Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition

399 Pages·1995·33.843 MB·English

by  Peter Kingsley

Ancient Philosophy,
Mystery, and Magic
Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition
*
PETER KINGSLEY
CLARENDON PRESS «: OXFORD
Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6DP
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay
Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dares Salaam
Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne
Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore
Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press
Published in the United States by
Oxford University Press Inc., New York
© Peter Kingsley 1995
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press.
Within the UK, exceptions are allowed in respect of any fatr dealing for the
purpose of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted
under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, or in the case of
reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of the licences
tssued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning
veproduction outside these terms and in other countries should be
sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press,
at the address above
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way
of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which tt ts published and without a similar condition
including this condition betng imposed on the subsequent purchaser
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data avaiable
Library of Congress Cataloging tn Publication Data
Ancient philosophy, mystery, and magic : Empedocles and
Pythagorean tradition | Peter Kingsley.
Includes bibliograhical references and index.
1. Empedoctes. 2. Pythagoras and Pythagorean school. I. Title.
B238.Z27K56 1995 182'.2—de20 95-5090
ISBN 0-19-815081-4
3579108 642
Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by
Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd., Midsomer Norton
CONTENTS
*
Map of Sicily and southern Italy viii
Map of Egypt 1X
Introduction
I Philosophy
Back to the Roots 13
15
Aither
NN 24
Aer
OFC
The Riddle

e The Sun 49
O
II Mystery
An Introduction to Sicily 71

The Phaedo Myth: The Geography
719
w
The Phaedo Myth: The Sources 88
C
The Phaedo Myth: The Structure
10. Plato and Orpheus 112
. The Mixing-Bowl 133
12. ‘Wise Men and Women’ 149
13. Central Fire 172
l4. A History of Errors
195
III Magic
. The Magus Q17
- From Sicily to Egypt
233
. The Hero 250
v1 Contents
18. Death on Etna 278
19. Sandals of Bronze and Thighs of Gold 289
20. Pythagoreans and Neopythagoreans 317
21, ‘Not to Teach but to Heal’ 335
22, Nestis 348
23. ‘Conceal My Words in Your Breast’ 359
24. From Empedocles to the Sufis: “The Pythagorean
Leaven’ 371
Appendices
. Parmenides and Babylon 392
IT. Nergal and Heracles 394
III. Empedocles and the Isma‘ilis 395
Abbreviations 397
Bibhography 403
Index 417
PREFACE
a
Tuts book has essentially been written in the form of a
narrative; there are certain stories, however ancient, which still
deserve to be told. For the sake of the general reader, Greek
words and phrases have been either translated or explained; so
with other ancient languages. Technical matters have as a rule
been confined to the footnotes; the occasional exceptions are
where a certain issue has a wider significance or helps to
illustrate a principle. The style of reference adopted in the
footnotes has been simplified as far as possible. For an explana-
tion of references given in the form of initials, or abbreviations,
see the list of abbreviations at the end of the book; fuller details
of works cited either by the author’s name alone, or by author
and date, will be found in the bibliography.
This is an appropriate place to offer my gratitude to all who
have helped in various ways in connection with the book. I
would like to mention in particular Sir John Boardman,
Archbishop Norair Bogharian, Mary Boyce, Walter Burkert,
Michel Chodkiewicz, Stella Corbin, John Creed, Luc Deitz,
Jill Kraye, Geoffrey Lloyd, Alain Martin, James Morris, Vrej
Nersessian, David Sedley, Bob Sharples, Anne Sheppard,
Malcolm Willcock, and Fritz Zimmermann. I owe a special
debt to Charles Burnett, Stephanie Dalley, Sara Sviri, and
Robin Waterfield; to all the library and teaching staff at the
Warburg Institute, London; and to Hilary O’Shea at the Press.
But above all my thanks go to Martin West, for always being
there ready to help at every stage in the writing of this book.
The Kimbell Art Museum, Texas, has given permission to
reproduce on the cover the detail from Salvator Rosa’s Pythag-
oras Emerging from the Underworld (1662). For Rosa’s own
comments on the painting, see Lettere tnedite di Salvator Rosa a
G. B. Ricciardi, ed. A. de Rinaldis (Rome, 1939), 141.

Introduction
ok
‘Tnts book covers a wide area in space and time, but takes as
its starting-point one man who lived well over two thousand
years ago. That man was called Empedocles.
Empedocles was probably born around the start of the fifth
century BC.’ He was from the Greek colony of Acragas—
modern Agrigento—on the south-west coast of Sicily; but he
appears to have spent much of his time travelling, as one would
anyway expect from ‘seers’ of his type in the world of the
ancient Mediterranean and Near East.* About when he died,
or where, or how, we know nothing.’ And yet this same man,
whose life remains such a mystery to us, was to perform an
unparalleled role in seeding the subsequent growth of western
culture. Formulated in terms of the later trend for defining
separate fields of interest or expertise, his influence made itself
felt in philosophy, rhetoric, medicine, chemistry, biology,
astronomy, cosmology, psychology, mysticism, and religion.
The immensely influential theory of four elements, first
presented in western literature by Empedocles, is just one very
obvious example.’
Wright 3-5; KRS 280-1.
Regarding his wanderings see DK g1 B1i2 with Zuntz 189 and e.g. D.L. 8.67,
where Empedocles’ return to Acragas is described as having been prevented by ‘the
descendants of his enemies’, of rwv éx8pav daéyovor, probably implying a lengthy
period of absence: cf. for the expression Hdt. 7.158, Porph. VP 22 = Aristox. fr. 17 with
von Fritz (1940), 19. For travelling seers cf. Grottanelli; Burkert (1983).
' The report by Aristotle that Empedocles died at the age of 60 is now usually
considered reliable (Arist. fr. 71; Guthrie, ii. 128, Wright 5); but its lack of historical value
was already seen by Bidezacentury ago, and subsequent research on Greek biographical
i:udition either prior to or contemporary with Aristotle has done nothing to inspire any
more confidence. Cf. Bidez 154-5 with A. J. Podlecki, Phoentx, 23 (1969), 114-37;
Momigliano 23-84; Kingsley (1990), 261-4. In the absence of more solid information,
the most we can say is that according to Greek biographers the age of 60 was a convenient
ume to die: cf. e.g. D.L. 2.44 (Socrates) and 9.3 (Heraclitus), Burnet (1892), 75-6 (Anaxi-
menes), F, Jacoby, Apollodors Chrontk (Berlin, 1902), 329 (Demosthenes), 350 (Moschion).
lor the legends about Empedocles’ death see below, Chs. 16-19.
' Kranz 83-105, 110-12; Halleux 67;J . Longrigg, /sts, 67 (1976), 420-9, and Apetron,
1011985), QS“ 115.
2 Introduction
Not surprisingly, such an important figure has evoked a
great deal of attention and given rise to a vast literature. The
main purpose of this book is to demonstrate that—in spite of all
the attention and the literature—modern scholarship has by no
means come to grips with Empedocles’ teaching as a whole,
and to indicate that a fundamental revision of our ideas about
him is in order: a revision which has major implications not
just for our understanding of Empedocles himself but also for
our understanding of ancient philosophy—and, indeed, of the
origins of western culture.
More specifically, the aims of this study are to show that the
major obstacle to a correct appreciation of Empedocles has not
been (as is usually claimed) the fragmentary nature of the
surviving evidence but, instead, has been a wrong approach; to
clarify the reasons why, ever since the time of Aristotle in the
fourth century Bc, his teaching has been so misconceived; and
to show where we need to turn for a more accurate representa-
tion of his work. That will involve in the first instance uncover-
ing evidence which is more or less contemporary with
Empedocles and, although so far overlooked, is directly
relevant to him. In the second instance it will involve uncover-
ing evidence for a continuous chain of tradition: an ‘alternative’
tradition of understanding and interpreting Empedocles which
survived for centuries and in several important senses remained
closer, more faithful to the authentic Empedocles than the
mainstream philosophical interpretations of him in the schools
of Aristotle and Plato. An inevitable consequence of bringing
these strands of evidence back into the picture is the need for an
extensive broadening of our perspectives, and for a reassess-
ment of many unspoken assumptions about transmission of
ideas in the ancient world.
Empedocles used poetry to communicate his teaching, and his
poetry—like the writings of all early ‘philosophers’ prior to the
time of Socrates and Plato—only survives in the form of
fragments as quoted and preserved in the texts of later writers.
This has naturally raised the issue of what aids and sources we
can possibly use to elucidate these fragmentary remains of
Empedocles’ teaching. The issue is of crucial importance,
Introduction 3
because it poses very basic questions about the framework in
which we need to situate and appreciate the writings of these
so-called ‘Presocratics’.
Although the fact is rarely admitted, contemporary study of
the Presocratics has reached a crisis-point. The crisis revolves
around two words: authority, and tradition. On the one hand,
post-‘Enlightenment’ scholarship over the past two centuries
has persistently viewed the history of early Greek philosophy as
a progressive evolution towards some extremely vague, but
numinously seductive, ideal of rationality; and in doing so it
has almost unquestioningly decided to embrace Aristotle’s
arrogant assessment of Presocratic philosophy as no more than
a stammering attempt to say what only he, at last, was able to
articulate with any fluency. Aristotle, and Aristotle’s successor
Theophrastus, have come to be treated as the ultimate author-
iues for our understanding of the Presocratics—not only
because they are the earliest writers to provide us with extensive
information about their teachings but also because they are
considered ideally qualified to appreciate the aims, and the
supposed shortcomings, of Presocratic philosophy. As a result,
a kind of genealogy has been established: the tradition of inter-
pretation of the Presocratics is at its purest, its most reliable,
and even its most infallible the closer we return to its dual
source in these two great authority-figures.°
On the other hand, since the publication of Cherniss’s work
on Aristotle and the Presocratics in 1935 there has been a
deeper awareness not only of the fact that Aristotle and his
school were frequently capable of misinterpreting the Pre-
socratics at a very fundamental level, but also of the fact that he
and his followers systematically used deliberate misunder-
standing and ‘shameless’ misrepresentation as a way of
silencing their predecessors. In other words, Aristotle and The-
ophrastus turn out to be far from infallible guides to the inter-
pretation of the Presocratics; and the further back we move up
the streams of ‘ancient tradition’ the more directly we come
Efforts at tracing the history of ‘doxography’—the now-technical term for the
writing up and discussing of the views of early Greek philosophers—back even further
in tame than Theophrastus and Anstotle are still very tentative: cf. e.g. Mansfeld (1990),
22-43. On Aristotle’s predominant role in determining the nature of the doxographical
tradition as known to us see Kingsley (1994a) with the refs. in n. 46.
4 Introduction
face to face with the forces of prejudice, bias, and downright ill
will.®
Desperate situations often give rise to desperate solutions.
The most recent trend has been to turn necessity into a virtue:
to glorify the subjectivity of our ancient sources by making it
not just something worth studying in its own right, but the only
possible object for study. To quote a recent writer,
It is not words which are of interest but interpretations. . . . There is
no way that one can cut through the layers to some ‘objective truth’
about the meaning of the ‘fragments’. ... When it comes to the
Presocratics, scholars have no justification for asserting that what
{any ancient authority] saw in the text was not there or was incorrect
as a reading of that text. ... No subsequent reading based on the
words they quote can have greater validity than their own readings.’
In a number of ways this ‘contextual’ approach to the
Presocratics represents the logical and ultimate conclusion to
the course of interpretation pursued during the past two
hundred years: so much importance is attached to the
contextual statements of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and later
reporters that eventually Empedocles—or any other of the
Presocratics—fades from the picture altogether. Yet what this
approach misses entirely is the fact that the context provided by
ancient writers who quote fragments of the Presocratics is not
the only context in which those fragments can, and must, be
understood. On the contrary, they need also to be situated in
their own historical context; and the reason why this has only
been done to such a minimal extent so far is because scholars
have by and large remained content to read and understand
the Presocratics through the eyes of Aristotle and later writers.
As soon as we Start to anchor the fragments of the Presocratics
historically we stop being the slaves of those writers and,
instead, can begin to use their reports and interpretations by
appreciating them at their real value.
As we will see, there are a number of tools that allow us to
perform this task. The first is philology. Put very simply, words
* Cf. Cherniss (1995) and the further refs. in Kingsley (19944), n. 2; (19946), esp. nn. |
17-19; (19954), § iv. ‘Shameless’: Guthrie, ii. 160. As we will see later (Ch. 24), this
perception of the extent to which Aristotle and his school misrepresented the Pre- |
socratics is in fact nothing new.
” Osborne 22-3.