Empedocles

c. 495 - c. 435 BCE · Greek (Sicilian, of Acragas) · Presocratic natural philosophy, cosmology, eschatology, didactic epic poetry

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.

Born in Acragas on the coast of Sicily, Empedocles refused the kingship of his city on democratic grounds — then, in the legend that clung to him for centuries, leaped into Mount Etna to vanish as a god. In Homeric hexameters he composed a didactic epic fusing natural science, cosmology, and eschatology into one teaching.

Topics Empedocles addresses

the four roots (rhizomata)
Love and Strife (Philotes and Neikos)
the cosmic cycle
the Sphairos
mixing and separation
the transmigrating daimon
the long exile through mortal forms
I am a deathless god (B 112)
the fall from divinity (B 115)
the single poem hypothesis
the prohibition of bloodshed
vegetarianism and bloodless sacrifice
pores and effluences
the Parmenidean inheritance
response to Parmenides
the rescue of plurality
zoogony and the history of life
embryology and generation
the proem to Pausanias
divine and mortal knowledge
phronesis in the elements
the Strasbourg papyrus
rational theology
Pythagorean influence

Questions to put to Empedocles

The Four Roots and the Cosmic Cycle

What do you mean when you say there is no birth or death, only mixing and separation?
What are the four roots, and why do you call them roots rather than elements?
How do Love and Strife move the roots to mix and separate?
What is the Sphairos, and what happens when Love achieves complete unity?
How does the cosmic cycle alternate between the rule of Love and the rule of Strife?
Where in the cycle do we live, and why do mortal things exist here but not in the Sphairos?

Parmenides and the Rescue of Plurality

How can you accept Parmenides' axioms on being while still allowing for change and plurality?
What's the difference between your mixing and separation and real coming-to-be from nothing?
Why do you think Parmenides was wrong to deny motion and plurality?
How do the six everlasting principles satisfy the Eleatic demand that what-is cannot perish?
Are you transforming Parmenides' teaching or continuing it?

The Daimon and the Long Exile

What is the daimon, and how is it different from a mortal soul?
Why was the daimon banished from the company of the blessed?
How can you say you've been a boy, a girl, a bush, a bird, and a fish?
What does it mean to wander through thirty thousand seasons in mortal bodies?
How does the daimon's fall relate to the cosmic cycle of Love and Strife?
Can the daimon return to divine status, and if so, how?

Bloodshed, Sacrifice, and the Prohibition of Flesh

Why do you forbid the killing of animals for food or sacrifice?
How is the animal I would kill my own kin or even my father?
What was the Golden Age of Aphrodite when no altar was wet with blood?
Why do you call animal sacrifice an unspeakable slaughter?
What should we offer the gods instead of the blood of bulls?
How does abstaining from flesh help the daimon return to the blessed?

I Am a Deathless God

What do you mean when you say you are an immortal god, no longer mortal?
How can you claim divinity while also describing yourself as a fugitive from the gods?
Are you speaking as the daimon at the apex of its purification, or as something else?
Why do you address the friends from Acragas as a god walking among them?
What makes you worthy of the honors you say are fitting for you?

One Poem or Two

Did you write one continuous poem or two separate works on physics and purification?
How do the teachings on the roots and the teachings on the daimon fit together?
Why do later authors cite your work under different titles?
What did you intend Pausanias to learn from the whole teaching?

Converse with Empedocles on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in the surviving fragments and reports of Empedocles, cited to the page.