Putting Fragments in Their Places: The Lost Works by Empedocles

Abstract

AbstractThe author deals with the lost works of Empedocles, an often neglected subject, in the frame of the discussion concerning the number of the poems and their main features. He reviews the traces of thePassage of Xerxes, of theMedical Discourse, and of theProem to Apolloamong the fragments and witnesses, taking his cue from textual aspects and dealing with the contents, the significance of each of these writings in Empedocles’ culture and thought and their multifarious relationships with his times. As to thePassage, he tries to reconcile the contrasting interpretations so far proposed (historical or religious poem). Concerning B111, the only relic from theMedical Discourse, he explains why its contents are incompatible with thePhysical Poemand thePurifications. He analyzes theProem to Apolloin several perspectives (text, witnesses, contents also from the epistemological point of view, literary genre). He assigns fragments 131–134 and 142 to theProem, drawing one of his arguments from the comparison with the third HomericHymn to Apollo, and also suggesting a relationship with an intellectual cult of the sun. Formal features help to ascribe each fragment to the relevant poem. Close similarities between fragments do not necessarily mean that they come from the same writing: Empedocles is wont to allude to one poem of his while composing another. The author concludes that the striving for areductio ad unumof the Acragantine’s output, also evident in the attempt by a number of scholars to make only one poem out of the Περὶ φύσεως and the Καθαρμοί, has often led researchers to take for granted that none of the fragments preserved might belong to the lost works.