A rchive Date
[ 13-12-2005 ]
Category
[ Philosophy ]
sub-Categoy
[ Greek ]
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[http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/empedocles.shtml
Empedocles (c.490 BC - c.430 BC)
"The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere"
While we know nothing of his early life, we can probably assume that he was aware of the ideas of Pythagoras and Xenophanes, and possibly Parmenides. Like Pythagoras, Empedocles was believed to have travelled to Egypt and to have visited other contemporary Greek philosophers, such as Herodotus and Protagoras. With his father's money and his own ever-growing influence he began to adopt the trappings of power, wearing purple robes and employing scores of attendants.
It would appear that Empedocles was a magician first and a philosopher only second. He left behind two poems, the source of most of our existing knowledge of him, one of which discussed his philosophy. A key fragment reads, 'Hear first the four roots of all things: Dazzling Zeus, life bearing Hera, Aidoneus, and Nestis who moistens the springs of mortals with her tears'. Zeus is commonly interpreted to be air, Hera to be earth, Aidoneus (Hades) as fire and Nestis (Persephone) as water. At the beginning of the world, Empedocles' four elements were all mixed in unity, and held together with 'love'.
However, 'strife' appeared and split them up in a mythology of the creation of the earth. First came air, followed by fire that mixed with the air, crystallising into the sky. The heavy fire unbalanced the earth, which tilted on its axis. The fire accumulated in one area, and the sun fell back down to earth and went underground to form a central fire. The water came last, covering the flames. The Gods were equated to their elements; Zeus was in the heavens, Hera was the earth-mother-of-all, and Hades was fire, in the bowels of the earth. Persephone was the wife of Hades and spent six months in the underworld, and the other six months above ground, thus residing both with him and also on the surface of earth. Everything on earth was some combination of the four elements; for example, bone was three parts fire and two parts earth. His theory posited that eventually love would gain ascendancy once more and that the process would reverse, before starting once again. Nothing was permanent except for the one whole made of the elements.
Most of Empedocles' miracles were of a medical nature, but some stories told of his magic; on one occasion he is reputed to have calmed a man seized by uncontrolled anger simply by reciting a verse of Homer. On another occasion the village of Selinus was afflicted with a plague, and he saved them by diverting two streams into their river to purify it. Following this miracle, he reportedly manifested himself to the villagers, who worshipped him, and he threw himself into the volcanic Mount Etna to prove his divinity.
Following his leap into Etna's crater, it is said that the volcano regurgitated a bronze sandal, disproving his deification. Other stories emerged, possibly in the search for a more rational account of his death. Yet the Etna story is not too fantastic. If Empedocles believed he was ready for immortality - that his physical body had lived such a pure life that his soul was ready for immortality - then the prison of the soul, the body, had to be purified under the laws of Greek mythology. The best way to purify his body was fire. Empedocles believed that Hades' realm of fire was under the earth, accessible through volcanoes. A temple of Adranus was on the slopes of Etna. As the temple regularly made offerings into Etna, it was the perfect place to become immortal. A single bronze sandal was a symbol of Hecate, Goddess of Magic, and was worn by followers as a sign of their ability to descend into the underworld.
Thus it is possible that Empedocles did actually leap into the fire, leaving a bronze sandal on the edge, and thinking he was going to become immortal.
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