From the Beginning to Plato

EMPEDOCLES 187
A solution to this difficulty can be found in an appreciation of the different
contexts in which the underlying ideas are set. Before the present state of the
world all things were said to have been united under Love; this was an ideal state,
and the present one a degeneration from it. In physical terms the elements were
exactly mixed and held fast in harmony, with Neikos, the principle of enmity and
separation, having no control. The interpretation of this for publication to the
people of Acragas was in terms of a previous ‘golden age’ comparable to the era
of general happiness and universal friendship traditionally ascribed to Kronos in
the Isles of the Blessed. Then, at a fixed time, there came an end to the ideal
state. Strife entered the cosmic sphere, causing tremors that resulted in elements
separating out from the mixture; it was as a consequence of this further disturbance
that the conditions arose that were appropriate for the emergence of varied forms
of life. In the language of the Katharmoi Strife gained control of some of the
daimones and separated them from their fellows, causing them to take on ‘an
unfamiliar garment’ of skin and tissues (fr. 126); that is, the substance is
reconstituted as forms of lives in different elements. That this is the same process
viewed in two ways is confirmed by the mention of the oath at the appropriate
moment in each case: the time for the end of the state of harmony, for the rise of
Strife and the consequent generation of mortal lives, is held secure by the ‘broad
oath of necessity’, a striking way of indicating the inevitability of universal law.
Empedocles sees himself involved in these cosmic events. The elements of
which each individual is composed have, in this present phase of the cosmic
cycle, been pulled apart from their original unity and plunged into rounds of socalled
births and deaths. Life on earth is therefore to be viewed as an exile from
an earlier true home. In terms of human law exile is the standard penalty for
blood-shedding and perjury, and so these are given as the acts committed by the
daimōn, who consequently takes on a series of mortal forms, and lives in one
element after another. Although the daimōn has come under the power of Strife
and so is said to have acted ‘wrongly’, this does not imply wrong intention or
opportunity for choice on the part of the daimōn, for it was ‘according to
necessity’ that Strife would gain control. And when Empedocles says that he has
been born as boy, girl, plant, bird and fish, no personal remembrance of such
states is involved, but it is an inference from the universal law ordaining that the
daimōns be born in different elements as different kinds of mortal life.
There would however seem to be some constant factor to justify Empedocles’
use of egō (‘I’ as first person) at each stage of his history, which would be
incompatible with the theory of the complete dispersal at death of the elemental
parts that make up the individual. Now in the Physics, as has been shown, the
elements, eternal and unchanging, are called gods, which, when the time comes
round, adopt the form of mortal things. The supreme cosmic god (theos
eudaimonestatos, where the adjective has connotations of a good and happy
daimonic status) is the union of the whole under Love, resulting in holy mind
(phrēn hierē), until attacked and broken into separated parts by Strife. The
daimones of the Katharmoi similarly were united under Love, then forced to