Fr. 68. White pus: Gr. t6 iriov, not A tC^s ('colostrum'), if my available lexical information be correct, though the latter is probably meant (Burnet). The comparison seems to behowever grotesque— between mother's milk (properly colostrum) in the breast enlarging during pregnancy, and the matter of a suppurating boil— the teat of the former corresponding to the "head" of the latter. Colostrum is, however, present in the breast after the first few months.
Fr. 69. Twice-hearing: i.e., bearing offspring in the seventh and tenth month.
Fr. 70. Sheepskin: used of the membrane conceived as covering the "embryo" (foetus?). E. could only have been familiar with the membranes which follow the birth of the young.
Fr. 71. Sun: this is of course here a symbol for the element fire.
Fr. 73. Kypris: Aphrodite, Love.
To speed of fire that she might grow firm: fire has a condensing property. Cf. fr. 56.
Fr. 74. The subject may be Aphrodite.
Fi"- 75-76. Here the bones, the earthen part (in modern science, the lime) within some animals are related, quite in the spirit of our own physiology, to the shells on the outside of others. The turtle's shell, consisting chiefly of keratin, is, however, morphologically connected, like horn, finger-nails, etc., with the skin. Aristotle {Pneumat. 484a 38) says that E. explained fingernails as produced from sinew by hardening.
Fr. 77-78. Trees were supposed by E. to derive their nourishment through their pores from the air, more or less vitalizing according to the mixture — again a suggestion of modern science.
Fr. 79. In thus assimilating the seeds of the olive tree to the eggs laid by birds, E. was probably guided by similarity no less of function than of form.
Fr. 80. Wherefore: Can any one tell me? Prof. McGilvary happily suggests it\is "because the pomegranate has a very hard thick skin, not admitting air as rwidily as the thin skin of an apple. See fr. 77-78."
Fr. 82. A doctrine of comparative morphology that has reminded many critics of the poet-scientist Goethe.
Fr. 84. Of horny lantern: the ancients had lanterns made of translucent horn, and "horny," though not in the text, must be understood here.
"Emp. conceives the eye as a sort of lantern. The apple of the eye contains fire and water enclosed in films, the pores of which, alternately arranged for each element, give to the emanations of each a free passage. Fire serves for perceiving the bright, water for the dark. When the emanations of visible things reach the outside of the eye, there pass through the pores from within it emanations of its fire and water, and from the joint meeting arises vision." Zeller, p. 801.
"It was an attempt, however inadequate, to explain perception by intermediate processes. It was an attempt, moreover, which admitted, however reluctantly, the subjective factor, thus completing one stage of the journey whose ultimate goal is to recognize that our sense-perceptions are anything rather than the mere reflections of exterior objective qualities of things." Gomperz, p. 235. Cf. Burnet, p. 267.
Fr. 86. From which: i. e., from these elements.
Fr. 87. Bolts of love: a metaphor for the uniting power of Aphrodite. Cf. fr. 96.
Fr. 88. Interesting as an early lesson in a sound theory of optics.
Fr. 89. Cf. note on fr. 2.
Fr. go. Sour sprung for Sour: "'went for" (^jSij) would be a more effective rendering, but for the slangy connotations.
Fr. 92. Diels (FV), following Aristotle, who has preserved us the fragment, makes the connection sufficiently clear: "Die Samenmischung bet der Erzeugung von Mauleseln bringt, da zwei weiche Stoffe susammenkommen, eine harte Verhindung zustande. Denn nur Hohles and Dickies passt zu einander. Dort aber geht es, wie wenn man Zinn und Kupfer mischt."
Fr. 93. Silvery: See note to f r. 43.
Fr. 94. Preserved only in Latin (Plut. Quaest. not., 39). Diels (PPF) has thus turned it into Greek: "/col irAei ev pivBei iroTo/wC ii£Kav in aKibevras Kal airriXai^SecriTiv i/uis evoparai i» ivrpoii."
Fr. 9S. They: I e., the eyes. The thought is thus completed by Diels (FV), following Simplicius: "ergab sich auch der Unterschied, dass einige bei Tag, andere bei Nacht heller sehen."
Fr. 96. Thus bones are formed of 2 parts earth, 2 parts water, and 4 parts fire.
Broad-breasted melting pots: "ben construtti vasi," as Bodrero translates it.
Clue of Harmony: cf. "bolts of love."
Fr. 97. Thus completed by Diels (FV), following Aristotle: "hat ihre Form daher, dass sie bei der Entstehung der Tiere durch eine sufdllige Wendung serbrach."
Fr. 98. She met: Gr. ovviKvpae, a word, among others, which suggests in Empedocles' system, an implicit doctrine of chance. Cf. fr. 102, 103. Cf. Bodrero, p. 107 ff.
Ether, the all-splendorous: an illustration of how E. will sometimes emphasize a term, used sjrmbolically to denote an element as one of the four-fold roots of all things, by an epithet suggestive of that element as it appears in the world about us.
Diels (PPF) paraphrases: "Tellus ad sanguinem efficiendum fere pares partes ignis, aquae, aeris arcessit, sed fieri potest ut paulo plus terrae aut minus, ut quae pluribus elementis una occurrat, admisceatur."
Fr. 99. A Aeshy sprout: E.'s picturesque definition of the outer ear. The inner ear he likens to a bell which sounds as the air strikes upon it — again an anticipation of modern science.
Fr. 100. This fragment (cf. fr. 105) shows some knowledge of the motions of the blood, though far enough from the discovery of Harvey. Cf. Harvey's own work On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (1628) for the anterior views. As a theory of respiration, it is as grotesque as it is ingenious.
The comparison with the clepsydra, though in form of a Homeric simile, rests, as Burnet points out, upoij scientific experiment, and is doubly significant for its sound physics. The following diagram and analysis from Burnet (p. 230) will, perhaps, make the allusion clear: "The water escaped drop by drop through a single orifice at a. The top b was not altogether open, but was perforated so that the air might exert its pressure on the water inside. The instrument was filled by plunging it in water upside down, and stopping the orifice at a with the finger before taking it out again."
The water's destined bulk: i. e., a corresponding mass of water.
Fr. loi. All that is left of E.'s theory of scent. The mites are the emanations.
Fr. 102. Got: lit, "chanced on" (\e\6yxa(ri). Cf. note on fr. 98.
Fr. 103. Chance: cf. note on fr. 98. Here, as in some passages elsewhere, E.i seems to be a hylozoist. Cf. Zeller, p. 802; but E. nowhere credits the elements as such, with consciousness, unless fr. 109 be so interpreted (but cf. Gomperz, p. 245).
Fr. 104. The lightest: supply "bodies."
Fr. 105. In the blood streams: cf. note to f r. 100.
The blood that stirs, etc.: the verse was often alluded to by the ancients (cf. Diels, PPF), and Tertullian seems himself to have turned it into Latin in his De Anima (chap. 16): "namque homini sanguis circumcordialis et sensus."
But E. did not mean here, I think, to exclude some power of thought from other parts of the body; he says "where prevails the power," i. e., where it chiefly {iiAXurra) exists. Cf. Zeller, p. 803.
Fr. io6. Cf.
"Praeterea gigni pariter cum corpore et una crescere sentimus pariterque senescere mentem.''
Lucr., Ill, 445-6.
"Empedocles hat nicht die Seele aus den Elementen zusammengesetzt, sondern er hat das, was wir Seelenthatigkeit nennen, aus der elementarischen Zusammensetzung des Korpers erklart, eine vom Korper verschiedene Seele kennt seine Physik nicht" — i. e., a soul as distinct from the composition of the elements in the body is nowhere found in the On Nature. Zeller, p. 802.
Fr. 107. These: the elements. Cf. note on fr. 106.
Fr. 108. "By day" and "by night" have been supplied here from references in Simpl. and Philop., quoted by Diels, PPF.
Fr. 109. Through Earth, etc.: "we think each element with the corresponding element in our body" (Zeller, p. 802), and the same holds true of Love and Hate (cf. note on fr. 17).
Cf. Plotinus: Oi yhp &v wiiirore elSev j0da\/iis ^Xioi' ^XioeiS^! iiii yeyevTiniros. Cf. also Goethe: "War' nicht das Auge sonnenhaft, Die Sonne konnt' es nie erblicken; Lag* nicht in uns des Gottes eig'ne Kraft, Wie konnt' uns Gottliches entzticken?"
Man is the microcosm.
Fr. no. All these things: perhaps the good thoughts of the master's doctrine; E. is here, as elsewhere, addressing Pausanias.
For of themselves...they grow, etc.: sound psychology, if my interpretation just above be correct, and capable of serving as the basis for a chapter in the philosophy of living, on the practical bearings upon character of right and wrong thinking.
All things have Axed intent: i. e., consciousness.
Fr. III. Drugs: Gr. (p&p/iaKa; possibly "charms" is better, as suggested to me by a friend. Galen makes E. the founder of the Italian school of medicine. Cf. Burnet, p. 215.
The dominion over human ills, sickness, windstorms, drought and death, here promised to Pausanias, was early imputed to Empedocles himself (cf. Introduction), perhaps, chiefly by virtue of these lines. * The might of perished men: Gr. KaTa<t>9iixivov fUvos AvSp6s. "Spirits of the dead" seems hardly permissible with /t^ros (though the word is sometimes used of the spirit, the courage of man), and would render still more crass the contradiction with what E. has elsewhere told us in the On Nature of the psychic life. One would conjecture that the fragment belongs to the Purifications, but for the fact that it is addressed to Fausanias, and not, as the latter, to the citizens of Acragas, THE PURIFICATIONS.
The inconsistency of the religious tenets of this poem with the philosophic system of the On Nature is, like the relation between the two parts of Parmenides' poem, a commonplace^ in the history of Greek thought; and, though attempts at a reconciliation have been made, conservatively by Burnet (p. 271), radically by Bodrero (passim), our materials seem too scanty for anything more than ingenious speculation. The work evidently owes much to Orphic and Pythagorean tradition; but there seems no reason for doubting its genuineness.
Fr. 112. The yellow Acragas: The river beside the walls of Agrigentum.
As god immortal now: an Orphic line runs: "Happy and blessed, shalt thou be a god and no longer a mortal."
Cf. Harrison, Proleg. to Study of Greek Religion, p. 589.
Crowned both with fillets and with flowering wreaths: Empedocles' passage about the Sicilian cities reminds one of the peasant-prophet who went about the populous towns of Galilee, followed by the multitudes seeking a sign or a healing word; but the simplicity of the Jew is more impressive than the display of the Greek.
Fr. 113. I. e., "Why should I boast of my miracles and my following, who am a god and so much above mankind?" E., if an Orphic (cf. Burnet, p. 213, and his references), has here little of even "the somewhat elaborate and self-conscious humility" of his sect.
Fr. IIS. With amplest oaths: cf. fr. 30.
Those far spirits: Gr. Sat/ioves; Burnet (p. 269) identifies these with "the long-lived gods" of the On Nature.
With slaughter: i. e., bloodshed of animals, no less than of fellowmen; it probably refers also to the eating of flesh. Cf. fr. 136.
In offense: in sin, sinfully.
Thrice ten thousand years: Gr. rpU iivplai «5pot, by some interpreted as 10,000 years. Cf. Zeller, p. 780.
Be born through time, etc.: the doctrine of metempsychosis in E. is probably Pythagorean in origin, though apparently not entirely Pythagorean in form: "Non e specializzata solo a certi determinati esseri, ma riguarda tutti gli esseri organici e giunge sino agli Dei," according to Bodrero (p. 146).
For now Air hunts them, etc.: Here we have mention of the familiar four elements, and below of Hate, but the realm of the Blessed and the curse pronounced upon the spirits seem incompatible with the On Nature. Moreover, something is needed after all for metemphychosis besides "the reappearance of the same corporeal elements in definite combinations" (Burnet, p. 271), though perhaps Empedocles deemed that sufficient. Cf. the Buddhistic doctrine of reincarnation and retribution. Cf. also Gomperz, p. 249 S.
Fr. 116. Charis: Aphrodite. In the On Nature (fr. 35) E. refers to the unwillingness also of Hate to submit to the law of necessity.
Fr. 117. Possibly as a punishment for having tasted flesh: "Empedocle ci fa sapere che il suo spirito era gii pervenuto alia sede dei beati, ma che cedendo alia tentazione accosto impuri cibi agli labbri [cf. fr. 139], e tomo ad essere arbusto, pesce, uccello, fanciullo e giovinetta." Bodrero, p. 147.
"So long as man [in the Orphic belief] has not severed completely his brotherhood with plants and animals, not realized the distinctive marks and attributes of his humanity, he will say with Empedocles: 'Once on a time a youth was I,^nd I was a maiden, A bush, a bird, and a fish with scales that gleam in the ocean.' " Harrison, Proleg. to Study of Greek Religion, p. 590.
Fr. 118. This must refer to Empedocles' feelings, as he entered, after banishment from heaven, upon his earthly career (cf. fr. 119). Cf.
"Infans...vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut sequmst cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum."
Lucr., V, 226.
For other parallels see Munro and Guissani, notes to loc. cit.
Fr. 119. Cf. note to fr. 118.
Fr. 121. A joyless land: with fr. 122 and 123 this refers, as I understand it, to our mundane world itself.
And Labors burthened with the water-jars: this is a paraphrase of the puzzling ^pya 'pevari, which, it has been suggested to me by Prof. Newbold, "can hardly be anything other than the fruitless toil of the water-carriers, representing, if the scene be earth, life's disappointments and the vanity of all human pursuits." If this interpretation be correct, the figure is evidently taken from the conception of the Orphic Hell, which, if the literary tradition be reliable, was situated upon earth (for water-carriers in Hell, cf. Harrison, Proleg. to Study of Greek Religion, Chap. XI, p. 614 ff.); but that E. is depicting scenes from the Orphic Hell itself may be questioned from what is preserved to us of the context: he seems throughout these adjacent fragments to be dwelling on the earthly abiding place unto which he and others must descend from the realm of the blessed.
But Diels (PPF): "nee sunt humanae res fluxae (Karsten) nee vero foedunt morbi genus (Stein), sed agri inundationibus vexati." According to this, it might run in English: "And slimy floods of wasting waters rise And wander," etc. Cf.
"Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains.''
Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, I, 169.
Fr. 122. There: i.e., in the joyless land," the "roofed cave," this earth.
Virgin of the Sun: the moon(?).
The personages that follow are feminine. E. evidently imitates the catalogue of Nymphs in II. S 39: "&«' &p' iijv TXaiKV re, edXetd re KvfioS6Kri re" Kt\, Fr. 125. This refers, perhaps, to the passage from the life, of the blessed to the (relative) death on this earth, where souls are wrapped "in unfamiliar tunics of the flesh" (fr. 126.), and have a hapless existence.
Fr. 126. This refers to metempsychosis.
Fr. 127. The worthiest dwellings: for those who have proceeded in their purification; expanded from the context where the original passage is found (in Ael. nat. an., XII, 7., quoted by Diels, PPF): "X^et dt Kal 'E. r^v iplarqv elvai lurolKiiaiv ri/v toD ivOpiiirov, et fiiv is (wiov ii Xnfts airbv lurayiyoi, \4ovTa ylvea-0af el dk is (jniTov, Sd^Kijv.VE. conceived the plants as having souls, a fancy not confined to antiquity.
Fr, 128. A Golden Age seems incompatible with the biology of the On Nature, but cf. Burnet (p. 271), who thinks it to be referred to the time when Hate was just beginning to separate the elements.
•Kydoimos: personification of uproar, as in battle.
Unmixed blood: the figure is from unmixed wine, which, as such, is thick and dark.
Fr. 129. "Similiter mentis infinitam vim (philosophi scilicet non vatis) Parmenides praedicat fr. 2 'XeOaae S' i/uas direSura j>6ut vapeivra Pepaltos ktX. unde apparet cur nonnulli Parmenidem hie respici arbitrati sunt, nee dubimn cur Pythagorae quater redivivi mentio ["a reference to Pythagoras, four times returned to life"] facta sit." Diels, PPF. But Burnet (p. 236), conjecturing that E. is still speaking of the Golden Age, thinks the "supreme man" is Orpheus.
In ten or twenty human ages: cf. paraphrase of Diels (PPF): "ubi sununa vi mentem intenderat, facile singula quaecumque sive decern sive viginti hominum saeculis fiebant perspicere solebat."
Fr. 132. Bodrero in his attempt to interpret harmoniously all the thoughts of Empedocles explains this passage with reference to what has gone before in the On Nature as follows: "Felice colui che ha una cosi perfetta composizione di elementi da.poter comprendere la natura degli Dei; misero chi per la poverti delle proprie risorse, segue le credenze superstiziose e comuni" (p. 159).
Fr. 134. Cf. fr. 29 and note. Burnet thinks that E. is here too speaking of the Sphere; but the last lines seem out of place in such a connection, even though we recall that E. has vaguely named the Sphere "God" (fr. 31).
Fr. 135. Broad-ruling Ether, etc.: "den weithin herrschenden Feueraether und den unermesslichen Himmelsglanz." Diels, FV. Cf. note to fr. 38.
Din of slaughter: killing of animals. Cf. fr. 137 and 115. The reader need hardly be reminded of the Orphic interdict against eating animal food. ' Vr. 138. "As our philosopher placed life and soul in the blood [cf. fr. 105], it was not unnatural for him to speak of 'drawing the soul.' " Diels, PPF. The passage seems to refer either to the draining or scooping up into a bronze vessel of the blood of slaughtered animals, or to cutting their throats with a sacrificial knife of bronze.
Fr. 139. Cf. note on fr. 117.
Fr. 140. For the probable reason of this injunction cf. fr. 127.
Fr. 141. A familiar Pythagorean commandment, on the meaning of which scholars have offered a variety of suggestions. Bodrero (p.149) and others connect it with the doctrine of metempsychosis (cf. fr. 139, 127); Burnet (p. 104) well compares it (and kindred Pythagorean rules) to the bizarre taboos of savages. Possibly there was some fancied association, based on shape, with the egg (as E. likened olives to eggs in fr. 79), which, as may be gathered from Plutarch, was held by Orphics and Pythagoreans to be taboo, perhaps as being the principle . « of life (cf. Harrison, Proleg, to Study of Greek Religion, p. . 628)., ■t: Fr. 142. ''etiam sensus incertus, utrum lovis et Hecates regna (cf. fr. 13s, 2?) opponantur an quattuor elementa, unde exclusus sit scelestus (cf. fr. 115, 9)." Diels, PPF.
Fr. 143. Scooping ■ Gr. raixSvr', 'cutting,' i. e., water for purposes of ceremonial lustration (?), for which bronze vessels were regularly employed.
Fr. 144. George Herbert uses the same figure somewhere in his poems.
Fr. 14s. Evil doings: presumably such "sin" as referred to above which doom souls to "be bom through time In various shapes of mortal kind which change Ever and ever paths of troublous life." Fr. 115.
Fr. 146-7. The last words left us of the all too few on the transmigration of the soul.
Fr. 148. This does not refer to "mother earth," but to the human body, "rb Tf/i \l/vxvt wepiKelufvov aa/ia" (Plut. Quoest. Conviv. V 8, 2, p. 683 E \post fr. 80], quoted by Diels, PPF).
Fr. 149. Of air.
Fr. 151. Of Aphrodite.
Fr. 152. Preserved in Aristotle's Poetics, 21, quoted by Diels, PPF.
Fr. 153. Gr. /Soi//3<J, a very rare word: "arnmlvet Sk koJ KoiKlav is irop' •E/iveSok\€:." Hesych., quoted by Diels, PPF.
Fr. iS3a. Diels (FV) translates the doxographer: "In sieben mal sieben Tagen wird der Embryo (seiner Gliederung nacK) durchgebildet."