THIS translation was made at the suggestion of my friend, Dr. W. R. Newbold, Professor of Greek Phi- losophy at the University of Pennsylvania, in the hope of interesting here and there a student of thought or a lover of poetry. The introduction and notes are intended merely to illustrate the text: they touch only incidentally on the doxographical material and give thus by no means a com- plete account of all it is possible to know about Empedocles's philosophy. My indebtedness to the critics is frequently attested in the references; but I have in all points tried to exercise an independent judgment. Most citations from works not accessible in English are given in translation.
It is a genuine pleasure to acknowledge my special obli- gations to Professor Newbold and to Professor E. B. Mc- Gilvary of the philosophical department at Wisconsin for their kindness in reading the manuscript and adding several valuable suggestions. I am indebted to Dr. J. R. Blackman of the department of physiology at the University of Wis- consin for medical references.
William Ellery Leonard. Madison, Wis., May 14, 1907.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGB Preface v Empedocles: The Man, the Philosopher, the Poet.
Life. I Personality 2 Works 3 History of the Text 3 Translations 4 The Ideas of Empedocles 4 The Poetry of Empedocles 9 Bibliography. 13 On Nature.
To his Friend IS Limitations of Knowledge 15 The Elements 17 Ex Nihilo Nihil 19 The Plenum 19 Our Elements Immortal 20 Love and Hate, the Everlasting 20 The Cosmic Process 20 Love and Hate in the Organic World 23 From the Elements is All We See 24 Similia Similibus 25 An Analogy 26 The Speculative Thinker 27 An Aphorism 27 The Law of the Elements 28 The Sphere 29 Physical Analogies 30 The Conquest of Love 31 Similia Similibus 32 The World as It Now Is 33 Earth and Air not Illimitable 33 viii THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
PAGB Sun and Moon 33 The Darkling Night 35 Wind and Rain 35 Fire 35 The Volcano 35 Air 35 Things Passing Strange 3° Strange Creatures of Olden Times 3° The Process of Human Generation To-day. 3° On Animals and Plants 39 Our Eyes 4^ The Black River Bottoms 44 Eyes 45 Bones 45 Blood and Flesh 45 The Ear 46 The Rushing Blood and the Clepsydra 46 Scent 48 On the Psychic Life 49 Dominion Si The Purifications.
The Healer and Prophet 53 Expiation and Metempsychosis 54 This Earth of Ours 56 This Sky-Roofed World 56 This Vale of Tears 56 The Changing Forms 58 The Golden Age 58 The Sage 59 Those Days 60 The Divine 60 Animal Sacrifice 62 Taboos 63 Sin 63 The Progression of Rebirth 64 Last Echoes of a Song Half Lost 65 Notes 67 EMPEDOCLES: THE MAN, THE PHILOS- OPHER, THE POET.
LIFE.
THE philosopher Empedocles, according to the common tradition of antiquity, was born at Agrigentum in Sicily, and flourished just before the Peloponnesian war, the contemporary of the great Athenians about Pericles. He might have heard the Prometheus in the theatre of Dionysus and have talked with Euripides in the Agora; or have seen with Phidias the bright Pallas Athene on the Acropolis; or have listened in the groves beyond the city while Anaxagoras unfolded to him those half-spiritual guesses at the nature of the universe, so different from his own. He might: but the de- tails of his life are all too imperfectly recorded. The brief references in other philosophers and the vita of Diogenes Laertiys contain much that is contra- dictory or legendary. Though apparently of a wealthy and conservative family, he took the lead among his fellow citizens against the encroach- ments of the aristocracy; but, as it seems, falling at last from popular favor, he left Agrigentum and died in the Peloponnesus — his famous leap into Mount Aetna being as mythical as his reputed 2 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
translation after a sacrificial meal...But time restores the exiles: Florence at last set the image of Dante before the gates of Santa Croce;.and now, after two thousand years, the hardy demo- crats of Agrigentum begin to cherish (so I have read) the honest memory of Empedocles with that of Mazzini and Garibaldi.
PERSONALITY.
The personality of this old Mediterranean Greek must have been impressive. He was not only the statesman and philos6pher, but the poet. And ego- tistic, melancholy, eloquent^ soul that he was, he seems to have considered himself above all as the wonder-worker and the hierophant, in purple vest and golden girdle, "Crowned both with fillets and with flowering wreaths;" and he tells us of his triumphal passage through the Sicilian cities, how throngs of his men and women accompanied him along the road, how from house and alley thousands of the fearful and the sick crowded upon him and besought oracles or healing words. And stories have come down to us of his wonderful deeds, as the waking of a woman from a long trance and the quite plausible cure of a mad- man by music. Some traces of this imposing figure, with elements frankly drawn from legends not here mentioned appear in Arnold's poem.
'From Empedocles, indeed, according to Aristotle, the study of rhetoric got its first impulse. Cf. Diels's Gorgias und Empedocles in Sitsungsberichte d. K. P. Akademie d. Wissenschaften, 1884.
THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. 3 WORKS.* Of the many works, imputed to Empedocles by antiquity, presumably only two are genuine, the poems On Nature and the Purifications; and of these we possess but the fragments preserved in the citations of philosopher and doxographer from Ar- istotle to Simplicius, which, though but a small part of the whole, are much more numerous and com- prehensive than those of either Xenophanes or Par- menides. It is impossible to determine when the poems were lost: they were read doubtless by Lu- cretius and Cicero, possibly as late as the sixth century by Simplicius, who at least quotes from the On Nature at length.^ HISTORY OF THE TEXT.
The fragments were imperfectly collected late in the Renaissance, as far as I have been able to deter- mine, first by the great German Xylander, who translated them into Latin. Stephanus published his Empedoclis Fragmenta at Paris in 1573. But not till the nineteenth century did they get the at- tention they deserve, in the editions of Sturz ( 1805) Karsten ( 1838), Stein ( 1852), and Mullach ( i860), which show, however, confusing diversities in the readings as well as in the general arrangement. Each except Stein's is accompanied by Latin trans- The writings of Democritus are conjectured to have been lost between the third and fifth centuries.
4 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
lation* and notes. But our best text is unquestion- ably that of Hermann Diels of Berlin, first pub- lished in 1901 in his Poetarum Philosophorum Fragment a, and subsequently (igo6), with a few slight changes and additions, in his Fragmente der Vorsokratiker.
TRANSLATIONS.
TRANSLATIONS.
As said above, there are several translations into Latin; all that I have seen being in prose, and some rather loose for the work of distinguished scholars. The late P. Tannery gives a literal French trans- lation in his work on Hellenic Science, Diels in his Fragmente one in German, Bodrero in his // Prin- cipio one in Italian, and Burnet and Fairbanks in their works on early Greek philosophy literal Eng- lish translations, of which the former's is the better. There is one in German hexameters from the ear- lier decades of the last century; and a few brief selections in the English hexameters of W. C. Law- ton may be found in Warner's Library of the World's Best Literature. The works of Frere and of Symonds contain specimen renderings, the form- er's in verse, the latter's in prose. Probably Diels does most justice to the meaning of Empedocles; none assuredly does any kind of justice to his poetry.
THE IDEAS OF EMPEDOCLES.
We can reconstruct something of Empedocles's system out of the fragments themselves and out of 'I have not seen the original of Sturz's edition; but I gather from references in my reading that it contains a translation.
THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. 5 the allusions in the ancients; yet our knowledge is by no means precise, and even from the earliest times has there been diversity of interpretation. •Various problems are discussed, as they come up, in the Notes, but a brief survey of what seems to be his thought as a whole, even at the risk of some repetition, may help the general reader to get his bearings.
The philosophy of the On Nature may be con- sidered as a union of the Eleatic doctrine of Being with that of the Heraclitic Becoming, albeit the Sicilian is more the natural scientist than the dia- lectician, more the Spencer than the Hegel of his times. With Parmenides he denies that the aught can come from or return to the naught; with Hera- clitus he affirms the principle of development. There is no real creation or annihilation in this universal round of things; but an eternal mixing and unmix- ing, due to two eternal powers, Love and Hate, of one world-stuff in its sum unalterable and eternal. There is something in the conception suggestive of the chemistry of later times. To the water of Thales, the air of Anaximenes, and the fire of Heraclitus he adds earth, and declares them as all alike primeval, the promise and the potency of the universe, "The fourfold root of all things."
These are the celebrated "four elements" of later philosophy and magic. In the beginning, if we may so speak of a vision which seems to transcend 6 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
time, these four, held together by the uniting bond of Love, rested, each separated and unmixed, beside one another in the shape of a perfect sphere, which by the entrance of Hate was gradually broken up to develop at last into the world and the individual things, "Knit in all forms and wonderful to see."
But the complete mastery of Hate, means the com- plete dissipation and destruction of things as such, until Love, winning the upper hand, begins to unite and form another 'world of life and beauty, which ends in the still and lifeless sphere of old, again ''exultant in surrounding solitude."
Whereupon, in the sarfte way, new world-periods arise, and in continual interchange follow one an- other forever, like the secular aeons of the nebular hypothesis of to-day.
Moreover, Empedocles tells us of a mysterious vortex, the origin of which he may have explained in some lost portion of his poem, a whirling mass, like the nebula in Orion or the original of our solar system, that seems to be the first stage in the world- process after the motionless harmony of the sphere. Out of this came the elements one by one: first, air, which, condensing or thickening, encompassed the rest in the form of a glolae or, as some maintain, of an egg; then fire, which took the upper space, and crowded air beneath her. And thus arose two hemispheres, together forming the hollow vault of the terrestrial heaven above and below us, the THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. "J bright entirely of fire, the dafk of air, sprinkled with the patches of fire we call stars. And, because in unstable equilibrium, or because bearing still something of the swift motion of the vortex, or be- cause of fire's intrinsic push and pressure — for Em- pedocles's physics are here particularly obscure — this vault begins to revolve: and behold the morn- ing and the evening of the first day; for this revo- lution of the vault is, he tells us, the cause of day and night.
Out of the other elements came the earth, prob- ably something warm and slimy, without form and void. It too was involved in the whirl of things; and the same force which expels the water from a sponge, when swung round and round in a boy's hand, worked within her, and the moist spurted forth and its evaporation filled the under spaces of air, and the dry land appeared. And the everlast- ing Law made two great lights, for signs and sea- sons, and for days and years, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; and it made the stars also.
The development of organic life, in which the interest of Empedocles chiefly centers, took place, as we have seen, in the period of the conflict of Love and Hate, through the unceasing mixing and sepa- ration of the four elements. Furthermore, the quantitative differences of the combinations pro- duced qualitative differences of sensible properties. First the plants, conceived as endowed with feeling, sprang up, germinations out of earth. Then ani- 8 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
mals arose piecemeal — he tells us in one passage — h^ads, arms, eyes, roaming ghastly through space, the chance unions of which resulted in grotesque shapes until joined in fit number and proportion, they developed into the organisms we see about us. In another passage we hear how first rose mere lumps of earth "with rude impress," but he is probably speaking of two separate periods of creation. Empedocles was a crude evolutionist.* His theory of the attraction of like for like, so suggestive of the chemical affinities of modern sci- ence; his theory of perception, the earliest recog- nition, with the possible exception of Alcmaon of Croton, of the subjective element in man's experi- ence with the outer world; and his affirmation of the consciousness of matter, in company with so many later materialists, even down to Haeckel, who puts the soul in the atom, are, perhaps, for our pur- poses sufficiently explained in the notes.
Behind all the absurdities of the system of Em- pedocles, we recognize the keen observation, in- sight, and generalizing power of a profound mind, which, in our day with our resources of knowledge, would have been in the forefront of the world's seek- ers after that Reality which even the last and the greatest seek with a success too humble to warrant much smiling at those gone before.
• Some portions of the above paragraphs are translated and con- densed from Zeller, some others from Vorlander, Geschichte der Philosophie, I. Band, Leipsic, 1903.
THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. 9 THE POETRY OF EMPEDOCLES.
Empedocles and his forerunner Parmenides were the only Greek philosophers who wrote down their systems in verse; for Heraclitus had written in crabbed prose, and Xenophanes was more poet- satirist than poet-philosopher. Lucretius, the poet- ical disciple of Empedocles (though not in the same degree that he was the philosophic disciple of Epi- curus), is in this their only successor. Contempo- rary reflective satire and the metrical forms of the Orphics may, as Burnet conjectured, have sug- gested the innovation; but both Parmenides and Empedocles were poets by nature, and I see no rea- son why they should not naturally and spontane- ously have chosen the poet's splendid privilege of verse for their thought.
The Ionic dialect of Empedocles's hexameters, and occasionally even his phrase, is Homeric; but in mood and manner, as sometimes in philosophic terminology, he recalls the Eleatic. Parmenides had written: "And thou shalt know the Source etherial, And all the starry signs along the sky. And the resplendent works of that clear lamp Of glowing sun, and whence they all arose. Likewise of wandering works of round^eyed moon Shalt thou yet learn and of her source; and then Shalt thou know too the heavens that close us round- Both whence they sprang and how Fate leading them Bound fast to keep the limits of the stars How earth and sun and moon and common sky, The Milky Way, Ol3mipos outermost.
And burning might of stars made haste to be."* •Parmenides, fr. lo, ii, Diels, FV.
lO THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
And it is as if he were addressing the Agrigen- tine and bequeathing him his spiritual heritage; and we might add thereto those verses of another poet of more familiar times: "And thou shalt write a song like mine, and yet Much more than mine, as thou art more than I."
For, although Empedocles has left us no pas- sage of the gorgeous imagination of Parmenides's proem,® the Ittttol raC fie <j)epov(nv, his fragments as a whole seem much more worth while.
He was true poet. There is first the grandeur of his conception. Its untruth for the intellect of to-day should not blind us to its truth and power for the imagination, the same yesterday, to-day and perhaps forever. The Ptolemaic astronomy of Par- adise Lost is as real to the student of Milton as the Copernican to the student of Laplace, and an essen- tial element in the poem. The nine circles of the subterranean Abyss lose none of their impressive- ness for us because we know more of geology than the author of the Inferno. The imagination can glory in the cross of Christ, towering over the wrecks of time, long after the intellect has settled with the dogmas of orthodoxy. And an idea may be imposing even for the intellect where the intel- lect repudiates its validity. A stupendous error like the Hegelian logic of history, even the pseudo- science of Goethe's vertebral theory of the skull, that yet suggests the great principle of morpholog- 'Diels, FV. Arnold has borrowed from it one of the best lines of Empedocles on Aetna: "Ye sun-born Virgins! on the road of truth." — THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. II ical and functional metamorpfcosis, argues greater things for the mind of man than any truth, however ingeniously discovered, in the world of petty facts. And the response of the soul is a poetic response, the thrill and the enthusiasm before the large idea. Our poet's conception is impressive to imagination and to intellect: we stand with him amid the awful silence of the primeval Sphere that yet exults in surrounding solitude; but out of the darkness and the abyss there comes a sound: one by one do quake the limbs of God; the powers of life and death are at work; Love and Hate contend in the bosom of nature as in the bosom of man; we sweep on in fire and rain and down the "awful heights of Air;" amid the monstrous shapes, the arms, the heads, the glaring eyes, in space, and at last we are in the habitable world, this shaggy earth, this sky-roofed cave of the fruitful vine and olive, of the multi- tudinous tribes of hairy beasts, and of men and women, — all wonderful to see; for Empedocles is strikingly concrete. But the aeons of change never end; and the revolution, as we have seen, comes full circle forever.
There is too the large poet's feeling for the color, the movement, the mystery, the life of the world about us: for the wide glow of blue heaven, for the rain streaming down on the mountain trees, for the wind-storm riding in from ocean, for "Night, the lonely, with her sightless eyes," 12 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
for the lion couched on the mountain side, the diver- bird skimming the waves with its wings, and "The songless shoals of spawning fish" that are "nourished in deep waters" and led, it may be, by Aphrodite.
There is the poet's relation to his kind, the sym- pathy with "men and women, the pitied and bewailed," who after their little share of life with briefest fates "Like smoke are lifted up and flit away;" the interest and the joy in the activities of man: how now one lights his lantern and sallies forth in the wintry night; how now another mixes his paints in the sunlight for a variegated picture of trees and birds which is to adorn the temple; how now a little girl, down by the brook, "Plays with a waterclock of gleaming bronze."
There is the poet's instinct for the eflfective phrase, which suggests so much, because it tells so little; an austere simplicity, which relates the author by achievement to that best period of Greek art to which he belonged by birth; and a roll of rhythm as impassioned and sonorous as was ever heard on Italian soil, though that soil was the birth-place of Lucretius...But I am the translator, not the critic, of the poet.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
BoDRERO in his II Principio fondamentale del sistema di Empedocle' (Rome, 1904; cited as "Bodrero") gives a valuable bibliog- raphy, almost exhaustive for the study of our philosopher, save for the surprising omission of the work of Burnet. Bo- drero is presumably known and accessible to the special stu- dent; for the general reader the following will, perhaps, be found sufficient: Blakewell. Source Book in Greek Philosophy, New York, 1907. (Contains partial prose translation, but came to hand after the present volume was in press.)
Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, London, 1892. (Keen and inde- pendent. Cited as "Burnet.").
Fairbanks, The First Philosophers of Greece, New York, 1898. (Contains translations of the doxographers on Empedocles.)
(lOMFERZ, Greek Thinkers, vol. I., trans, by Laurie Magnus, New York, 1901. (Beautifully written, inspiring; but somewhat fanciful. Cited as "Gomperz.")
Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets, vol. L, chap. VII., London, 1893. (Good critical appreciation, with some prose transla- tions.)
Tannery, Four Phistoire de la science helline, Paris, 1887. (Keen and independent. Cited as "Tannery.")
WiNDELBAND, History of Ancicnt Philosophy, trans, by H. E. Cush- man. New York, 1899- •This book seems to me as remarkable for its scholarship and acumen as for the speciousness of its views. I wrote to Professor Diels about it, who answered, however, that he had not as yet found time to examine it.
14 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
Zeller, Die Philosophic der Griechen, I. Teil, funfte Auflage, Leip- sic, 1892. (Cited as "Zeller.")
And the above mentioned texts of DiELS, Poetamm Philosophorum Fragmenta, Berlin, 1901. (Contains the comments of the doxographers in the Greek, and a few, but very useful, original notes in Latin. Cited as "Diets, PPR") " Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, zweite Auflage, erster Band, Berlin, 1906. (Contains German translation. Cited as "Diels, FV,") ON NATURE.
To His Friend. I. Ilav(rapir), crv 8e Kkvdi, Sattjjpovo? 'Ay^irov vie.
Hear thou, Pausanias, son of wise Anchitus!
Limitations of Knowledge.
2.
aravomoi [lev yap iraXdfiat Kara yvta Kej^wrai* iroWa 8e SciX' efiircua, to, t d.fL^\vvov(rt fiepCfivas. Travpov Se ^tuijs iSiow fiipo^ adprj(ravTe<i oiKVfjLopoi Kairvoto Sikt^v apdevres drreTrrav auTO p.6vov TreLcdepTes, oroji Trpo<r€Kvp(r€v acao'Tos iraj/Tocr' iXavvofievoi, to S' o\ov [iras] ei/;(6Tai evpelv owTws ovr eiTLOcpKTa rao avopacriv ovo eiraKovora oure vooi TrepiM]irra, crv o ovv, cttci too eAtaort/ijs, wevcreav ov trXeov 'qe ^poreiiq [i'^tls opapev.
For narrow through their members scattered ways Of knowing lie. And many a vile surprise Blunts soul and keen desire. And having viewed Their little share of life, with briefest fates, Like smoke they are lifted up and flit away, Believing only what each chances on, l6 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
Hither and thither driven; yet they boast The larger vision of the whole and all. But thuswise never shall these things be seen, Never be heard by men, nor seized by mind; And thou, since hither now withdrawn apart, Shalt learn — ^no more than mortal ken may span.
areydcrai <f)pevo^ cXXojtos cmtg).
Shelter these teachings in thine own mute breast.
4- dWa deal t&v fiev fiavit]v av(yrpe\jtaT€ •yXcaaonjs, €/c 8' oaixiiv aTOfLartov Kadap^v 6)(er€V(raT€ irrjyijv, KoX (re, TToKviivrjaTq XevKatKeve irapdive. Movaa, avTOfiai, &v difii^ ia-rlv i<f>r]iiepioi,(riv aKoveiy, irefMre Trap' Eiucrc/Snjs eXaovcr* evtjviov app.a. p,T}8e ere y evSo^oio ^njacTat dvdea Ti/i'^S ir/oos dvTjTwv dpeKeadau., i<f>' eSi $* otrCrji irkiov eiireiv Odpare'C Kal Tore Si) ao^urfs iir aKpouri dod^eiv. dXX* ay' ddpei rrao-Tji iroKdp.-qi., itrji. ZrjfKov iKaarov, liiJTe Ti mfiiv €)((iiv irioret irkiov ^ Kar dKoxjrjv ri dK07]v ipiSovTTov virep Tpavtofiara yXtucrcrr};, fi/iyre ti tSjv aXX<ui/, oirocrji iropo^ i&rl vo'^crcu, yvuiiv iritrTiv epvKe, vdci ff i^i S':7Xoi' iKacrrov.
But turn their madness, Gods! from tongue of mine. And drain through holy lips the well-spring clear! And many-wooed, O white-armed Maiden-Muse, Thee I approach: O drive and send to me Meek Piety's well-reined chariot of song, THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. \^ So far as lawful is for men to iiear, Whose lives are but a day. Nor shall desire To pluck the flowers of fame and wide report Among mankind impel thee on to dare Speech beyond holy bound and seat profane Upon those topmost pinnacles of Truth. But come, by every way of knowing see How each thing is revealed. Nor, having sight, Trust sight no more than hearing will bear out. Trust echoing ear but after tasting tongue; Nor check the proof of all thy members aught: Note by all ways each thing as 'tis revealed.
5- dXXa KaKois ^Jkv Kapra fieXei Kpariov<riv dirurretv. «as 8e irap' ■qp.erepris Kekerai TriorTw/iara Mouoijs, yvSidk SiacrtrqdevTOi ivl <rir\dy)(uouri Xoyoto.
Yea, but the base distrust the High and Strong; Yet know the pledges that our Muse will urge, When once her words be sifted through thy soul.
The Elements. 6. riaaapa yap irdvrcov pi^dfiara irpwrov aKovc Zeus dpyr)^ 'HpTj re. ^epeafiio^ ■^8* 'AiScufcvs N^o-Tis 0'f -^ SaK/3voi9 reyyei KpowafMa ^poreiov.
And first the fourfold root of all things hear! — White gleaming Zeus, life-bringing Here, Dis, And Nestis whose tears bedew mortality.
l8 TliE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
7.
dyevTjTa.
The uncreated elements.
Birth and Death. 8. aWo Se TOL ipeo)- j^utrts ovSev6<; icTiv airavratv 6vr)TS)v, owSe ns ovXofievov davdroio reXevn;, dWa fiovov fiC^us tc StaXXa|'is re fnyevTeov iorrC, <j)v<ri,s S' eirt tois ovofJid^eTcu dydpamoKTiv, More will I tell thee too: there is no birth Of all things mortal, nor end in ruinous death; But mingling only and interchange of mixed There is, and birth is but its name with men.
9- oi o ore fiev Kara <p<UTa jutiyevr eis atUep i,\^K(ovTaij rj Kara dyjpwv dyporipav yevo? •^ Kajd ddfivoiv ■^e KttT oKui'ei)^', TOT€ /tev TO [Xeyoutri] yevecrdoL' evre o' dvoKpLvdacrL, rd S' aS SucrSat/oioj^a TroTfiov ■§ dEJu.19 [ou] KaXeovcri, vofiai, S' eTrufyrjfjLi Kal auTOS.
But when in man, wild beast, or bird, or bush, These elements commingle and arrive The realms of light, the thoughtless deem it "birth"; When they dispart, 'tis "doom of death;" and though Not this the Law, I too assent to use.
la ddvWTOV...dXoLTTjV.
Avenging Death.
THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. I9 Ex nihilo nihH II. vrjmof ov yap tr^iv hoki)(6^povi<i elcn fiepLfivcUf ot St) yiyviaOai trdpo's ovK iov i\m^ov(riv ^ Ti KaTadvijia-Kav re koI i$6\\v(rdai airdvTr)t.
Fools! for their thoughts are briefly brooded o'er. Who trust that what is not can e'er become, Or aught that is can wholly die away.
12.
ot T€ yap ovBdfi i6vTo<s dp.rf'^^avov cctti yevecrdai KaC T iov i^aiToXicrdai dvrjwcrTov koX dirvcTTOv aiet yap TrJL y eorai, ottjji k€ tls alev ipcCSrji..
From what-is-not what-is can ne'er become; So that what-is should e'er be all destroyed, No force could compass and no ear hath heard — For there 'twill be forever where 'tis set.
The Plenum. 13- ou8e Ti Tou iravTos Kevehv TreXei ouSe irepLtrirov.
The All hath neither Void nor Overflow.
14. Tov wavTos 8* ovSev Keveov iroOev ovv ri k iirekOoi,; But with the All there is no Void, so whence Could aught of more come nigh?
20 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
Our Elements Immortal.
IS- oiiK av avTjp roiavra (to^o<s ^peal /utai^cutroiTO, <us o<f>pa fidv TC ^Lcocrif to 8'^ fivorov Kokeovcrt,, T6<f>pa p.kv 'ovv elaCvy KaC a^iv irdpa ociXa km ccrpXa, irplv 8e wdyev re ^porol koX [ewel] \v0ev, ovBev ap aaw.
No wise man dreams such folly in his heart, That only whilst we live what men call life We have our being and take our good and ill, And ere as mortals we compacted be. And when as mortals we be loosed apart, We are as nothing.
Love and Hate, the Everlasting.
^i yap KoX vdpo<i iaKe, Kal cirtreTat, ouSe iror', oia», TOVTOiv dfLif)OT€p(ov KeveaaeTai datriTos cdau.
For even as Love and Hate were strong of yore. They shall have their hereafter; nor I think Shall endless Age be emptied of these Twain.
The Cosmic Process. 17- SmtX* ipeoi- Tore pey yap ev rjv^ijOr) povov etvai Ik ifK^ovoiVy Tore 8' aS 8ic<^v vXeov' i^ ivo^ cTvai. .8oit) 8e dvrjT&v yeVctris, Soil) 8' drroXeiApi^- T^v pev yap travroiv otJi'oSos tiktci t oXeicet re, n 8e iraXiv Zia^vopivoiv 0p€<}>d€i(ra Bieimj. Kal TaCr' dWdacrovTa SiapTrepes ovSapd Xijyci, aXXoTC pev ^tXdrjjTi awepxopev cis li/ aTra^ra, THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. 21 aXXore 8* a5 Stj^' eKao-ra ^opev/i^a Ncwccos ^^a. [ouTct)? ^i fikv e.v ix irXeovav jiejjiddTfKe <j>v€<Tdai] •qoe irdKiv Sia^vpTO^ ei/05 irKiov iKTeKidovtri, rrji [lev yiyvovrai re koX ov (r<]iia-vv e/t7reSos aldv •qi oe oia\kd(r(rovTa Siafiirepe^ ovSa/ia Xi^yei, Tovrqi o alkv eaxriv aKivrfroi Kara kvkKov. oXX aye fjivdcav KXvdi- [idBr] yap rot ^peva^ av^et,' CDS yap Kai irpiv eeiira Tn^avaKcav ireipara fivdtov, omtX' epeo)' Tore fiev yap ev Tji^ijOrj [lovov eTvai e/c irXeovcjv, totc 8* aS 8tci^u TrXeov* e^ ej/os etj'ai, TTvp Kal vSap Kal yala Kal "qepo^ dirXerov wjios, NetKos T* ovkofievov Stj^a Tmj/, aTaXawoi/ avavrrji, Kal ^ik6rr)<s iv toIo-lv, utt} firJKo^ re wkdro^ tc* r^u ait pofoi Bepxev, fwjS' 6p,p,a(riv ^(to tc^tjitcSs* ijTis Kai dvrjTOLO'i, vo[ii^eTcu ep.<^VTO% dpOpoi^^ r^i re ^C\a ^poveovcTL Kal dpdfita epya TeXovci, Ti]do(r6i/Tju KaXeovre^ iiT(ow[iov ^8' 'Atjypohinrjv T^v ov Tts /tera Toicrii/ eKuT<roii.evy]v SeSdrjKe Bt^to^ dvrjp' (TV 8' aK0V6 Xoyou oroXov ovk aTranjXoi'. TaCra ya/o lad re travra Kal rjXiKa yevvav eaa-i, n/x'^s 8' aXXt}; dWo [leSei, irdpa 8* ^do$ cfcacrTcui, Ef 8e fiepei KpaTeovat ireptirXofievoio xpovoio. Kal TT/Jo? Tots ovT dp Te Ti yiverai ovr dTrokrjyei' eire yap e^deipovTo hLap,trepe<i, ovkct av ^(rav