Empedocles of Acragas (492-435 BCE)





Like Pythagoras, the charismatic Empedocles was a magnet for legends; unlike Pythagoras, though, he might well himself have done all he could to actively encourage them. Born into an aristocratic family in Acragas, Sicily, around 492 BCE, he seems to have vigorously supported the democratic faction in the politics of his home city. The proximity of Acragas to Croton and Elea in Southern Italy brought him into contact with both Parmenides and the Pythagoreans, and strong traces of their influence are evident in his own work.

A flashy and flamboyant showman, Empedocles is said to have traveled extensively through the western Mediterranean, dressed in expensive purple robes, bronze boots, and a golden crown. He professed extraordinary power over the natural world, as well as the means to perform miraculous cures, and offered these secrets to prospective disciples (tr. Barnes):

What drugs there are for ills and what help against old age
you will learn, since for you alone I shall accomplish all this.
And you will stop the power of the tireless winds which sweep over the earth
and destroy the crops with their breath,
and again, if you wish, you will bring on compensating breezes.
And after black rain you will produce a seasonable drought
for men, and after the summer drought you will produce
tree-nurturing streams which live in the ether.
And you will lead from Hades the power of dead men. Empedocles even went as far as to claim divine status for himself:                             No longer mortal, I travel among you as an immortal:
                            revered by all, wreathed in headbands and garlands of flowers. The most famous—and most fanciful—account of his death relates the story of how, wishing to demonstrate his true immortality, he threw himself into the crater of Mount Etna.

Fragments:

(1) Hear first the four roots of all things: fire and water and earth and the immeasurable height of air.

(2) And I shall tell you another thing: there is no creation of any mortal things, nor any end in hateful death, but only mingling and separation of what is mingled.

(3) As when painters decorate votive tablets,...they take the various pigments in their hands, mixing in correct proportions more of these and less of those, and produce from them forms resembling all things,...so let no falsehood deceive you into thinking that there is any other source [than the elements] of all the countless mortal things.

(4) I shall tell a twofold tale. At a certain time one alone grew out of many, and at another it grew apart to be many out of one: fire and water and earth and the immense height of air, and cursed Strife...and Love.... All these are equal and coeval, but each is master in a different province and each has its own character, and they prevail in turn as time circles round. And besides these nothing comes into being nor ceases to be.... There are just these, but running through one another they become now some things and now others and yet ever and always the same.

(5) Others maintain that the same cosmos comes to be and perishes alternately, and again arises and perishes, and that this succession goes on forever. Thus Empedokles says that Love and Strife gain the ascendancy in turn: Love brings all things together into one, destroys the cosmos created by Strife and makes it into a sphere, whereas Strife separates the elements again and creates a world like this one. [Simplicius]

(6) Empedokles says that flesh originates from the four elements mixed in equal quantities, sinews from fire and earth mixed with double the quantity of water, the claws or nails of animals from the sinews insofar as these are chilled by contact with the air, bones from two parts of water and earth to four of fire....
[Aetius]

(7) Some claim that differentiation of sex occurs in the womb. Thus Empedokles says that what enters a hot womb becomes male, what enters a cold womb female. The heat or coldness is determined by the flow of the menses, which may be either colder or hotter, older or more recent. [Aristotle]

(8) This is the way all creatures breathe. All animals have tubes of flesh that contain a little blood, stretched deep inside the body. At their mouths the furthest  ends of the nostrils are pierced through with close-set holes, so that the blood is kept out but a free path for the air is opened through the passages. Then whenever the delicate blood flows away from here, the blustering air rushes in with a furious surge; but when it leaps back, the animal breathes out. It is just as when a girl plays with a water-lifter [klepsydra]...: when she puts the opening of the neck against her hand and dips the vessel into...the water, no liquid enters, since the bulk of air falling from within on the close-set holes prevents it until she uncovers the compressed stream of air. Then as the air gives way, the water enters. Similarly when water occupies the interior of the klepsydra and the opening is stopped by the hand, the air outside trying to get back in keeps the liquid back...until she releases her hand.... So with breathing, when the blood coursing through the body leaps back to the inner recesses, a stream of air immediately comes surging in, but when it returns, an equal quantity goes back and is breathed out.

(9) When a man thinks to go out into the wintry night, he gets a light ready, a flame of blazing fire, and puts a lantern around it to keep the winds away: it divides the blasts of the rushing winds, but the light (the finer substance) passes through and shines...with unyielding beams. So too... primeval fire enclosed in membranes gave birth to the round pupil in its delicate garments that are pierced through with wondrous channels. These keep out the water that surrounds the pupil but let through the fire, the finer part.