Kitap 8
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Thou, Empedocles, didst cleanse thy body with nimble flame, fire didst thou drink from everlasting bowls.i.e. the craters of Etna. I will not say that of thine own will thou didst hurl thyself into the stream of Etna; thou didst fall in against thy will when thou wouldst fain not have been found out. And anotherAnth. Pal. vii. 124.: Verily there is a tale about the death of Empedocles, how that once he fell from a carriage and broke his right thigh. But if he leapt into the bowls of fire and so took a draught of life, how was it that his tomb was shown still in Megara?
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His doctrines were as follows, that there are four elements, fire, water, earth and air, besides friendship by which these are united, and strife by which they are separated. These are his wordsFr. 6 D.: Shining Zeus and life-bringing Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis, who lets flow from her tears the source of mortal life, where by Zeus he means fire, by Hera earth, by Aidoneus air, and by Nestis water.
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And their continuous change, he says, never ceases,Fr. 17. 6 D. as if this ordering of things were eternal. At all events he goes onFr. 17. 7 D.: At one time all things uniting in one through Love, at another each carried in a different direction through the hatred born of strife.
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The sun he calls a vast collection of fire and larger than the moon; the moon, he says, is of the shape of a quoit, and the heaven itself crystalline. The soul, again, assumes all the various forms of animals and plants. At any rate he saysFr. 117 D.: Before now I was born a boy and a maid, a bush and a bird, and a dumb fish leaping out of the sea.
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His poems On Nature and Purifications run to 5000 lines, his Discourse on Medicine to 600. Of the tragedies we have spoken above.
Chapter 3. EPICHARMUS (c. 550-460 B.C.)
