From the Beginning to Plato

EMPEDOCLES 171
disintegration of the divine harmony. In the resulting movements, as the
elements ‘run through each other’, the present world order would be generated,
with its teeming variety of plant, animal and human life. During this time Love
should be envisaged initially as the more powerful force, and, on the analogy of a
craftsman, as engendering well-constructed forms of life in sympathy with each
other. But Strife, with increasing power and ferocity, is preparing to tear them
apart, and eventually to bring down the cosmic edifice in the return once more to
akosmia. The limits of the powers of both attraction and separation are presumed
to be held, like the elements which they control, within the circumference of the
sphere, the kuklos, that persists throughout; beyond these lies what is described
in the doxography without further explanation as ‘idle matter’ (argē httlē is the
term at Aetius I.5.2).
Some of the details of the process are controversial, and even the basic idea of
cosmic phases being repeated has been challenged, and, given the fragmentary
nature of the primary sources, there can be no certainty. But the consensus of
opinion, supported by such testimony as we do have from the primary and
secondary sources, suggests a reconstruction along the following lines, with
Empedocles’ poetic skill giving a vivid character to his descriptions of elements
reacting to contrary forces. At one time the four (‘fire and water and earth and
measureless height of air’) were completely separate under Strife, and Love lay
inactive at the circumference; then came the increase of her power, initiated (in
the metaphor of the invasion of foreign territory) by a move to the centre, and the
consolidation of her position as Strife was pushed back. This alternation was
manifest in the elements consequently ‘running through’ each other, and so
causing the rise of a generation of mortal beings. Some monsters and strange
shapes emerged at first, even separate limbs and ‘heads without necks’, but these
were short-lived, whereas those that were well formed and fitted for survival
became a viable generation of living creatures. Love was eventual victor in the
cosmic battle, bringing all the elements into one, and so generating the blessed
god (theos eudaimonestatos), in which Strife had no part. But the ideal state
came to an end, and, when the time was completed, Strife struck as Love had
done by rushing to claim the centre. This caused a mighty disturbance as ‘one by
one all the parts of the god began to tremble’ (fr. 31).
Empedocles saw the emergence of the present world as a consequence of this
upheaval. In the succeeding phase of his cosmogony, as Strife began the process
of separation, he introduced the important concept of a rotation (a vortex or dinē)
starting in the centre, which was the immediate cause of the separating of the
closely mingled parts of the different elements. First it seems that air was drawn
out and flowed round in a circle, followed by fire, which solidified some of the
air into the ouranos as aithēr and brought down the heavier particles as
atmospheric mist. The force of the rotation also compressed parts of the earth
into the centre, and water consequently exuded from it to form the sea (‘sea is the
sweat of earth’ as Empedocles expressed it in a typical homology, fr. 55). Such
fire as was still in the earth warmed some of the remaining water to produce hot