Abstract
This article argues that Empedocles’ trust in Strife (DK31 B115.14 = LM22 D10.14) is not, as the prevailing interpretation has it, only a past misjudgement and failure. Rather, trust in Strife still, and to his own lament, infects Empedocles’ mind and informs his life. This detail then offers a fresh perspective on Empedocles’ self-conception and on how, through the daimōn’s cosmic peregrinations, Empedocles raises and pursues questions of agency and responsibility. Furthermore, it sheds light on Empedocles’ understanding of his own ethical standing: common assumptions to the contrary notwithstanding, he does not see himself as an unqualifiedly successful embodiment of his own ideals.
1 Introduction
As he concludes his account of crime and transmigratory punishment among divine beings, Empedocles identifies himself as a daimonic exile ‘trusting in mad Strife’ (DK31 B115.13–14 = LM22 D10.13–14).1 This remark will turn out to be more puzzling and challenging than scholars recognise. By contrast with the prevailing interpretation, I will argue that this trust does not represent merely a past misjudgement or failure that led Empedocles down the path of crime and exile but no longer exercises any hold on his mind. Instead, the text indicates that Empedocles is still now trusting in mad Strife, that this trust at least to some degree governs his cosmic peregrinations and—to his own lament—still infects his present state of mind, even if less blindingly and virulently than before.
This point will lead us into a broader examination of questions of self-conception, agency and responsibility in Empedocles’ thought, and of how Empedocles understands the nature and extent of his own standing and achievements. Empedocles both locates his agency with the transmigrating daimōn and, at the same time, renders the daimōn’s agency subject to the (sometimes overwhelming) external influences of the divine powers that govern his cosmic journey and to the succession of alien bodies that constitute his uncomfortable way stations along this journey. On the one hand, the daimōn will emerge as a deliberate and volitional agent and as a continuing (though also changing) entity across successive incarnations. On the other hand, the daimōn’s self-government is constrained and complicated by the ongoing influence of mad Strife and by the hampering psychological and cognitive effects of his different human, animal and vegetal hosts. As he travels from one life-form to the next—across different species and genders—the daimōn experiences substantially different psychological lives, framed by different impulses, capacities and limitations.2 An important point, however, will be that, even in his current incarnation, Empedocles does not imagine himself to be now a perfect manifestation of his own ethical ideals: his mind is not altogether free of Strife’s pernicious influence. For the exiled daimōn, I will argue, trust in Strife represents an unwelcome attachment that the daimōn must struggle to resist and can resist with only partial and varying degrees of success. To some extent, the influence of Strife’s madness remains an inescapable fact of the exile’s unhappy existence.3
2 The Wandering Daimōn: (Still Now) Trusting in Mad Strife
In B115, Empedocles recounts a system of crime and punishment among the daimones and his own subsequent exile:
Other fragments flesh out Empedocles’ transmigratory career a little further. His sojourns as different life-forms encompass land, sea and air animals, including both human genders and plants (B117 = D13). Again, Empedocles laments crimes that he committed as some beast (Strasb. d 5–6 = B139 = D34, D76.5–6) and, when he refers to daimones who become lions among beasts and laurels among trees (B127 = D36), it is a fair guess that he is similarly alluding to his own previous incarnations.
The passage concludes with the stunning revelation that the speaker is himself one of the exiled and transmigrating daimones, and this revelation is capped off with his description of himself as ‘trusting in mad Strife.’7 According to a widely held interpretation commonly taken for granted, Empedocles’ trust in Strife is a thing of the past. It constitutes the ethical misjudgement and failure that got the daimōn into trouble in the first place, but the daimōn no longer places trust in Strife. Thus, for example, Gheerbrant (2017) discusses B115.13–14 as ‘a retrospective analysis’ of the past influence that once led Empedocles to perpetrate his crimes.8 The translation of Laks and Most captures well the common attitude: ‘Of them, I too am now one, an exile from the divine and a wanderer, I who relied on insane Strife.’9
I submit that, while the daimōn does indeed regret and lament his trust in Strife, he does not imagine that he is now altogether free of this trust.10 To begin with, pisunos (‘trusting’, ‘relying’) is not a participle, as it is often treated, but an adjective. The term expresses the trust that agents (mortal or divine) place in others or in their own attributes, as in Zeus’ trust in his thunder and lightning (Hesiod, Theogony (Th.) 506). In a distinctive usage, it expresses the trust of mortals in gods and, in particular, how those mortals act in concert with divine guidance or influence. In the Iliad, it is their trust in Zeus’ omens that underpins Hector’s relentless attack against the Greeks, and Priam’s perilous mission to Achilles (
It may be objected that, even if the term pisunos does not itself direct us backwards, a remark on moral error within an account of exile would naturally refer to the past event that brought about this exile. One could, furthermore, square this intuition with our text by taking it that we are meant to supply a (causal) participle after pisunos—the present participle
An initial worry about this line of thought is that Empedocles would be rendering the proper construal of a key point—ex hypothesi, that his trust in Strife is only a thing of the past—dependent on a specific interpretive reaction from his audience that is at most possible but unobvious: supplying an implicit participle and construing its action as antecedent. This worry is exacerbated by a second one. Even if we posited an implicit
These initial points raised in response to the objection are not trivial, but I do not claim that they are conclusive. Ultimately, the question is whether the immediate and broader context of B115.14 directs us to restrict Empedocles’ statement to the daimōn’s past and his original transgression alone. A close consideration of this context points, I suggest, in a different direction. First, the words ‘of them I too am now one’ (
None of this is to deny that these lines, and indeed the fragment as a whole, also look backwards to Empedocles’ initial crimes as a daimōn and the influence of Strife that first led him to err. Indeed, I do not think that this retrospection is of merely secondary importance in this passage. But this retrospection is conveyed only implicitly and indirectly. Explicitly and directly, Empedocles identifies himself here as an exiled and wandering daimōn, who is still now implicated in trusting in mad Strife.
It has long been recognised that Empedocles’ account in B115 echoes Hesiod’s description of the exile of perjured gods (Th. 782–806).15 This intertextual relation might also incline one towards the traditional interpretation. After all, Hesiod’s divine perjurers commit their crime before their exile and do not appear to offend during it.16 Empedocles, however, creatively adapts the Hesiodic model. The complex, transmigratory journey of Empedocles’ exiled daimones through the cosmos is not paralleled in Hesiod, whose exiled divinities are only said to spend one year lying down breathless and another nine in isolation from other gods (795–803). Most importantly, Empedocles’ account of his time as a wild beast (Strasb. d 5–6 = B139 = D34, D76.5–6, cited below) confirms that he indeed departs from Hesiod on the point in question: incarnated as a beast, the exiled daimōn kills violently.17 It is perhaps unsurprising that Strife should continue to haunt the exiled daimōn, since its presence looms large in his peregrinations. While it would be a mistake to limit responsibility for the process of punishment and transmigration only to one of Empedocles’ two principal cosmic powers, the hand of Strife is keenly felt in the exile’s sufferings (‘interchanging the painful paths of life’, B115.8) and, in particular, in the hatred of all the different areas of the cosmos towards him (‘but all hate him’, B115.10–12). Empedocles thus locates himself within an ongoing process of punitive exile in which the influence of Strife is decidedly current.18 Against this background, we could not plausibly dismiss Empedocles’ description of himself as in the grip of this higher power as merely a thing of the past. As we saw, what Empedocles directly refers to just before he describes himself as trusting in mad Strife is his present state as an exiled cosmic wanderer.19
The upshot of the textual analysis undertaken in this section is that, according to B115.14, Empedocles is still now trusting in mad Strife. If this is right, then this line presents a major and largely overlooked puzzle for readers of Empedocles: why might Empedocles be still now trusting in mad Strife, and what might this trust amount to? If nothing else, I hope to have shown that this difficult interpretive challenge—effaced by the traditional, past-tense construal of B115.14—has a claim on our attention. In the next section, I develop and defend one way of meeting it.
3 Humanity and Madness: Why the Daimōn Might (Still Now) Be Trusting in Mad Strife
By comparison with the parallels we considered, Empedocles’ use of the language of trust and reliance in B115 is jarring and paradoxical.20 When Hecuba exhorts Priam to trust in and rely on Zeus’ omen (Il. 24.295), or Aeschylus’ chorus describe themselves as ‘trusting in gods’ (Th. 212), they are encouraging or expressing pious conduct. Such relationships of attachment to gods can also convey privileged and empowering divine favour, as when Pindar portrays the heroic Jason as ‘trusting in a god’ (P 4.232). By contrast, Empedocles’ statement stops us in our tracks and impels us to ask why and in what sense the exiled daimōn might now be trusting in and relying on mad Strife.21 The puzzling nature of Empedocles’ statement about Strife is thrown into sharper relief by his own use of cognate language elsewhere, when he expresses his trust in and attachment to his Muse and calls on us to accept her ‘assurances’ (
Indeed, Empedocles consistently describes Strife in pejorative terms: Strife is hateful (
The daimōn is described as ‘growing to be all sorts of forms of mortal things through time, interchanging the painful paths of life’ (B115.7–8). This suggests that the daimōn successively morphs into or merges with different life-forms.25 Empedocles’ actions as a wild beast make clear that these physiological transformations are accompanied by psychological and cognitive and, therefore, ethical ones. When he was incarnated as a beast, Empedocles was constrained—psychologically and morally—far more radically than he is now. He was driven to tear flesh for the sake of food. Incarnated as a human, Empedocles has the clarity of mind to preach vegetarianism and a sufficient degree of self-control to practise it. Equally, however, even if human beings are not as contaminated by the psychological influence of Strife that so dominates the beast’s thoughts, experiences and behaviour, it does not follow that they are completely free of this influence, or that Empedocles was deluded enough to imagine that he was. Indeed, extant reflections in Empedocles on the human condition and especially on madness, both in general terms and in relation to his own predicament, point in the opposite direction. In this way, they offer supplementary evidence that helps explain why and how the daimōn is, lamentably, still now trusting in mad Strife.
In one passage, Empedocles catalogues opposing powers, both positive and negative, that, it seems, inescapably frame our lived experience:
According to Plutarch, these lines made the point that, from the moment of their birth, humans are subjected to the contrary pull of competing impulses and drives, and that they may strive to align themselves with the better ones but must always expect and cannot simply eliminate the worse (On Tranquillity of Mind 474b–c = R49). Plutarch’s account fits with Empedocles’ apparent reference to the scene of our exile, elsewhere described as a ‘roofed cave’ (B120 = D16), as ‘an unpleasant place … the meadow of Atē’, where murder and rage wander in darkness (B121 = D24).26 It also fits with Empedocles’ remark that the ‘miserable race of mortals’ was born of ‘strifes and groans’ (
We may compare Empedocles’ remark to Pausanias that he will learn, but only as far as mortal intelligence can reach (B2.8b–9 = D42.8b–9), and his own appeal to the Muse to relay to him only what is right for ephemeral mortal creatures to hear (B3.3–5 = D44.3–5). Their current incarnation in human form imposes on Empedocles and Pausanias certain cognitive limitations and—by the same token—ethical and psychological ones. Empedocles could strive to minimise Strife’s hold and influence over his life and mind as much as possible but also acknowledge that as an exiled daimōn, tossed about through the cosmos from one mortal life-form to the next, he cannot eradicate it. In B115.13–14, Empedocles acknowledges that the daimōn still now cannot wholly extricate himself from the same psychological influence that so dominated his life as a wild beast.29
From human existence let us turn to madness. The category of madness lends itself well to worries about one’s inability to regulate fully one’s thoughts and actions. We can be painfully aware of the hold our madness sometimes has over us and yet be unable to dispel it. Aeschylus’ Orestes diagnoses his creeping madness in terms that evoke some failure of self-governance: ‘… as if I am twisting reins with chariot horses outside the track, my wits carry me: they are hard to govern and I am overcome’ (
Now, in B115.14 it is not Empedocles who is described as ‘mad’, but Strife.32 It is extremely difficult, however, to imagine that the daimōn could be trusting in mad Strife without thereby becoming infected with that madness. Empedocles’ account of his time as a wild beast gives us a disquieting snapshot of a form of life frenzied and maddened through Strife. More generally, it is by Love that we commit acts of Love and by Strife acts of Strife (we will return to this point below). It is a constant feature of these twin powers that they come to typify our mental states even as they influence our actions. When we act with Love, we not only perform loving acts but also have loving thoughts (B17.23 = D73.254). By the same token, one could not trust in mad Strife, think in line with this trust or act on it, without thereby coming to share in its madness.33
Another fragment confirms this point and shows the circular link between Strife’s influence and bad conduct: ‘And so, being frenzied by terrible crimes (
This leads us, finally, to our most revealing bit of supplementary evidence. Before he invokes his Muse, Empedocles makes a more general appeal: ‘But, gods, turn aside their madness from my tongue (
In sum, Empedocles’ reflections on what it is to be (incarnated as) a human or a beast, and on madness, point us in the same direction. Over the course of his wanderings and transformations, the daimōn continues to be beset by some measure of proclivity for falling or lapsing into the error of trusting in and relying on mad Strife.35
4 Agency and Responsibility
The picture that emerged below raises difficult questions. Can we draw a clear line between the daimōn’s volition and deliberate actions and the sometimes irresistible external divine influences to which he is subjected? What makes the daimōn culpable for actions committed as an incarnated human—not to mention as a wild beast—through the maddening influence of Strife? Are they still in any meaningful sense his own actions? I do not hope to answer these questions here—if they can be answered—but only to probe them a little further.
In a series of important articles, Rowett argues that Empedocles ascribes to the daimōn unconstrained volition and, therefore, responsibility and culpability for his actions. Indeed, all the components of Empedocles’ world, including not only the daimōn but also, for example, the four elements, are living beings, who act as voluntary agents.36 Rowett sees the influence of Love and Strife as an impetus to display certain attitudes and act in particular ways that, nonetheless, leaves it up to the affected subject (be it an element, a daimōn or some other organism) to decide whether and how to respond through an unhindered exercise of volition.37 Rowett offers a valuable corrective to mechanistic conceptions of Empedocles’ world and her emphasis on the daimōn’s volition and culpability is well placed. But her approach to the problem of the daimōn’s agency and divine influence strikes me as too neat. I do not suggest that the daimōn is in fact simply forced or coerced by Strife, but Rowett’s stance does not easily accommodate Empedocles’ lament that he is still now, to his own regret, trusting in mad Strife. The daimōn, it seems, may experience an external stimulus so powerful that he ends up thinking in line with it or acting on it despite the better judgements of his lucid thoughts.38
The problem of squaring divine influence with human agency looms large already in Homer, and one approach to this issue will be deeply suggestive for our understanding of Empedocles’ wandering daimōn. Schmitt argues that, in Homer, ‘humans are generally led or misled by the gods only to do those things for which they already have a predisposition in themselves.’39 Divine influence ranges from persuasion to violent coercion, but, at the former end of the spectrum, the gods do not pick their mortal targets at random. Humans can thus bear responsibility for the sort of divine influence that they receive.40 Even Agamemnon, who to a significant extent shifts the blame onto the divine actors who altered his state of mind (Zeus, Fate, the Erinyes and Atē, Il. 19.86–94), nonetheless recognises that it was he who succumbed to and acted under their influence and so wishes to make amends (137–8), so that he does not altogether renounce his earlier assumption of responsibility (Il. 9.115–20). Schmitt makes a good case that Agamemnon’s own boastful arrogance was instrumental in rendering him susceptible in the first place to the divine influence that led him to wrong Achilles.41 The plainest illustration of Schmitt’s model, however, is given by Pandarus, who ruins the truce between the Greeks and Trojans by shooting at Menelaus. This event was planned by Zeus and triggered by Athena, and yet Athena does not select just any Trojan. She looks specifically for Pandarus (Il. 4.86–8). She does not coerce him to shoot his arrow but, in disguise, plays on his own desire for wealth and fame (93–103).42 Thus, Homeric mortals, despite being influenced by the gods, are possessed of a genuine (if limited) form of freedom and so remain responsible and culpable for their actions.43
We need not imagine that this is the only model of divine influence and human responsibility found in Homer.44 But, at a minimum, Schmitt shows that it is at least one prominent Homeric model, and this model may shed some light on our exiled daimōn. My suggestion is not that Strife seeks out the daimōn in the same way as Athena sought out Pandarus. The crucial point for us is rather that it is indeed the daimōn’s own psychological and cognitive disposition—a disposition that alters significantly between different incarnations—that renders him susceptible or vulnerable to the stimuli of Love and Strife. When the daimōn proves unable to resist the influence of mad Strife, then this failing itself stems from his own character and shortcomings. The language of trust and reliance itself supports this point. Empedocles is not simply forced by an outside agent to follow the promptings of Strife. It is his own nature that leads him, to his own subsequent regret, to put his trust in Strife.
There is no strict division in Empedocles between free action and externally-determined, unfree action.45 At every turn, the daimōn is confronted with the competing pressures of Love and Strife. He may recognise them at one time and miss them at another, or successfully resist some and succumb to others.46 As Empedocles recounts (or, we would say, imagines) how the exiled daimōn travels through the cosmos from one life-form to another (a beast, a human, etc.), he is in part reflecting on how different life-forms may be possessed of different ethical dispositions, face different psychological pressures, and operate with different capacities and limitations when meeting those pressures.
There is a distinctive group of references to Love and Strife in the dative case. Empedocles reflects on how it is ‘in’ or ‘by’ Love and Strife that humans or other things (e.g. the elements) take certain actions, have certain experiences or undergo certain processes. It is by Love (
5 Return to Godhood
In B146 = D39, Empedocles describes the penultimate stop before the daimōn’s final return to the gods:
Against the standard interpretation, Picot and Berg (2015) convincingly argue that the four figures mentioned cannot represent pure and saintly agents of Love.50 At least many (even if not all) seers and singers of hymns prescribe or celebrate violence and animal sacrifices. Most problematically, the term ‘promoi’ carries a strong militaristic connotation. In Homer, the term is consistently used as a functional equivalent of ‘promachos’ or ‘foremost fighter’ (Il. 7.75; 15.293). By Empedocles’ time, it could signify ‘leader’ in an extended sense and Empedocles need not be referring exclusively to ‘battle chiefs’.51 Nonetheless, the point stands that, if Empedocles wished to indicate leaders while avoiding connotations of Strife, then ‘promoi’ would be a highly incongruous word to choose, given its longstanding and common associations with violence and war.52 Nor should we expect the penultimate stage of the exile to reflect the values of Love to the exclusion of Strife’s. Why should this be the case in a world-order in which both powers have a hand? We noted that Strife’s agency is prominent in Empedocles’ account of the daimōn’s exile. Indeed, some evidence suggests that our current cosmic period is one of waxing Strife.53 As Picot and Berg put it, scholars have acquiesced in an overly ‘angelic’ picture of Empedocles’ daimonology and eschatology.54
Unlike seers, singers and promoi, the doctor is plausibly a figure who primarily advances the cause of Love. The coherence of this group of figures on the final rung of reincarnation seems to lie not in their association with either Love or Strife, but in the fact that all four enjoy elevated social status.55 It is again unsurprising that the same social hierarchies are found both in our human communities and in the eschatological process of transmigration. After all, the same dual forces of Love and Strife played a decisive factor in influencing the formation of both human conventions and the ‘ancient decree of the gods’ (B115.1) that governs the eschatological process. The purpose of the purifications prescribed by Empedocles, then, is not to shorten the sentence of the exiled daimōn. The period of exile is set at thirty thousand seasons (B115.6) and, whatever period of time this indicates, nothing in Empedocles suggests that it can be reduced. Instead, Empedocles’ purifications aim to reduce the agony of exile.56 Empedocles makes clear that the influence of Strife is intrinsically and intensely undesirable.57 Insofar as Empedocles’ purifications have the effect of making any exiled daimōn less affected by Strife’s influence and more receptive to Love’s—for example through the avoidance of killing and meat-eating—they do much to improve his life here on earth.
Things get more tricky for Picot and Berg when they come to ask whether Empedocles sees himself, in his current incarnation, among the four figures highlighted in B146 = D39. It is difficult to deny that he associates himself at least with the healers, seers and singers of hymns.58 Picot and Berg opt for an uneasy ‘yes’: Empedocles does indeed associate himself with at least three of the four figures, but he is a highly untraditional seer and singer of hymns, shunning the traditional promotion or celebration of violence.59
The problem with which Picot and Berg are grappling is that it is difficult to square the evidence that, in B146 = D39, Empedocles highlights figures whose activities recall his own with their (convincing) argument that these figures are not celebrated as pure agents of Love. There is perhaps a real tension here, but I suggest that two considerations can ameliorate it. First, while we could not plausibly dissociate from the workings of Strife all those to whom Empedocles refers en masse as seers, singers of hymns and promoi, we could plausibly see them—even the promoi—as also promoting the workings of Love, in particular by preserving social harmony and the integrity of human communities. Homer formulaically describes military leaders like Agamemnon as shepherds of the people (e.g. Il. 2.243). In the proem to his Theogony (36–115), Hesiod relates how both singer and king, in their different capacities, can soothe anger and grief and preserve or restore psychological and communal harmony. The importance of seers for the preservation of individual and communal life is no less clear. In the Iliad, to take one example, Achilles urges the Greeks to call upon a seer in order to discover the cause of the pestilence threatening the Greek army and end it (Il. 1.62–7). Second, Picot and Berg still seem to operate with the idea that—even though Empedocles does not see the four figures of B146 = D39 as humans who embody Empedoclean ethical ideals to perfection—he does see himself in that way.60 As we saw, however, Empedocles’ identification of himself as a daimōn who is still now trusting in mad Strife expresses a more nuanced conception of his own psychological and ethical achievements. To be sure, within the broad spectrum of each profession (seer, singer, healer, promos), Empedocles would locate himself at the most Love-leaning end. He will not be a seer who prescribes animal sacrifices or a singer who celebrates warlike prowess. But this is not to say that Empedocles imagines his own life and mind to be entirely free of the pernicious influence of Strife. This makes it easier to understand how Empedocles can associate his own current position with that of the other incarnated daimones who are on the cusp of their return to the gods. An important lesson from B146 = D39, then, is that, at the final stage of their transmigrations and just before their return to the gods, the exiled daimones are not free of Strife, even though some may resist it better than others.
We must address one final text. In B112 = D4, Empedocles introduces himself to his audience in these terms (4–5):
A deflationary interpretation emphasises the collocation
On the traditional interpretation, then, Empedocles claims for himself in B112 = D4 the status of a god. Even on the deflationary interpretation, he deems ‘fitting’ (on the most likely construal of
One viable if of course speculative possibility is to follow the lead of scholars who assign B115 and B112 = D4 to different poems that represent different stages in Empedocles’ self-conception. Thus, Sedley assigns B115 to On Nature, where Empedocles still saw himself as a fallen transmigrating daimōn, and B112 = D4 to the later Purifications, where he now confidently considered that he had recovered his godly status.66 Along such lines, Empedocles’ acknowledgement of his trust in Strife may be another manifestation of a general pessimism, which characterises an earlier phase of his self-conception, as reflected in the proem of On Nature, and which eventually gives way to the unmitigated triumphalism of the proem of the Purifications.
This, then, is one option. I wish, though, to raise also another one. First, instead of different phases, we might speak rather of different aspects of a complex predicament. Empedocles may lament that he is a guilty exile condemned to a painful cycle of transmigrations, while, at the same time, optimistically locating himself at the conclusion of this daunting process and on the cusp of release from it. Second, the closest parallel to Empedocles’ description of himself in B112 = D4 as a god who is honoured by all is his reference in B146 = D39 to those who are about to ‘blossom up as gods, foremost in honours’. As we saw, however, the protagonists of B146 = D39 are not out-and-out agents of Love, aseptically sanitised from Strife. Here again, then, we must not presume without justification an overly ‘angelic’ (to adopt Picot and Berg’s term) understanding of Empedocles’ conception of divinity. Indeed, that Empedocles is a god does not by itself imply that he is now free of Strife: that Strife’s influence extends even to some of the Blessed is shown by the exile’s initial crime (B115.3–4). Third, Empedocles immediately elaborates on his judgement, that he is honoured fittingly, by describing how throngs of admirers inquire of him about ‘the path to profit’ (
Certainly, Empedocles may also believe that his laudable ability to benefit individuals and communities rests in part on a personal, ethical as well as cognitive and psychological achievement. After all, Empedocles uncovers the true nature of the conflicting powers of Love and Strife, and goes perhaps as far as one could, as an exile in whose punishment Strife is a dominant presence, to align his thinking and conduct with Love. If one were reluctant to assign B115 and B112 = D4 to different poems and periods, then what the foregoing argument of this article would require is only a not unreasonable qualification: Empedocles can confidently present and promote himself as a champion of Love, as a benefactor for individuals and communities, and even as a god, without thereby imagining or implying that he has rendered himself altogether invulnerable to one of the two universal forces that unite, separate and affect things throughout the cosmos, a force whose influence extends even to some in the community of the Blessed themselves.
A certain duality is fundamental to Empedocles’ conception of himself.68 On one hand, Empedocles is a divinity that persists beyond its successive incarnations in different life-forms. On the other hand, we saw that, as the daimōn migrates from one mortal life-form to another, he experiences substantial changes in his psychological makeup, emotional proclivities and moral and cognitive capacities and limitations. Empedocles-the-beast experiences and responds to the world differently from Empedocles-the-human. Within this framework, it is natural if the more positive or negative aspects of Empedocles’ complex self-conception come to the fore in different contexts and moods. This may be why, at some junctures, Empedocles can present himself as a divine being ‘superior to much-destroyed mortal humans’ (B113 = D5), but, at others, as one of the ‘ephemeral’ mortal creatures (B131 = D7). Again, at some moments, Empedocles may lament that trust in Strife has been an inescapable fact of life over the course of the transmigratory journey that was his exile (B115.13–14), but, at others, celebrate his status as a god and his imminent release (B112 = D4).
6 Final Remarks
This article argued that Empedocles’ identification of himself as an exile and a wanderer ‘trusting in mad Strife’ expresses an ongoing and current predicament. It explored, further, how this pained avowal, and Empedocles’ shifting placements of the daimōn in different life-forms, bear on his negotiation of thorny issues of self-conception, agency, responsibility and authority. As he reflects on his personal journey from one mortal form of life to the next, Empedocles locates his agency with the exiled daimōn. At the same time, Empedocles raises through this story difficult questions about the ways in which the daimōn’s agency is subjected at every turn to the competing pressures of Love and Strife—crucially, he laments that the exiled daimōn could never fully liberate himself from the frenzied influence of the latter—and to all the various human and animal bodies into which the cosmic wanderer finds his way. There is a neat echo between Empedocles’ identity as an itinerant daimōn, travelling from one life-form to another, and his identity, within his present incarnation, as a wandering poet, who travels from city to city, offering his wisdom, his oracles and his cures (B112 = D4).
The analysis of these issues places in a new light Empedocles’ construction of authority and his conception of his own ethical standing. To be sure, Empedocles considers himself far superior to his contemporaries. Nonetheless, and common assumptions to the contrary notwithstanding, Empedocles (at least in whatever poem featured B115) does not see himself as an altogether perfect embodiment of his own ethical ideals. His mind is not altogether free of mad Strife. Viewed by the light—or in the shadow—of his lament in B115.13–14, as analysed in the context of our extant evidence, Empedocles constructs his authority and ethical standing in a more nuanced and sober way. He emerges as someone who sees clearly the duelling cosmic forces of Love and Strife which, unbeknownst to us, frame our lives, and who was even able to struggle against the corrupting influence of mad Strife as much as his present incarnation allowed, although, significantly, no more than that.69
Empedocles’ daimonology disrupts boundaries between the ordinary and the extraordinary, the familiar and the unfamiliar. On one hand, Empedocles does away with the daimōn who operates on us from the outside inscrutably.70 The daimōn has become internal and is in fact nothing beyond us ourselves. On the other hand, Empedocles renders the ordinary itself deeply extraordinary. What we might previously have thought of as an unremarkable human life turns out to be one stage in the punitive cosmic journey of an exiled daimōn. What seemed to be everyday actions and decisions reveal themselves as the sites of so many different cosmic battles between Love and Strife, battles that are waged through and within the person and agency of this same daimōn.71
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References are to the editions of Diels-Kranz (DK) and Laks-Most (LM). The letters ‘A’ or ‘B’ followed by a number refer to the corresponding text in Sections ‘A’ or ‘B’ respectively of Chapter 31 of DK; the letters ‘D’ or ‘R’ followed by a number refer to the corresponding text in Sections ‘D’ or ‘R’ respectively of Chapter 22 of LM. To avoid cumbersome reduplications, subsequent references to B115 = D10 will be to ‘B115’ alone.
I use the masculine pronoun when referring to the daimōn, in keeping with Empedocles’ practice in B115. Empedocles is explicit, though, that he has been incarnated as both male and female (B117 = D13).
It remains controversial whether our material from Empedocles derives from one poem or two, but my discussion will not turn on this issue (with the exception of one interpretive possibility raised tentatively: text with n. 66 below). The Strasbourg papyrus, published in 1999, undermined attempts (that had already been subjected to powerful critiques: Kahn 1960; Osborne 1987b) to divorce Empedocles’ natural philosophy from his religion and eschatology. In particular, ensemble d juxtaposes cosmological and daimonological themes. There is now general agreement that these aspects of Empedocles’ thought were somehow unified. For a succinct discussion of this development, see Trépanier 2017, 132–3.
Noncommittally following the common emendation
Noncommittally reading
Translations of Empedocles generally follow Inwood 2001 or LM, with modifications.
It is well to remember that the standard text of B115 followed above is a composite of citations from several sources, sometimes interspersed with commentary; see e.g. Wright 1995, 136–9. We cannot be certain that no other lines intervened. The key point for us, however, is that both Hippolytus (Haer. 7.29.14–23) and Plutarch (On Exile (Exil.) 607c–d) give us to understand that the speaker is one of the transmigrating exiles. Even in Plutarch, who cites B115.1–3–5–6–13 with an alternative reading of B115.13a (‘this way I myself am now going’, see n. 19 below), the implication is that Empedocles is now embarked on the journey of these exiled daimones (5–6) and is therefore one of them. Rashed 2018, 230–1 inserts B113 = D5 between lines 12 and 13 of B115, so that ‘of them’ (
Gheerbrant 2017, 683–7, 697; similarly, Santamaría 2022, 299–300, 308.
D10 (my emphases); cf. similarly e.g. DK31 (ad loc.): ‘… da ich rasendem Streite vertraute’; Wright 1995, 270 (also KRS 1983, 315): ‘… having put my trust in raving strife’; Rowett 2016, 100 n. 35: ‘… because I placed my trust …’; Gheerbrant 2017, 798: ‘… parce que j’ai eu foi en la Discorde furieuse’; Casella 2019, 273: ‘per avere confidato …’; Palmer 2020, 67–8: ‘having trusted …’; Santamaría 2022, 299: ‘I who relied …’. Examples can be multiplied.
O’Brien 2001, 131–4 similarly sees the daimōn’s trust in Strife as a pollution that will stay with him during his exile. Likewise, Rashed 2001, 252 raises in passing the possibility (crediting the idea to independent suggestions from O’Brien and Picot) that the daimōn may be lucid enough to recognise Strife’s tormenting influence and yet be unable to stop it. They do not develop this reading—or pursue its implications for Empedocles’ self-conception and reflections on agency and responsibility—in the ways attempted below. As examples of actions that the exiled daimōn takes ‘in concert with Strife’ and as its ‘faithful associate’, O’Brien mentions ‘the dreadful deeds of murder and cannibalism to which he is now all unwittingly addicted’ (132, 134). But these are surely actions that Empedocles, in his current incarnation, does successfully resist (B136–B137 = D28–D29). Also, it is difficult to take it, with O’Brien, that Empedocles’ trust in Strife originally stems from whatever transgression is described in B115.3–4, since some alignment with Strife should be a precondition for that transgression, even if an increased alignment with Strife results from it. Kingsley 2003, 430–3 also interprets Empedocles’ trust in Strife as current. But, in keeping with his idiosyncratic denial that Empedocles prefers Love over Strife (415–17), Kingsley takes it that Empedocles simply chooses to trust in Strife. Empedocles, however, has a strongly pejorative view of Strife (as noted below). Bollack 2003, 69 also seems to render the daimōn’s trust a deliberate policy when he suggests that the daimōn made himself Strife’s servant in order to overcome it (‘[l]e nouvel Oreste s’est fait le serviteur du Mal pour en venir à bout’). It remains mysterious, however, how and why the daimōn might ‘overcome’ Strife by trusting in it. As we shall see, the more we trust in Strife, the madder we become, and the further we stray from our purification. This is why, also within the context of our exile, Empedocles exhorts us to distance ourselves from Strife as much as possible. Indeed, Empedocles would prefer his own annihilation to shedding blood (Strasb. d 5–6 = B139 = D34, D76.5–6): he is not a willing servant of Strife.
For further philological discussion of the adjective, see O’Brien 2001, 132; Gheerbrant 2017, 683–7.
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me on this point. On omissions of
Cf. Smyth 1984, § 1872: the action expressed by a present participle is generally coincident and only rarely anterior or subsequent to that of the main verb. In his typical examples of present participles expressing anterior actions (§ 1872a1), some temporal marker signals this explicitly (
For the observation that alētēs (B115.13) echoes alalēsthai (B115.6), cf. O’Brien 2001, 100 n. 42.
DK31 (ad loc.); Wright 1995, 275; see further Most 2007, 284–92; Long 2019, 26; Santamaría 2022.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for this observation.
Empedocles also subverts Hesiod’s daimonology. For Hesiod, invisible daimones dwell among humans unbeknownst to us, protect us and judge our crimes (Works & Days 121–6, 249–55). For Empedocles, we are, unbeknownst to ourselves, the daimones who are here, and the daimōn is himself a disgraced exile duly suffering for his own crimes. On the internalisation of the daimōn in the philosophical tradition (the locus classicus is Timaeus 90c), see Suárez de la Torre 2000.
For the point that Strife prominently presides over the daimōn’s incarnations, cf. Picot and Berg 2015: 384. Zatta 2020, 52 n. 1 calls for a present-tense translation of ‘pisunos’ on this ground (without pursuing this point in the directions taken below).
If we entertained the alternative text of B115.13a found in Plutarch (
Nor could we mitigate the paradox by establishing some strict division between the notions of trusting in something and relying on it (for example, by stipulating that relying is something one might do while remaining distrustful) and positing that, in his current state, the daimōn still somehow relies on Strife but, unlike previously, no longer falls into the error of putting his trust in it. As the parallels considered in the previous section and this one illustrate, the term ‘pisunos’ and its cognates encompass the notions of trusting in something and relying on it, but not in a way that allows a surgical distinction between those two closely related ideas. It is not plausible that, with the word ‘pisunos’, Empedocles could expect to signal some carefully circumscribed conception of the latter to the exclusion of the former.
Osborne 1987a, 114, 118 plausibly remarks that Empedocles must rely on Strife since he is exiled in a realm governed predominantly by Strife. This observation of course leaves much to explore concerning the ramifications of the exile’s subsequent unwelcome attachment to Strife. More problematically, Rashed 2001, 253 suggests that in B115.14 Empedocles may only express hope for some future benefit—left unspecified here—from Strife’s activity; similarly but more specifically, Picot 2022, 646–7 proposes that Empedocles is merely indicating that he will owe to Strife his eventual release from exile. Rashed’s and Picot’s suggestions encounter several difficulties. First, this language of trust and reliance expresses elsewhere personal attachment to some god and indicates that one is acting in line with some divine influence or guidance (see the parallels discussed above, and B4 = D47 noted anon); it would be most misleading of Empedocles to use this charged language if he wished to express only hope in Strife or the prediction that Strife will administer the termination of his exile, without suggesting personal attachment of that sort (cf. a similar objection in O’Brien 2001, 132–3). Second, why should Empedocles choose this moment, when, ex hypothesi, he is expressing his hopes in Strife or his confidence in its direction of the process of exile, to describe it as mad? Third, one intuition that lies behind the traditional, past-tense interpretation of B115.14 is in itself compelling: within this account of crime and punishment, one would expect that Empedocles’ climactic remarks about himself as an outcast and about trusting in ‘mad Strife’ relate somehow to the error that led him to his fateful transgression (B115.3–4) and consequently to his expulsion (for the connection between crimes and madness, cf. B145 = D30, discussed below); my reading of B115.13–14 in Section 2 accommodates this intuition, but Rashed’s and Picot’s proposals do not. Fourth, Empedocles’ pronounced view of Strife as the cause of sufferings and evil makes it difficult to identify in B115.14 the expression of some hope in Strife, as O’Brien 2001, 133 objects to Rashed. Finally, Picot’s more specific proposal also requires him to supply the reference to the prospect of release from exile, which nothing in the immediate context suggests. (There is, moreover, no evidence that Strife governs the process of exile alone; indeed, note the female eschatological agent of B126 = D19.)
It is the mark of base men to distrust (
Also B115.14 (‘mad’:
Strasb. d 5–6 may present the correct text for B139, or the two couplets may constitute near repetition with a variance, with ‘lips’ (
Cf. Zatta 2020 55, 64, who labels this process ‘metensomatosis’; note B117 = D13 (‘I became …’). On the daimōn as a long- but not ever-lasting entity, see Long 2017, 12–17; 2019, 22–7. On the daimōn as a material entity, see e.g. Curd 2005, 142–3; Trépanier 2014; 2017; 2020; 2021, 28–36. Santaniello 2021, 147 takes Aëtius 5.25.4 = A85 = R29 to exclude a material daimōn persisting across lives, but the reliability and meaning of this testimonium are doubtful. As Mansfeld and Runia 2020, 2004 observe, if by saying in 5.25.4 that death is common to body and soul Aëtius meant that the latter dissolves upon death, this would contradict 4.7.1, where the Empedoclean soul is indestructible. Aëtius might mean only that the soul detaches from the body upon death. Anyway, Aëtius’ remark is only his hazy inference (
See Wright 1995, 278–81 for relating B120–B122 = D16, D21, D24 to our own surroundings. On ‘Atē’, see below in this section, with n. 31. On the alignment of the pairs in B122 = D21 with Love and Strife, see Mackenzie 2021, 116–18.
‘… or daimones incarnated as human beings’: I leave open whether all human beings are exiled daimones or, as Sedley 2005, 345–7 argues, there is one race of daimones, who may be incarnated as human beings as punishment, and another of humans, who are always restricted to this life-form and do not transmigrate.
It may be suggested that Empedocles’ verses themselves indeed do not reveal a Strife-free voice. His invectives against ‘child-like fools’ (
The disposition of the daimōn fluctuates not only between different life-forms, but also with the cosmic waxing and waning of Love and Strife. Consider the peaceful beasts of B130 = D26 when ‘benevolence blazed forth’, and the Aphrodite-worshipping community of B128 = D25.
Cf. e.g. Sophocles, Ajax 447–53; Euripides, Hippolytus 239–48; Heracles 1149–62; Bacchae 1259–96, etc. On madness in Greek tragedy, see Goldhill 1986, 168–98; Padel 1995; Most 2013; Saïd 2013. Aristotle compares the akratic to those who are asleep, mad or drunk (Nicomachean Ethics 7.3 1147a11–18).
On Homeric atē (indicating both ‘delusion’ recognised in retrospect and the ‘ruin’ this delusion caused), see Scodel 2008, 114–17; Cairns 2012; on Homeric atē as partial precursor to tragic madness, see Padel 1995, 167–96; Saïd 2013.
Gheerbrant 2017, 687 emphasises this point.
Not to mention that it could in the first place be considered an act of madness to place one’s trust in mad Strife.
I see no reason to read the distinctive appeal of B3.1–2 = D44.1–2 as anything less than a genuine call for divine aid. Even if one adopted some figurative interpretation, however, one would still need to account for this aspect of Empedocles’ self-presentation in these lines.
Some scholars ascribe to Empedocles a positive claim for benign poetic mania, contrasted with Strife’s madness: Guthrie 1965, 227–8; Hardie 2013, 231–2; Ustinova 2018, 335–7. This ascription would cohere with my discussion of Empedocles’ extant remarks on madness, but it rests on a testimonium from Caelius Aurelianus (On Chronic Diseases 1.5 = A98; LM exclude this text), which is late, inexplicit (Caelius speaks only of ‘Empedocles’ followers’: Empedoclem sequentes) and likely coloured by the approach to mania in Plato’s Phaedrus, which Caelius summarises beforehand.
Osborne 1987b; 2005; Rowett 2016. For volitional language used of the elements, see B21.8 = D77a.8 (
Esp. Rowett 2016, 93.
Rowett also argues that changes between the cosmic cycles of Love and Strife themselves result from voluntary agents freely changing their moral attitudes and that such changes are ‘spontaneous in the way that intelligent behavior is spontaneous’ (Osborne 2005, 295). The question here (Rowett answers affirmatively: see the items in n. 36 and 2020, 172–6) is whether this view can be squared with apparent evidence that these macrocosmic processes are cyclical in a recurrent and predictable manner: B17.13, 29 = D73.244, 260; B26.1, 12 = D77b.1, 12; A46 = D81; D84b.2; D85b; D86b.2; R8b.2; R13b.2; R12.
Schmitt 2013, 65. A similar insight comes into play in the reflections of Williams 2008, 28–33 on divine interventions and human agency in Homer: ‘even when the gods do intervene, they do not standardly do so by simply making people do things’ (29). Williams highlights, for example, cases where gods intervene by presenting a human with reasons (30–1, cf. 135), something nicely illustrated by the example of Pandarus noted below.
Schmitt 2013, 73.
Schmitt 2013, 77–80; cf. Cairns 2012, 21 on Agamemnon as ‘prone to atē’.
Schmitt 2013, 74–6; cf. Scodel 2018, 10.
Schmitt 2013, 62.
Schmitt works too hard to iron out some creases. After all, Priam does suggest that the culpability for Helen’s errors lies squarely with the gods (Il. 3.164), even if Helen herself demurs (Il. 3.180; 6.344); see Scodel 2008, 111, 116–17 and contrast Schmitt 2013, 81. Again, Schmitt 2013, 79–81 underplays how, at Il. 19.86–144 (unlike Il. 9.115–20), Agamemnon’s plea that ‘he was not in a normal state of mind’ (Williams 2008, 54) shifts the blame onto the gods. For nuanced discussions of the ways in which, in Iliad 19, Agamemnon both disavows and assumes responsibility, see Williams 2008, 52–5; Scodel 2008, 117–24; Cairns 2012, 23–6, with n. 52.
Cf. Schmitt 2013, 67–8 on Homer. For the phenomenon of ‘double-motivation’ or ‘over-determination’ in Homer, where the same actions or impulses are conceived as caused by both human and divine agency, see e.g. Il. 15.636–7; 20.94; with Janko 1992, 3–4; Dodds 1951, 1–27; Scodel 2008, 112, 129; 2018, 10–11.
One may press the point that the daimōn’s character, whether prior to or during any incarnation, itself results from the formative influences of Love and Strife. This problem may again not admit of a fully satisfying resolution, and it would probably be ill-conceived to pinpoint precisely where the daimōn’s character ends and external influence begins. If moral responsibility is to reside anywhere, however, it will be with the choices and actions that stem in some way from the character (however formed) of the daimōn.
Cf. B17.7–8 = D73.239–40; B20.2–4 = D73.303–5; B22.5 = D101.5; B26.5–6 = D77b5–6; B35.5 = D75.5; B109 = D207; also B95 = D217.
Rowett 2016, 97–101.
On this point, cf. O’Brien 2001, 132: B115.14 ‘indicates … a joining of the daimon’s action to that of Strife. The daimon who “trusts” in, or who “relies” on, Strife acts in concert with Strife.’ On O’Brien 2001, see further n. 10 above.
For the standard view, see e.g. Kissel 2007, 120.
As Picot and Berg 2015, 383 translate the word.
‘Leader’: Euripides, Iphigeneia in Aulis 699. We also find figurative uses in Sophocles, Oedipus the King 660 and Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 50 (assuming the emendation of
See Picot and Berg 2015, 408.
Picot and Berg 2015, 403.
Loc. cit.
Following Picot and Berg 2015, 404; Picot 2022, 655–6; similarly, Rashed 2018, 229.
B145 = D30, discussed above; cf. B22.6–8 = D101.6–8.
For Empedocles as a healer, see B112.10–12 = D4.10–12; B111 = D43; seer: B112.10 = D4.10; singer of hymns: B35.1 = D75.1; cf. Herrero de Jáuregui 2013, 46.
Picot and Berg 2015, 400–2, 409.
Picot and Berg 2015, 390–1.
E.g. Palmer 2013, 311; Hardie 2013, 225 n. 64; cf. LM22 D4. For the dative of perspective, see van Emde Boas et al. 2019, no. 30.52. It would be another question whether Empedocles concurs with the perception of him as a god.
See Zuntz 1971, 190–1; Wright 1995, 264–66 (‘I tell you …’); Long 2017, 12 (‘any translation risks overtranslating’). For the ethical dative, see van Emde Boas et al. 2019, no. 30.53.
For a sustained defence of this view, see Panagiotou 1983; also Zuntz 1971, 189–91; Long 2017, 12–13.
Somewhat differently, Guthrie 1965, 246 suggests that Empedocles is speaking proleptically of his imminent return to godhood; or Long 2017, 12–15; 2019, 26: Empedocles is now an immortal god insofar as, henceforth, he will enjoy the long-lasting psychological continuity that his successive transmigrations have interrupted (one might qualify: have interrupted significantly even if not wholly; cf. n. 24 above).
For a defence of the rendering ‘as is fitting’ for
Sedley 1989, 275–6; 1998, 2–10; 2005, 363 n. 48; for such moves, cf. Kahn 1960, 29–30; Long 2017, 16. Contrast e.g. Rashed 2018, 213–43, who places B115 and B112 = D4 within the proem of the Purifications. The possibility raised in this paragraph of course requires, controversially, the two-poem view.
The social honours that Empedocles describes fall short of the worship that in B128 = D25 a bygone community accords Love. On this point, see Zuntz 1971, 191. Empedocles’ addressees in B112 = D4 (‘Friends …’) are themselves described as ‘inexperienced in evil’ or ‘in ill’ (
On this duality, cf. Tor 2017, 335–7.
In addition to the oftentimes fraught issues explored above, there is another and more upbeat story to be told about how the daimōn’s cosmic journey contributes to Empedocles’ construction of poetic and epistemic authority. At least if we see Empedocles as claiming recollections of past lives (see n. 24 above), the daimōn’s cognitive access to different cosmic places, periods and perspectives—including to the psychological pressures he had encountered—may be partly what enables Empedocles to convey an authoritative account of the world-order, its inhabitants and the physical and moral powers that mould it. For discussions along those lines, see Sassi 2009, 193–4, 234–5; Ferella 2013, 43–7; Clay 2015, 128–34; Ranzato 2015 99–105; Tor 2017, 318–39; Pellò 2018; Santaniello 2021, 157–9.
On these aspects of daimonic action, see Burkert 1985, 180–1.
This article was much improved by comments and questions from audiences in Cambridge, Coimbra, London, Manchester and Newcastle, and from an anonymous reviewer and the editors. Thanks are also due to Emmanuela Bakola, Lea Cantor, Lyndsay Coo, Renaud Gagné, Sophie Lunn-Rockcliffe, Malcolm Schofield, Henry Spelman, Leon Wash and Hannah Willey. The article was written during a period of leave funded by the Leverhulme Trust for whose support I am grateful.
