Recovering a Poem by a Presocratic Guru
By Prof. Richard Janko

I had never studied the object of the Symposium, the 5th.-century B.C.E. poet Empedocles. He is best described as a cross between a scientist, a mystic and a magician. We already knew that he combined Sicilian origins and Pythagorean beliefs with knowledge of the Eleatic philosophers, led by Parmenides. Aristotle criticized the vagueness and implausibility of his scientific theories, which were presented in powerful verse that greatly influenced the Roman poet Lucretius. Empedocles was a wealthy aristocrat who ruled his city and saved it from harmful winds. He claimed to be able to work miracles and to be a god on earth; he dressed and acted the part. Extraordinary stories circulated about his death. In one version he allegedly threw himself into Mount Etna, and the lava disgorged one of the bronze sandals that he wore.

Parts of his great poem On Nature were recently identified in a papyrus in Strasbourg, France. Empedocles believed that the world consists of four elements, fire, earth, air and water, that turned into one another in cycles. The cycles were driven by two opposing forces, Love and Hate. The details are controversial. He also offered physical explanations for all kinds of natural and living phenomena. His biological doctrines were intertwined with his theology. He believed that sinful souls were purified in cycles of reincarnation lasting thousands of years; we can stop these cycles by abstaining from sex and from eating meat. Empedocles himself claimed to be at the end of such a cycle.

Running out of time over what I would have to say about this unique figure, I made photocopies of the plates of the six larger pieces of papyrus and tried to rearrange them to make a more coherent text. To my amazement and relief, I was able to put them together for the first time to form a continuous stretch of 130 verses (lines 233-364 of Book I). By the time you read this, I shall have inspected the papyrus itself in Strasbourg, and hope not to have proved myself mistaken.

This is the second Greek guru whose writings I hope to have put back together, since my previous work on the Derveni papyrus revealed a thinker with equally remarkable ideas. But a guru who wrote poetry is even more fun! I have translated the passage into verse, to give you an idea of how abstruse and yet oddly compelling this poetry is, and how much it influenced Lucretius. Above you will find Empedocles' lament over the death and dismemberment of all living things-a passage which is dismembered no longer.

Index of Topics / Return to the Classics Homepage