tear-drops are a well-spring to mortals. R. P. 164.[546]

... uncreated.

And I shall tell thee another thing. There is no coming into being of aught that perishes, nor any end for it in baneful death; but only mingling and change of what has been mingled. Coming into being is but a name given to these by men. R. P. 165.

But, when the elements have been mingled in the fashion of a man and come to the light of day, or in the fashion of the race of wild beasts or plants or birds, then men say that these come into being; and when they are separated, they call that woeful death. They call it not aright; but I too follow 5 the custom, and call it so myself.

Avenging death.

Fools!—for they have no far-reaching thoughts—who deem that what before was not comes into being, or that 241aught can perish and be utterly destroyed. For it cannot be that aught can arise from what in no way is, and it is impossible and unheard of that what is should perish; for it 5 will always be, wherever one may keep putting it. R. P. 165 a.

And in the All there is naught empty and naught too full.

In the All there is naught empty. Whence, then, could aught come to increase it?