Immortality in Empedocles

Sky and Moon (B21)

I begin with Empedocles’ discussion of large cosmic bodies, which almost certainly has a theological dimension, given the many connections between his poem and Hesiod. ^[14] Later in the paper I will consider Empedocles’ account of the daimôn’s punishment (B115) and its relationship with the account in Hesiod of the coma and isolation of a perjured deity (Theogony 783-804). At this point I will outline one aspect of the relationship between Empedocles and Hesiodic theology. Empedocles’ gods are generated, as we have seen, but without sexual intercourse. Xenophanes had criticized others for supposing that the gods are born or “fathered” (γεννᾶσθαι, B14). It is not certain whether Xenophanes intended to deny that the gods come to be at all or, more specifically, from parents. ^[15] Empedocles took Xenophanes’ side, or what he probably took to be Xenophanes’ side, against Hesiod, and denied that gods are generated sexually. Whereas in Hesiod’s Theogony sexual intercourse is the central cause of new divine life, to such an extent that the exceptions are often noted (e. g. Theogony 132, 213) in Empedocles’ theogony sexuality does not feature, and even in his zoogony it is given a severely restricted explanatory role. Humans and other animals may reproduce sexually now, but this is only one of several forms of generation (Aetius 5.19.5, A72). ^[16] New gods continue to emerge, but not from parents; rather, they “sprout up” from humans (ἀναβλαστοῦσι, B146.3). ^[17] One consequence, surely intended by Empedocles, of this further generative stage is that the humans who have attained immortality become, as gods, parentless. Empedocles even says explicitly that two gods, Sphere and “immense, holy intelligence”, do not have sexual organs (B29, B134). ^[18] Sphere’s successor (the next Sphere) will be generated by Love, but, again, not sexually. Many gods are generated, but no god has a parent, or is a parent, in the literal sense. ^[19] So much for the elaborate family tree of Hesiod’s Theogony.

As is often observed, Hesiod’s deities include the largest parts of the physical world. Earth, sky, sea, sun and moon are gods and members of the divine family (Theogony 126-32, 371-4). What is the status of these huge cosmic bodies in Empedocles’ system? (I call them “cosmic” bodies or masses in order to distinguish them from the huge elemental masses that are formed, on one interpretation, during the acosmic reign of Strife.) Given his responses to Hesiod, such as the response outlined above, it is hard to believe that Empedocles did not see a question about the largest cosmic bodies as, at least in part, a theological question. It is well known that Empedocles applied the names of gods to the four elements or roots (B6), but it does not follow from this that he did not also regard as a god the large cosmic conglomeration of an element. In B38 he gives a divine name, “Titan”, to one such cosmic mass (either the sun or the sky), ^[20] and in B42 he applies to the moon Athena’s epithet γλαυκῶπις. It is easy to assume that any mention of “sun” in Empedocles is merely a reference to the element fire (and so on for earth, sea or rain, and sky). But this is only sometimes the case. For example, in B98 (the composition of blood and flesh) “rain” must stand for “water”, as Simplicius notes. ^[21] By contrast, in B38 “sea” really is the sea: Empedocles is promising to explain how the sun, earth (the Earth, not the element), sea and sky all came to be. Elsewhere (B41) he says that the sun was “assembled” (presumably from fire; cf. A49) – and of course he cannot mean that fire was assembled from fire.

In Empedocles’ theology, as in Hesiod’s, being generated is consistent with being a god. But in Empedocles’ system the cosmic conglomerations come to an end. In B27 he describes a period (the reign of Strife, according to Plutarch, fac. lun. 926d) when the sun, earth and sea do not exist, and another period (that of the Sphere, according to Eudemus) ^[22] when the sun no longer exists. And yet in B21.4 some cosmic bodies, composed of air (the three other elements are represented in 21.3-6) are called “immortal”:

ἀλλ’ ἄγε, τῶνδ’ ὀάρων προτέρων ἐπιμάρτυρα δέρκευ,

εἴ τι καὶ ἐν προτέροισι λιπόξυλον ἔπλετο μορφῆ,

ἠέλιον μὲν λευκὸν ὁρᾶν καὶ θερμὸν ἁπάντηι,

ἄμβροτα δ’ ὅσσ’ εἴδει^[23] τε καὶ ἀργέτι δεύεται αὐγῇ,

ὄμβρον δ’ ἐν πᾶσι δνοφόεντά τε ῥιγαλέον τε·

ἐκ δ’ αἴης προρέουσι θελεμνά τε καὶ στερεωπά.

Come, look upon the witnesses to that previous account, should its form have been at all lacking: the sun, bright to see and hot all over; all the immortals (ἄμβροτα) that are drenched in heat and shining light; the rain, dark and cold in everything; and from the earth pour things rooted and solid. (B.21.1-6)

This has obviously discomfited translators and commentators. Wright 1995 translates ἄμβροτα not “immortal” but “heavenly”, and in Kirk, Raven and Schofield ^[24] it is suggested that ἄμβροτα are the “breezes and expanses of air” that supply ambrosia to the sun; ἄμβροτα would then point to their role as nutrients and not (as we would certainly expect) to immortality.

In B21 Empedocles is trying to support a claim about the elements, namely that even though there are only four of them they jointly constitute the observable world. In support of this he calls upon visible or tangible “witnesses” (21.1-6). The witnesses testify to the contrasting qualities of the elements. Empedocles obviously associates the witnesses very closely with the elements, for after the description of the witnesses he describes, without marking a contrast, how the elements come together, fall apart and constitute divine and non-divine organisms (21.7-14). But there is nonetheless a distinction between witness and element, ^[25] shown above all in the sixth line of the fragment, where the “witness” is not the element earth but the solid objects that come forth in abundance from the Earth. And the witnesses testify by means of their own qualities. For example, the sun shows the brightness and heat of the element fire because it is itself so obviously bright and hot. So we should not suppose that the qualities predicated of the “witnesses” are true of the elements and are not true of the witnesses themselves. ^[26] The sun is hot, the rain is dark and cold – and the airy “witnesses” are themselves immortal.

What are these witnesses, and why are they called “immortal”? They are said not to be bright or dark but to be “drenched” in light (and perhaps in heat). This suggests a more subtle contrast between air and fire than between fire and water. The sun shows the ability of fire to heat and illuminate, rain shows the darkness and coldness of water, and the ἄμβροτα show the ability of air not to generate light (and maybe heat), but to be illuminated (and maybe warmed) by something else. (Compare the “drenched” altar of B128.8, which is made wet and bloody not by itself but by the sacrifice.) These airy bodies do not emit light of their own, and so cannot include stars, but they are illuminated, and so cannot include breezes. ^[27] The moon, which is made of air (A30, A60) and gets its light from the sun (B43, B45, B47), is the obvious match. Given that he uses the plural ἄμβροτα, there must be at least one other illuminated immortal, and this is most likely the sky (B38), another illuminated body consisting of air. ^[28]

The nature of their immortality is, to our eyes, quite simple, but to Empedocles it must have seemed pioneering. He draws on Parmenides’ discovery about the moon and the source of its – or “its” – light (Parmenides B14, B15), and extends it to the sky. The sky is illuminated at some times and at others is not; ^[29] the moon appears to lose and then regain large segments of itself, and in eclipses it disappears entirely. But in fact both sky and moon are not destroyed or diminished. There is thus a contrast between, on the one hand, the appearance of diminution or destruction and, on the other, the persisting reality. ἄμβροτος gets its meaning through this contrast: these bodies persist and, despite the appearance of destruction and diminution, do not really undergo those changes.

Empedocles can thus explain why, and in what sense, two of Hesiod’s deities, sky and the moon, are immortals. But he does not suggest, as Hesiod would certainly suggest, that these “immortals” will last forever. And during their existence Empedocles’ “immortals” may, despite their immortality, undergo changes, such as the moon’s locomotion (B45). ἄμβροτος points not to complete changelessness, but to the absence of specific changes during the item’s existence. Similarly in other fragments, as we will see, immortals are not totally changeless, but changeless in some specific respect. ^[30]

Love and the Former Immortals (B35)

αἶψα δὲ θνήτ’ ἐφύοντο, τὰ πρὶν μάθον ἀθάνατ’ εἶναι,

ζωρά τε τὰ πρὶν ἄκρητα διαλλάξαντα κελεύθους.

τῶν δέ τε μισγομένων χεῖτ’ ἔθνεα μυρία θνητῶν

παντοίαις ἰδέῃσιν ἀρηρότα, θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι.

What had previously learned to be immortal grew to be mortal immediately, and those that were unmixed before became mixed, having exchanged paths. As they mixed tens of thousands of races of mortals poured forth, fitted with forms of every kind, a wonder to behold. (B35.14-17)

Here Empedocles describes how mortality contributes to new life. Two groups of mortals are mentioned. By being mixed, some previously immortal items become mortal, and through that process other mortals, of staggering number and variety, are generated. The second group of mortals owe their lives to the newly gained mortality of the first group. Members of the second group are said to belong to countless “races” (35.16; compare 35.7), and so must be living organisms, although it is not agreed whether they are the organisms of Empedocles’ own day or some other period. It is difficult to discuss this passage without taking a stand on some central questions about Empedocles’ cosmology. In what follows I take no view on whether or not the organisms generated at the end of B35 are Empedocles’ contemporaries. But I do assume that whereas Love brings together portions of different elements, Strife brings together portions of the same element; I also assume that “mixture” refers exclusively to Love’s activity, not Strife’s. ^[31]

In the present context the key question concerns the nature and identity of the first group of mortals (B35.14), those that used to be immortal. The standard identification is with the elements or roots. ^[32] That may seem the only possible reading, given that their mortality is connected to mixture. But here it is vital to distinguish between (1) an element, (2) a particular mass or body composed exclusively of a single element, and (3) the portions of the element that compose a single-element body. When setting the scene for the loss of immortality Empedocles says that Strife has withdrawn partly but not fully from the world, and still “restrains” some portions of the elements (35.8-11). ^[33] That is, Strife prevents some portions from being mixed with other elements. But some other portions are now mixed. So at this time not every portion of, say, fire is in the same condition; “many” portions of fire are not mixed with other elements, but mixed portions of fire exist simultaneously (35.8). Given that there already exist mixed portions of the elements, the unmixed items of line 15–that is, the items that so far have been immortal – cannot be the “elements” without some further specification. Rather, they must be the unmixed portions of each element, the constituents of one-element bodies, i. e. (3) in the list above. All that we are told about those unmixed portions is that they are “many” (line 8). The bodies constituted by them must therefore be either large or numerous (or both), and so far as I can see nothing in B35 helps us choose between these interpretations. ^[34] If the world described in 35.8-11 at least resembles the world inhabited by Empedocles and his contemporaries, then the single-element bodies include vast masses, such as the sun, moon, sea and sky. Imagining those bodies combining to produce new organisms would certainly inspire the awe professed by Empedocles in 35.17.

The contrast between “immortal” and “mortal” in 35.14 is between the contrasting conditions of one and the same portion of an element. First, together with other portions of the same element, it belonged, as an “immortal”, to a single-element body; then, under the influence of Love, it is mixed and becomes a constituent of a “mortal”. Henceforth the portion will be recycled in a succession of living compounds, and at this point it itself becomes a mortal – as Empedocles says, it changes “path” (35.15). “Immortality” thus marks the condition of the portion when it belonged to a specific, single-element body, by contrast with a sequence of mortal compounds; what it lost, when it is mixed with other elements, is a kind of continuity. There is a controversy about how far down the new discontinuity goes: when the elements are combined, it is not certain whether each of the combined elements retain its distinctive qualities. ^[35] But the following should be uncontroversial: at least part of the new discontinuity will be the secondary, or derivative, properties for which the elemental portions become responsible. The portions of a single-element body give rise to a specific and unchanging group of properties, such as warmth and solidity; in that regard they do not change, even though a single-element body and its portions may still experience other changes, such as (again) locomotion. By contrast, when they become portions of living mortals they, in combination with other elemental portions, give rise to diverse properties: the characteristics and parts of different organisms. If “immortal” marks a kind of continuity, not endless duration or complete changelessness, we can understand why the onset of Love through the world should itself be called “immortal” (35.13). Love’s expansion is a continuous and uniform process. It will end, and during its existence it affects more and more portions of the elements, but as long as it exists it promotes mixture.

If the “immortals” of B35.14 are previously unmixed portions of an element, does he ever indicate whether or not the elements themselves are immortal? ^[36] The closest he comes to answering that question is in his discussion of the elements’ changes and permanence (B26.8-12; cf. B17.9-13). There he suggests that it depends on one’s perspective. If one looks to the regularity of the elements’ changes, then, as he says, “they are always changeless in the cycle’: the elements come together, are separated and so on without end. But if one asks ‘are the elements divided or integrated?”, the only answer is that they constantly change. In this regard they have no “firm life” (17.11, 26.10). The implication is that neither “mortal” nor “immortal” is fully appropriate.

Empedocles and Other Gods

In B112 Empedocles announces to his fellow-citizens that he is an “immortal god, no longer mortal”, echoing solemn self-revelations of deities in epic. ^[37] It has been argued – mistakenly, in my view – that Empedocles does not really commit himself to the self-description. Empedocles says that he is an immortal god ὑμῖν (112.4) and that he is honoured ὥσπερ ἔοικα (112.5); his wording in these two lines has been taken to show that he is merely telling the people of Acragas how they perceive him. ^[38] As has long been recognized, ^[39] however, ὑμῖν is merely an “ethical” dative; any translation risks overtranslating, and nothing stronger than Wright’s “I tell you” is needed. A Homeric parallel (Odyssey 22.348) shows that ὥσπερ ἔοικα points to what the speaker deserves, not to how he is perceived by the addressee, and anyway in the Empedoclean passage ὥσπερ ἔοικα should be taken with “honoured”, not “immortal”. The meaning is that Empedocles is honoured by all, and appropriately. In recent scholarship it has also been suggested that the large number of the addressees (the inhabitants of Acragas) shows the passage and, perhaps, the Katharmoi more generally, to be “exoteric”. ^[40] Without some specification of what it means to be exoteric – accessible or guarded, vague or actually misleading – this does not tell us much about Empedocles’ immortality. And if we want to explain the large number of addressees in B112 there is a credible alternative to exotericism. As I have observed already, in B146 Empedocles suggests that immortality is achieved by benefactors: leaders, poets, prophets or doctors, or those who, like Empedocles himself, combine these different roles. So it is hardly surprising that when proclaiming his own immortality he puts himself in a relation not with an individual but with an entire city, and then shows how, as a religious authority and doctor, he has benefited cities on a vast scale.

The contrast in this fragment is between the mortal and immortal Empedocles. In order to understand the contrast we need to understand Empedocles’ mortality, and the passage where he describes that is his self-identification with one of the daimones who become “all the forms of mortals” (B115.7). ^[41] When a daimôn is punished with mortality, the duration of its existence is not curtailed. Instead it loses uninterrupted existence as a particular kind of organism (the best kind, a deity). Much of Empedocles’ description of the cause, nature and end of the punishment echoes or responds to Hesiod. ^[42] For example, in Hesiod’s Theogony perjured deities are denied the food of the immortals until their punishment is over (796-7, 802-4), and similarly Empedocles says that those who gain immortality join the company and “table” of the immortals (B147). (The divine feast is even made to seem more relevant in Empedocles’ poem, given that food brought about, and can prolong, the deity’s exile.) ^[43] Less conventional is his emphasis on change and disruption as a form of punishment. ^[44] The punished daimôn “exchanges the harsh paths of life” (115.8), and must keep migrating between the regions of air, sea, earth and sun (115.9-13). Transmigration thus takes it not merely between organisms, as Empedocles reveals elsewhere (B117), but between elemental environments.

At least in Empedocles’ version, transmigration is not supposed to offer consolation. On the contrary, Empedocles is trying to surpass Hesiod in severity. Whereas the punished deity in Hesiod returns to the other gods in the tenth year, Empedocles’ daimôn is banished for thirty thousand “seasons” (probably ten thousand years), ^[45] and is banished repeatedly. The unhappy deity is shunned and ejected from wherever it tries to make its home (sea, earth, air or the rays of the sun). We might compare B15, where Empedocles implies that a mortal, or what is formed as a mortal, continues to exist after death (he says that a wise man would not suppose otherwise). This is not intended to be an entirely encouraging message, for the view he rejects is that goods and evils are confined to what is called life (15.3). By denying annihilation at death Empedocles risks elevating all human beings to the status of immortals, and an attraction of transmigration is that it restores a sharp distinction between immortals and mortals – as long as “immortality” is reserved for those who have escaped transmigration. Survival is guaranteed, but it will involve further suffering, and little continuity, for all those who have not attained immortality. Godhood brings not total changelessness (the god of B134.5 thinks rapidly), but, once again, continuity of a more specific kind.

Empedocles is frustratingly unforthcoming about how much the daimôn retains from one life to the next, but that may indicate that, until the achievement of immortality, very little is retained. All that is certain is that it must retain its guilt, again until it regains immortality, for it continues to be punished up to that point. It might be argued that the daimones, or some of them, must be able to recollect previous lives, but the evidence for this is not as strong as one would expect. When Empedocles lists his previous forms of life (B117), the list highlights the contrasts between his previous lives (he has been female as well as male, a bird, a fish and even a plant), and so his claims may be based not on recollection (or on what he took to be recollection) but on an inference from his theory that any daimôn is punished with contrasting modes of life. ^[46]

Empedocles’ attitude to Pythagoras is therefore complicated. When Empedocles praises an anonymous man of exceptionally broad knowledge (B129), he was taken by some ancient readers to be speaking of Pythagoras. ^[47] Empedocles says that the man had knowledge ranging over ten or twenty lifetimes, but he does not say that the man’s knowledge came from personal recollection. Instead, as scholars have noted, in the little he says about the basis of the man’s knowledge – “he had the greatest wealth of understanding” – he echoes his description of the knowledge to which Pausanias should aspire. ^[48] Moreover, the man is said to have known not merely the details of his own previous lives but far more than that: “each of all things” over a huge period. We are reading a description of an outstanding polymath. On the other hand, this does not show that the ancient identification of the man with Pythagoras was incorrect. Empedocles may be reinterpreting Pythagoras’ knowledge in such a way as to accommodate anecdotes about Pythagoras ^[49] without implying that the daimôn can actually recollect previous lives. Pythagoras simply knew more than anyone else, and so, when asked, could “see” previous events as if he had been there. ^[50]

As we have seen, when the daimôn becomes one “mortal” after another, its longevity is unaffected, if longevity means merely length of existence. But it is no longer one and the same kind of organism throughout its existence: it is through this discontinuity, as well as banishment from the company of the gods, that the daimôn is punished. By contrast, achieving immortality as a god is not only to return to the gods but to regain continuity, psychological and bodily, over a long but ultimately finite period. This will involve some kind of transition: as Empedocles says, reaching for an alternative to sexual reproduction, a select few “sprout up” as gods (B146). But Empedocles may expect, as a god, to retain his current knowledge and memories, and so in that regard immortality is already his.

When addressing his “immortal” Muse Calliope Empedocles contrasts her with someone “ephemeral” (B131.1). The goddess is contrasted either with a poet who was previously assisted by her, or with the addressee of such a poet. ^[51] In a recent paper Most suggests that Empedocles has in mind Hesiod, who singles out Calliope at Theogony 79, but it is easier to understand her interest in “our concerns” (131.2) if the reference is to either Empedocles or Pausanias. ^[52] “Ephemeral” and the contrast with “immortal” suggest that the reference must be to Pausanias, not Empedocles, but that is certain only if Empedocles has “immortal” status throughout the fragments. So far I have tried to avoid the question of the number of Empedocles’ poems, but as it happens Empedocles’ comments on his own mortality and immortality constitute some of the evidence for his having written at least two poems, not one. In B112, the opening of the Katharmoi, ^[53] Empedocles says that he is a god, no longer mortal, whereas in B115 he is an exile from the gods, doomed as a daimôn to become different mortals. How can he both be “no longer mortal” and continue to become “all forms of mortals”? The simplest explanation is that B115 derives from an earlier poem where he still saw himself as a mortal. ^[54] As the Strasbourg papyrus has shown, ^[55] Empedocles did not write with a clean separation between religious and cosmological questions; this is evidence neither for nor against a two-poem hypothesis, but it does show that the subject matter of B115 no longer requires us to place it in the same poem as other fragments with a “religious” theme.

We must finally return to the description, in three passages, of the gods as “long-living” (B21.12, B23.8, a (ii) 2). These gods do not last forever, but if, on the strength of that, we call them “mortal” we are deviating from Empedocles’ own choice of words elsewhere. In each of the passages where gods are called “long-living” they are said in the same line to be “pre-eminent in honours” (“pre-eminent” must be supplied to complete the line in the Strasbourg papyrus). Given that context, it is most unlikely that “long-living” is intended to show what the gods lack. ^[56] Empedocles frequently connects the shortness of life to ignorance or error: in their lives people see only a small portion of life (B2.3), and the Muse of long memory is contrasted with the “ephemeral” creatures who will listen to her (B3.4). B11 suggests a connection between the short time people have for reflection and the short duration that they, mistakenly, attribute to things (in both cases, from birth to death and no further). Their thoughts are doubly οὐ δολιχόφρονες. In drawing attention to the gods’ longevity – that is, their longevity as a specific organism – Empedocles is showing the gods’ most important advantage, in cognitive terms, over humans.

This gives us the best clue as to why Empedocles’ uses of “immortal” are so heterogeneous and, to our eyes, strange. Despite their finite duration Empedocles wants to retain “immortal” as an honorific for his gods, and as an honorific the term should accurately mark what gives the gods an advantage, particularly an epistemic advantage, over other creatures. A long or even infinitely long existence would be of no benefit to gods if they did not also enjoy continuity as a specific organism, for this continuity is necessary if they are to have full access to their vast stock of previously acquired experiences. “Immortal” should thus be used of the gods’ freedom from disrupting “deaths” during their long existence. This then controls how “immortal” is applied to further items, even though these other items have widely different functions, effects and qualities that, for as long as they are immortal, are not interrupted. But, as I have tried to show, the Hesiodic context of his poetry makes it less surprising that he applied his new conception of “immortality” to vast cosmic bodies.

Conclusion

Empedocles uses “immortal” when making various contrasts, and denying various changes, and in conclusion I consider what the immortal items have in common. Empedocles sometimes associates death with mixture or separation (B9, B17.4), and this encourages the thought that immortal items are unmixed or undivided, by contrast with some item that is mixed or divided. We have seen this in the case of the illuminated objects of air, which despite appearances retain their physical integrity, and the “immortal” portions of B35, which lose their immortality when they are mixed with portions of other elements. But elsewhere mixture and division, at least of this kind, have not been as prominent as one would expect. In his discussion of the punished daimôn (B115) he talks of separation from the gods, where the daimôn is not divided but isolated from others. Empedocles must believe that transmigration involves physical mixture of some kind, given that human, animal and plant life start with mixture (B9), but the details of this are notoriously left vague. ^[57] Such “mixture” as there is in B115 is the new compulsion on the daimôn to inhabit different environments.

Empedocles saw continuity, over a long but finite time, as the more important common feature, for it is concerning this that we find a verbal echo between passages. His discussions of both daimones and elemental portions suggest that for long as something is immortal it does not “change paths” (B35.15 and B115.8), even though it may change in other respects. Of course, what it means not to “change paths” will vary from case to case. An immortal god remains one and the same organism, and, unlike a transmigrating daimôn, retains the memories and understanding acquired over its long life as that organism. Celestial objects perceived by means of “borrowed” light (B45) retain the size and shape that they appear to lose. Unmixed portions of an element give rise to the same set of properties until they are mixed with other elements – the “mortality” caused invariably by the “immortal” expansion of Love.

Does immortality have a common cause or origin? We might find it natural to associate immortality with Love, particularly as the daimôn loses its immortality from placing its trust in Strife (B115.14), but in fact Love is not the only cause of immortality, and sometimes causes the opposite: in B35 Strife causes portions of elements to become immortal, and Love is then responsible for their mortality. The common feature of the immortals’ origins is rather that in each case the origin is asexual. The celestial objects, for example, are created when portions of an element come together. Apotheosis is represented as quasi-vegetative generation, and so the awkward fact that the human being had parents can be discounted. Empedocles aims to keep immortality pure from sexuality; Hesiod is his principal target, but this is also one of the main differences between Empedocles and Plato. By comparison with Empedocles, Plato’s discussions of immortality are more accommodating to sexuality and human reproduction. Unlike Empedocles, Plato sees no reason to deny immortality to a soul that is still transmigrating, but in Plato a soul that has merely finite duration would not be immortal.