The father lifteth for the stroke of death His own dear son within a changed form. And slits his throat for sacrifice with prayers — A blinded fool! But the poor victims press, Imploring their destroyers. Yet not one But still is deaf to piteous moan and wail. Each slits the throat and in his halls prepares A horrible repast. Thus too the son Seizes the father, children the mother seize. And reave of life and eath their own dear flesh.
Drawing the soul as water with the bronze.
139- ^ oijit' on ov irpocrdev joic SLoikecre vrjXeks ^ff-o-Pt TtpXv (T^erXt' ipya ^opa<i irepl ^eiXetn [jiTjTLcracrdai,.
Ah woe is me! that never a pitiless day Destroyed me long ago, ere yet my lips Did meditate this feeding's monstrous crime!
Withhold your hands from leaves of Phoebus' tree!
141. SaXoi, irdvhaXoi, tcudfioav diro j^ei/aas ex^crOai.
Ye wretched, O ye altogether wretched, Your hands from beans withhold!
Sin.
ITOLVOV ].
Neither roofed halls of segis-holding Zeus Delight it, nor dire Hecate's venging house.
143- Kpr]vd(i)v diro irivre. rafiovr [ei'] drapii ^(aXKcDt...Scooping from fountains five with lasting bronze.
O fast from evil-doing.
Since wildered by your evil-doings huge, ' Ne'er shall ye free your life from heavy pains.
The Progression of Rebirth. 146.
61$ Se TcXos [idvTa? re koX vfiuoiroXoi koi LTjrpot Kal irpofioi dvOpcmoLO-iv itn^dovioun iriKovTOJi. ev6ev dva^XaaTovtri 6eol TifirjurL ^cpurroi.
And seers at last, and singers of high hymns, Physicians sage, and chiefs o'er earth-born men Shall they become, whence germinate the gods. The excellent in honors.
147dOavaroi^ dWoiariv ofiearioi avTorpdire^oi, cvj/tes dvSpeuav dxeuv, diroKhrjpoi, dreipei^.
At hearth and feast companioned with the Jmmortals, From human pains and wasting eld immune.
Last Echoes of a Song Hfilf Lost. 148.
The cloud-collecting, ISO. iroXvatftarov -^Trap.
Evening, the day's old age.
IS3.
The belly.
iSSa. iv eirra €phop.axn,v.
In seven times seven days.
NOTES.
ON NATURE.
Fr. I. Pausanias is the friend to whom Empedocles addresses himself throughout the poem On Nature. Matthew Arnold has made him a character in Empedocles on Aetna.
Fr. 2. Narrow ways: these are the pores (Tr6poi) into which pass the emanations (dirSppoai) from things (cf. fr. 89); whence man's portion — such as it is — of perception and knowledge (cf. the simulacra of Lucr. IV). "Ways" (jroXo/tai) are literally "devices"; but the notion of small passages is suggested by (TTeiywiro/; cf. fr. 4.
Their little share of life: a note of sadness struck more than once by Empedocles, and one of the few elements in common with the personage in Arnold's poem. Cf. the comments on life and man in the Gnomic writers. Like smoke: cf. "Ergo dissolui quoque convenit omnem animai naturam, ceu fumus, in altas aeris auras."
Lucr., Ill, 4SS-6. Than mortal ken may span: more literally, "than mortal skill may have power to move" (ipmpev).
Fr. 3. Addressed to Pausanias; so elsewhere.
Fr. 4. Their madness: this evidently refers to the over-bold speculations of Parmenides and other philosophers.
Meek Piety's: lit., "from [the realm of] Piety."
By every way of knowing: by every passage, or device (rroXd/tg); cf. fr. 2. Empedocles, unlike Parmenides, affirms the relative trustworthiness of the senses.
Trust sight no more than hearing, etc.: here E. may imply a distinction between the understanding and sense perception; or he may consider, with the sensationalists of modem psychology, one sense as acting as a check on another, without realizing that there must still be something over and above them which weighs and decides. His theory of knowledge was apparently little developed. Aristotle (,De an.. Ill, 3, 427a 21-29) says that E. drew no distinction between voelv or <ppovelv and ala6ivea0ai.
Note by all ways: "ways" here translates v6pos, 'road,' 'pore.'
The Roman critic (Hor., De arte poetica, 134 ff-) warns the poet against a beginning that promises bigger things than the work bears out, and he might have chided Empedocles with the contrary fault; for the reverent attitude, reflected in this fragment, soon gives way to dogmatism and grandiloquence, as the old philosopher's soul thrills to his large thought and the roll of his splendid verse. Later writers on the Unknowable and the limitations of human knowledge have not always been more consistent.
Fr. s. The High and Strong: "either philosophers or doctrines or the gods Love and Strife." Diels, PPF.
Sifted through thy soul: an illustration of the dependence of a poetic value on an emendation; if, instead of Sioo-ffijff^nToj (FV), we read Siar/iTieivTos (PPF), the translation might run: "Deep in thine inward parts dividing thought," a very different, and to me less effective figure.
Fr. 6. The four-fold root: the four elements, but there is some disagreement as to the interpretation of the symbols that follow. Nestis is presumably a Sicilian water divinity, identified by van ten Brink and Heyne with Proserpina, and the context shows that she s3Tnbolizes water. Zeller (p. 759) makes Zeus fire. Here air, and Aidoneus (Dis) earth; Burnet (p. 243) and Bodrero (p. 78), following Knatz, make Zeus air. Here earth, and Aidoneus fire. I am not persuaded that any peculiar theory is implied in this mythology, as Bodrero attempts to prove (cf. also Gomperz, p. 245); at the most E. is hinting at the elements as eternal (the "established gods" of fr. 17) and primary — "the four-fold root of all things." Moreover, E. was poet no less than philosopher.
Earlier philosophy had recognized the materials which E. calls the four elements, though it had never made them Grundstoffe. Cf. also the "flowing" (like water), the "mistiform" THE FRAGMENTS QF EMPEDOCLES. 69 (like air) and the dryniist (like fire) of Heraclitus; and the contrasted warm ajsd cold which*Anaximander conceived as differentiated friJtn the &Treipov. (The five-fold division of Philolaos was probably derived from E.) E. was the first absolute pluralist; preceding thinkers, Thales, Pjfthagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, etc., had made ultimate reality a material One. Not until Plato have we an approach to an idealistic monism (cf. Burnet, p. 207-8).
Fr. 7. Elements (amx^ta), supplied here and elsewhere, is nowhere preserved to us by E., and was apparently first used in philosophy by Plato. Cf. Zeller, p. 759.
Fr. 8. End in ruinous death: this is not here enlarged upon as is the idea of birth; it is, however, but the other aspect of the latter: the interchange of the mixed implies a scattering as well, the dissolution of the old to form the new; at least I take it so. Cf. fr. 17.
Fr. 9. In man, etc.: properly, "in the case of man."
/ too assent to use: how many philosophers have felt themselves balked in the perfect expression of their thought by having in their vocabulary to "assent to use."
Fr. 10. Avenging Death: evidently used in a connection similar to "doom of death" in fr. 9 (cf. Plut. quoted by Diels, PPF). "ut 'ASitva &\olris Lycoph. 935 est sceleris vindex, sic Mors peccatorum ultrix." Diels, PPF.
Fr. 11-12. The doctrine (and in part the words) of Parmenides, afterwards developed with such energy and imagination and observation of the processes of the sensible universe in Book I of the De Natura Rerum.
For there 'twill be, etc.: perhaps a more literal rendering would make the meaning more obvious to some readers: "For every time will it [i. e., any given object] be right there, where any one every time puts it."
Fr. 13-14. E. held with Parmenides that the world is a Plenum, incapable either of excess or of deficiency.
Fr. 15. "But that there is here any aifirmation of the immortality of the psychic life (Siebeck, Gesch. d. Psychol, I, 53, 267) I do not believe. Ppanl denotes with E. not only men but all peryO THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
ishable beings, and these are eternal only in so far as their elements are eternal." Zeller, p. 7^ Diels, however, renders (FV) &poro\ "wir Sterbliche"; indeed, as "men" is evidently the understood subject of Ka\ko\>ai ('call'), it must also be the subject of |8«5<" ('live'), and it is but natural to construe jSpoTo2 below in the same sense. But there is still presumably no reference to the immortality of the soul. Thought and feeling with E. are part of the physical system; and "our being" is but a physical being, to which, however, as to every thing, the thought of fV. 11 must apply. "Compacted" and "loosed apart" refer to the mingling and the scattering of the bod/s constituent elements.
Fr. 16. Love and Hate: under varying names, "Lovingness" and "Strife," "Aphrodite" and "Wrath," etc., conceived by E. as the dynamic powers of the universe. Many details of the conception are still in dispute (cf. Zeller, p. 771; Tannery, p. 306). Efforts to relate them genetically to the Isis and Typhon of the Egyptian, or to the Ormuzd and Ahriman of the Persian seem to me unsuccessful; one is rather reminded of the "War" and "Harmonia" of Heraclitus.
Fr. 17. The longest, the most significant, and the most difficult of the fragments; preserved by Simplicius. "The One" is tlie Sphere; "the Many," as we see from line 18 (of the Greek text), are the four elements.
Two-fold the birth, two-fold the death of things: a dark saying; I paraphrase a Latin note of Diels, PPF: "The wheel of nature runs a double coujse, one from the complete separation of the four elements to the union of the Sphere, the other from the Sphere to the separation of the elements. In either course exist the certainties of creation and dissolution: for, as the elements come together, their meeting ((ripoSos) brings things to birth, but when the tendency to mingle has finally increased so far as to form the Sphere again, the same meeting is found at last to be no less the source of their destruction (thus dvoSos tIktsi t' 6\4Kei re); again, as the elements begin to separate from the Sphere (Sia-(pvo/iivuv), things are born into an orderly arrangement of their elements, until, with the increased tendency toward separation, everything at last flies apart (SUtttii) and perishes." Cf. fr. 26.
It must be noted that, when Love is supreme, we have the harmony of the Sphere; when Hate is supreme, a complete dissipation. In neither state is ans^thing Uke our world possible: we must be in either one or the other intermediate period, where the elements are making headway (i) away from the Sphere toward dissipation, or (2) from dissipation toward the Sphere. Cf. Burnet (p. 248 ff.), who believes we are in the former period.
Anaximander (but cf. Burnet, p. 64) and Heraclitus and the Pythagoreans seem also to have taught a succession of worlds bom and destroyed; and a similar thought is implicit in the nebular hypothesis of modern astronomy.
So far have they a birth, etc.: "thejr" refers, I believe, to the four elements: mortal, if viewed as parts of the perishable things of our world; immortal and unshaken as gods (cf. the m3fthological names of fr. 6), if viewed as the primeval sources of all things and as subject to the law of the four cosmic periods — eternal interchange and revolution round "the circle of the world."
And shut from them apart, etc.: both Strife and Love are apparently conceived as material, not simply as dynamic principles. The early philosophers were a long way from the incorporealities and abstractions of modern science (cf. Burnet, p. 246); and even the Pythagorean numbers were by no means sharply distinguished from their concrete expression in geometrical forms and material things, and even the "Nous" of Anaxagoras was mindstufl in space. Thus Strife is in equipoise, i. e., everywhere of the same weight (iriXavrov s'entend de I'equilibre des poids. Tannery, p. 305), and at this moment somewhere outside the Sphere; while Love, equal in length and breadth, is situated inside, and "speeds revolving in the elements."
Tannery (p. 306) regards them as "media endowed with special properties and able to displace each other, media in the bosom of which are plunged the corporeal molecules, but which are still conceived to be as material as the imponderable ether of the modern physicists," i. e., almost as diffused gases; but it is very doubtful if Empedocles had such a definite thought in mind.
'Tis she inborn, etc.: whatever the difficulties in thinking out the thought with consistency of detail, there is a freshness and a grandeur in this identification of a cosmic principle, or material, with a passion, or a faculty, in the life of man. E. makes a similar identification of Hate (cf. fr. log). Schopenhauer's identification of the dynamic principle of all nature with "will" offers a modem analogy. Nor should we overlook the prior significance in the very choice of the names, drawn from the passions of men to stand for activities as fundamental and wide as the universe.
I think, by the way, that E.'s language here makes it possible to interpret love ("thoughts of love," etc.) as more than the physiological passion of sex for sex, with which it is usually identified by the commentators.
Behold these elements own equal strength, etc.: E. conceives the elements as each alike in quantity and strength, each alike primeval; but each, with its peculiar function and appearance (cf. E's specific descriptive adjectives used in naming the elements), qualitatively distinct from the others. Cf. Zeller, p. 762. But what he means by affirming that "each Prevailing conquers with revolving time" is not, to me at least, perfectly clear. He speaks nowhere of an age of Air, or Earth, or Water; and the peculiar agencies he imputes to fire (see infra) are apparently at all times at work, without ever ending in fire's dominating all, as in the common interpretation of the system of Heraclitus. Possibly he refers to the temporal sequence in the separation of the elements from the Sphere (for which see Zeller, p. 787), or simply to the fact that now this, now that created object in natura rerum has more of this or more of that element in its composition. Cf. fr. 26. In Chinese philosophy "The elements are supposed to conquer one another according to a definite law. We are told that wood conquers earth, earth conquers water, water conquers fire, fire conquers metal, and metal conquers wood." Paul Carus, Chinese Thought, 1907, p. 47. But there is nothing in E.'s thought that seems to correspond.
Through one another: an allusion to the theory of the pores, the precursor of Atomism. Cf. Zeller, p. 767.
Fr. 18. The translator has made no effort to be consistent in rendering (pCKlii and 0i\6Tris into English by different words. There is evidently no vital difference of meaning in the Greek as used by E. Cf. Plut, quoted by Diels, PPF.
Fr. 19. With reference here to water.
Fr. 20. Line i has been supplied by the translator. Cf. with this fragment fr. 57-62.
Fr. 21. But come, etc.: 1. e., 'observe if what I have already said does not give a sufficiently clear description of the form, or physical characteristics of the elements' — "si quid materiae etiam in priore numeratione elementorum relictum erat formae explicandae." Diels, PPF.
The Sun: see note on fr. 41.
The eternal Stars: E. conceived the fixed stars as fastened to the vault (of the dark hemisphere), the planets as free, and both as formed of fire separated from the air.
The sun and the stars apparently correspond to the fiery element, rain to the watery, and earth to the earthy, considered here as visible parts of the present universe no less than as the sources thereof. Air seems to be unrepresented, unless it be suggested by "glowing radiance." I am inclined to take the phrase merely as a bit of poetry — it is the radiance of the night, hardly the bright heaven, the aery expanse of day. But were it so interpreted, one might well note that E. regularly uses aUHip ('sky) and once oipar6s ('heaven') for air, and might compare Lucretius' "Unde aether sidera pascit" (Bk. I, 231), and Virgil's "Polus dura sidera pascit" (Bk. I, 608) — phrases which, however, are not, as I understand them, based on an astronomy like that of Empedocles.
The green: the Greek is S&^viira, 'the beginnings of things,' the 'semina rerum' of Lucretius (Liddell& Scott), here possibly with some suggestion of the growth of the vegetable world (hence the translation "green"). There is assuredly no reference to the primeval "lumps with rude impress" of fr. 62, for E. is here speaking of things as they are.
The long-lived gods: the gods in the On Nature of Empedocles are part of the perishable world, formed, like tree or fish, out of the elements; hence, though "in honors excellent," they are not immortal.
Fr. 22. Heaven: air; cf. note to fr. 21.
For amber Sun, etc.: the mutual attraction of the like and the repulsion of the unlike are here referred respectively to the action of Love and Hate; but elsewhere in his system Empedocles leaves us much in the dark on the matter. Cf. Gomperz, p. 237. Tannery, p. 308. Also Burnet, p. 247.
Things that are most apt to mix: where the emanations of the one are peculiarly well fitted to the pores of the other. Cf. Burnet, 247 ff.
Fr. 23. mixing harmonious, etc.: Gomperz (p. 233) sees a reference in this fragment to the four primary colors, as analogous to the four elements. The simile were then doubly striking.
The goddess: lit., 'divinitjf" (Seov), undoubtedly the Muse, mentioned several times by E. (cf. fr. 4, 5, 131); important as a hint that the author is poet as well as philosopher, and may use language not always literally in accord with his system.
Fr. 25. One may regret that Empedocles has not left us more such pithy sayings.
Cf.
"A reasonable reason, If good, is none the worse for repetition."
Byron, Don Juan, XV, gi.
Fr. 26. In turn they conquer: "they" means the elements; cf. note on fr. 17.
olden Fate: fate is mentioned several times by E., and can only mean, I think, the universal law of being.
Whiles in fair order: Or. eh ha Kiaiiov; it refers to that orderly arrangement of the elements which results, as the unifying process goes on, in the dead harmony of the Sphere.
Whiles rent asunder: this refers to the process which ends in the complete dissipation of the elements and the destruction of all things.
Till they, when grown...succumb: i. e., as I understand it, till, after having completed the process of coming together again which ends in the Sphere, they again begin the process of separating which ends in dissipation. Cf. f r. 17; and Zeller (P- 77^) > who might question this interpretation.
"Go under and succumb" is in tlie Greek irivepOe yivitrai, a phrase found in Theognis (1. 843): where the event is, however, hardly of the same cosmic importance.
y Fr. 27. There: in the Sphere, where one could distinguish none of the elements and none of the forms of things. One notes that the passage makes no mention of air, and wonders if a line may have been lost. The Sphere corresponds somewhat to the "Being" of Parmenides, which was spherical and immovable; but the four elements, though in this sphere visibly indistinguishable, must still maintain their respective qualities. For various ancient interpretations of the nature of the Sphere, cf. Burnet, p. 250 ff.
In the close recess of Harmony: "in Concordiae latebris fixus tenetur." Diels, PPF. A poetic figure for the idea that the Sphere is completely under the reign of Love. Possibly "the close recess" is but the "surrounding solitude" below, and is not, perhaps, to be taken any more literally than the reference to the Sphere as "exultant." If examined narrowly, however, difficulties must be admitted. The figure may be Pythagorean. Harmony, then, were the personified "fitting," "adaptation," and would refer to the closely fitted parts of the universe, when brought together by Love. JliKivot ('closefitted,' 'compact') were itself perfectly appropriate; but Kp<i*os, as a noun (meaning, as it seems to here, 'a hidden place') would confuse the thought, for the figure, if Pythagorean, requires us to conceive "Harmon)'" as pervading the Sphere, not as hiding it somewhere in space. Moreover, one would expect to find Kpiipoi applied to the Sphere rather than to the recess. Prof. Newbold in a letter suggests Kpiv for Kpi^iw, i. e., 'in Harmonia's close-binding frost' as "better than the MS reading, though not altogether satisfactory."
Bodrero assumes (p. 135) that Harmony "is not Love alone, but the union of Love and Hate, their equilibrium"; but his whole interpretation of Empedocles is very far from that of all other scholars, and is usually, as here, of little service to the point of view adopted in these pages.
The rounded Sphere; This primeval Sphere must never be confounded with E.'s present spherical universe, composed, as we learn from the doxographers, of a revolving bright hemisphere of day and a dark hemisphere of night. Cf. note to fr.48.
Exultant in surrounding solitude: quoted with literary tact, though in a corrupt form, by Marcus Aurelius (XII, 3): "If thou wilt separate, I say, from this ruling faculty the things which are attached to it by the impressions of sense, and the things of time to come and of time that is past, and wilt make thyself like Empedocles' Sphere, 'AH round, and in its joyous rest reposing.'"
Fr. 29. Cf. fr. 134, where expressions, in part identical, are used apparently of the Divine; and note that below in fr. 31 the Sphere is called God.
Nor form of life-producing member: a touch possible only to a free and an austere imagination: Empedocles gazes upon man, the naked and the swift, and seizes at once on that which most identifies his manhood.
Fr. 30. Yet after mighty Strife: it will be remembered that Strife breaks up and separates the elements in the Sphere.
Amplest oath: Gr. itXot&s SpKov, Ht. 'broad oath.' Cf. fr. 115.
Fr. 31. God: the Sphere. "This mixture of all materials is divine only in the sense iii which antiquity in general sees in the world itself the totality of divine beings and powers." Zeller, p. 813; cf. p. 814.
Fr. 32. "quod e coniectura scripsi artus iungit Una eleganter expressit Martianus Rota sive ingenio sive meliore libro fretus: articulis constat semper iunctura duobus." Diels, PPF.
Fr. 33. Diels (PPF) cites Homer, £,902, and says "e Plut. patet Concordiae processum illustrari" — it illustrates the process of Love.
Fr. 34. i. e., like a baker, according to Karsten and Burnet.
Fr. 35. When down the Vortex: the origin of the vortex is not explained in any existing fragment of Empedocles. Tannery thinks (p. 312) "the vortex is due to a disturbance of equilibrium...the final resultant of the disordered movements which Hate occasions in the Sphere." And again (p. 314): "Hate is the principle of division and movement; in con- THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. TJ sequence of its very mobility it wvks its way naturally into the interior of the motionless Sphere, produces an agitation and then a movement of revolution. Thereupon Hate is thrown off to the circumference where the movement is most rapid, and is finally excluded altogether." But cf. Zeller, p. 784, 787. This chaos, or vortex, caused, according to Tannery by Hate, has suggested to some the "x&aiui" of Hesiod and the "rudes indigestaque moles" of Ovid; it was, however, an accepted tenet of the older schools (cf. The Slvri in Anaximenes and Anaximander, W. A. Heidel, Class. Philology, I, 3., July 1906).
The eddying centre of the mass: "the mass" is not in the Greek; but is to be understood rather than "the Sphere" — which has properly ceased to be in becoming a vortex.
Oneness: not to be identified with the Sphere, but with the "fair order" of fr. 26, as seems clear from the lines that follow, "and from their mingling," etc.
Only as willingly: possibly a reference to the attraction of like for like. Cf. note to fr. 22.
Not all blameless: i. e.. Hate retreated under protest, differing frqm "blameless Lovingness" in not willingly submitting to the "old decree" (see Diels, PPF, and fr. 30); although this seems, if anything more than a poetic touch, to involve the inconsistency of a free will over against the fundamental necessity. Such cruxes recall the inconsistencies even in the more developed materialism of modern times, which assumes the possibility of sense experience and of distinguishing truth and error, right and wrong. Cf. fr. 116.
The circle's utmost hounds: the circumference of the vortex, not the Sphere.
The members: the elements.
Those mortal things: the elements as constituents of physical objects in the perishable world, contrasted with the elements as eternal sources of creation. Cf. fr. 17 and 26. "Dagli dementi etemi si formano esseri viventi e peribili." Bodrero, p. 130. The two states are again contrasted in "The erstwhile pure and sheer Were mixed," below.
Fr. 36. They: The elements. Cf. preceding fragment Fr. 37. ''cetera elementa duo commemorata fuisse veri simile (cf. Lucr. II 1114 sq.), at versus recuperari nequit." Diels, PPF. Cf. fr. 109 on sense perceptipn.
Fr. 38. If the brief examples of "all things we now behold" are to correspond to the four elements, one finds nothing representative of fire, unless ether be here used, as by Anaxagoras, for fire, with reference to the fiery sky (cf. note to fr. 13s) and to the etymology of the word itself (from alOeiv, 'light up,' •blaze')— a sense, indeed, appropriate to the appellative "Titan." But this were quite a different sense than is usual in E., with whom ether regularly stands for the element air. This, however, involves us in another difficulty: "moist air" (iypis i^p) has been already mentioned; but with Zeller we may interpret it as the lower, thicker, misty air (so i-fip in Homer), as opposed to the upper air, the pure ether, "without, however, assuming any elemental difference," p. 786. "Moist air" is rendered "feuchten Luftkreis" by Diels (FV), and "damp mist" by Burnet. I may add that Burnet is evidently wrong in affirming that iiip never refers to air in E.: it is used interchangeably with alBrip ('air") in fr. 100 (q. v.) Cf. Stickney, notes to Cicero's De Nat. Deorum, I, 44.
"With Ether, the Titan who binds the globe about:" cf.
"Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all."
Emerson, Days.
Fr. 39. The white Ether: "white" is not in the Greek, but is in keeping with E.'s "Ether, the all splendorous," the "awful heights of Air," the vaulted sky of his imagination.
As forsooth some tongues, etc.: a gruffness reminding of Heraclitus, and of Emerson's line: "The brave Empedocles defying fools."
Fr. 41. E. seems to have conceived the sun as "a luminous image of the earth, when the latter was lighted up by the fire of the day [i. e., the bright hemisphere] and reflected upon the crystal vault of heaven." Tannery, p. 317. But cf. Burnet, p. 254, and Zeller, p. 789, for slight differences of interpretation. How the sun, a mere reflection, was borne along its track in the revolving sky we are left to guess.
THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES, 79 Fr. 42. An anticipation of the modern scientific explanation of solar eclipses.
The silver-eyed: yXavKiimSos /h^ki):; for the much discussed y\avKuTis see the Homeric dictionaries. It refers properly not to color but to "brightness and flashing splendor," used especially of Athene, of whom the Iliad (A, 200) says, "Seirii S4 ol Suae </>Aav$ev." Cf. Schol. on Apoll. Rhod. I. 1280 (quoted by Merrill and Riddell, Odys. A, 44): "SiayXaiaaovatv AvtI toC ijXiiTl^ovtn ^ StaXd/tTroviri, S$ev Kal 4 'AffrivS, yXavKairis, Kal yX'qvti ii Kdpri rou i<j>BaXfu>v, irapb, ri y\ai(taeiv 8 iari \i,ii,irta>. Kal 'EApiitl-Sijs htl rijs acX^vTis ^XP'}"''"''' yXavKairls re arpi^erai niivifi." But it is doubtful if E., who speaks of "Selene mild," intended here anything stronger than "with eye of silvery sheen."
7XouKos is used of the willow, the olive, and E. himself uses it (fr. 93) of the elder. Diels' "blauaugigen" seems to me inadequate.
Fr. 43. E. knew the source of the moon's light (cf. fr. 45, 47); but the moon itself he held to be a disk of frozen air, and one-half as far from the earth as the sun ("E. 8tir\<i(7«oi' ivix^iv {rhv ViKiav) atrh t^s 7^1 l^vep riiv ceX^yiji'." Plac. II, 31).
Fr. 44 He darts his beams: with Diels I take the subject to be 'the sun' and not 'the earth' (Burnet); and "Olympos" is then the bright heaven, Tannery's "feu du jour'' (see note to fr. 41). E. explained the light of the heavenly bodies through his doctrine of emanations, and, accordingly maintained — a correct conclusion from incorrect premises — that the sun's light requires a certain time to reach earth. Cf. Zeller, p. 790.
Fr. 46. Which round the outmost: probably 'goal is turning,' or something of the sort, followed here. The form of the clause shows that it served as a simile.
Fr. 47. Her lord: the sun, see note on fr. 43.
Fr. 48. E. conceived our earth as surrounded by a hollow globe composed of two hemispheres, a lighter of fire, a darker of air, whose revolution produces day and night. Cf. Zeller, p. 786 flf. This line means only that earth shuts off the light of the fiery hemisphere that sinks below the horizon, bearing with it its sun (see fr. 41).
Fr, so. For authenticity cf. Diels, PPF. I am uncertain what scientific meaning this line had for Empedocles; but for the modern reader it is at least charming poetry. Burnet (p. 256) says: "Wind was explained from the opposite motions of the fiery and airy hemispheres. Rain was caused by the compression of the Air, which forced any water there might be in it out of its pores in the form of drops."
Fr. 51. And upward, etc.: of fire, which, in E.'s thought, had an upward, as air a downward (see fr. S4) tendency, innate powers apparently not elsewhere explained. The peculiar functions attributed by E. to fire led Aristotle (De gen. et corr., B 3. 330b 19) to separate it from the other elements of the system, an interpretation developed with much ingenuity by Bodrero (Chap. II.).
Fr. 52. Doubtless an allusion to volcanic phenomena, as common in Sicily.
Fr. S3. "It" refers to air. "Met," i. e., with the other elements.
Fr. 54. See note to fr. 51.
Fr. 55. "The earth was at first mixed with water, but the increasing compression caused by the velocity of the world's revolution [the Vortex of fr. 35] made the water gush forth." Burnet, p. 256. The phrase is not, then, as criticized by Aristotle, mere poetic metaphor.
Fr. 56. With E. fire has a crystallizing, condensing function. Cf. fr. 73.
Fr. S7-6i. These fragments contain the rude germ of the theory of natural selection and the origin of species (but cf. Zeller, p. 79S); they seem to refer to a process of animal genesis during the period when Love is increasing in power (i.e., the fourth period; see fr. 17); fr. 62, on the other hand to another process when Hate is increasing (i. e., in the period of the present world). Cf. Burnet, p. 261.
Cod with god: Gr. Sal/tovi Salnuy, {. e.. Love and Hate.
There seems to be no reason for the conjecture, sometimes advanced, that E. is here influenced by the monsters of Babylonian legend and art. The Greek imagination was long familiar with centaurs, satyrs, chimxras, Cyclops, hermaphrodites and other "mixed shapes of being." The library of Johns Hopkins has recently (1906) been enriched, so a medical colleague informs me, by a collection (originally from Marburg), containing some 936 old volumes on monsters, which the curious reader may consult at his leisure for further parallels.
Fr. 62. See notes to fr. S7-6j.
The sundered Are: Gr. Kpiv6iuvav rSp, lit. 'self-sundering* — the fire which "burns beneath the ground" and has the "upward zeal." Though E. is speaking here of mankind, "Of men and women, the pitied and bewailed," he probably considers the process as typical for the whole animal kingdom.
Warm: warm and cold seem to have been important conditions in E.'s system, the former favoring growth, the latter inducing decay, old age, sleep, death, in the last instance perhaps serving as the occasion for the separation of the elements by Hate. The genera.1 idea is probably as old as speculation.
Fr. 63. For 'tis in part in man's: i. e., in part in the male semen. E. explained conception as a union of male and female semen, each furnishing parts for the formation of offspring. Cf.
"Aegre admiscetur muliebri semine semen.''
Lucr., IV, 1239.
In so far as this ancient belief recognizes that both sexes furnish the germs of the offspring, it is an anticipation of modern embryology.
Fr. 64. An alternative reading, a little freer: "Love-longing comes upon him, waking well Old memories, as he gazes."
Fr. 65. This is, perhaps, as rational as most modern theories. "At present we are almost absolutely ignorant concerning the causation of sex, though certain observers are inclined to suppose that the determining factor must be sought for in the ovum." Williams, Obstetrics (1904)1 P- 143- Fr. 66. Cloven meads: surely the labia majora.