7.1.1 The Birth of Human Beings

By starting this section with the origin of human beings, I will set out a topic that, at least since Reference GrahamGraham’s 1988 contribution, is generally agreed upon by scholars; namely, the fact that not only Love but also Strife has a role in generation and, specifically, in the generation of men and women.Footnote ⁴ However, this will open a long series of controversial issues concerning several aspects of Empedocles’ cosmic cycle, ranging from the number of worlds included within it, the number of zoogonies and their interpretation, to the number and shape of the cosmic phases the cycle encompasses. I will dedicate the following subsections to each of these issues, aiming at a revision of Empedocles’ concept of a double zoogony and, ultimately, at a reconsideration of the cosmic cycle, which I reconstruct in conclusion as a recurrent oscillation of Sphairos/One and Cosmos/Many.

If we first turn to one of our most reliable sources, then we can see that in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics,Footnote ⁵ Simplicius reports that Empedocles, in the second book of On Nature, dealt with the origin of men and women in these terms:

These verses describe the birth of human beings from ‘whole-natured forms’ (οὐλοφυεῖς τύποι at l. 4). When the latter sprang out from the earth thanks to subterranean fire that was trying to reach its celestial homologous portion in the sky, they displayed neither human limbs and voices nor distinct sexes. Thus, a general inference is that a prominent result of the origin of human beings is the distinction of two sexes.

Men and women are then depicted by the term πολυκλαύτων (l. 1), ‘much-lamented’ and therefore ‘pitiable’,Footnote ⁷ whereas the ‘shoots’ they arise from are ‘nocturnal’. The attribution of negative characteristics to human beings is recurrent in Empedocles’ philosophy. In B 124 (= EMP D 17 Laks-Most), for instance, human beings are said to be ‘wretched and very unhappy’, as they are born ‘from strifes and groanings’ (ἔκ τ᾽ ἐρίδων ἔκ τε στοναχῶν).Footnote ⁸ Moreover, as discussed in Chapter 6.2.1, in B 2 (= EMP D 42 Laks-Most) humans are described as having narrow cognitive devices and a small portion of life, which prevent them from gaining genuine knowledge of the world.Footnote ⁹ Elsewhere, they are analogously said to be ‘foolish’ and unable to understand the truth.Footnote ¹⁰ All this very likely hints at Strife’s work in generation. It is also worth noting that even the natural processes involved in the origin of humankind as described in the above-quoted B 62 (= EMP D 157 Laks-Most) – namely, the separation and movement of fire towards its homologous, celestial portion – indicate Strife’s influence.Footnote ¹¹

Additionally, the ability to sexually reproduce displays humans’ potential to increase their kind at will and, thereby, to expand cosmic multiplicity at the expense of Love’s unifying influence – a further indication of Strife’s power. In this respect, the differentiation of the sexes is traditionally portrayed as a punishment and a cause of strife and discord, like, for instance, in the myth of Pandora.Footnote ¹² This traditional representation has an echo in Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium (189c–193e), where sexual distinction is seen as a product of the gods’ displeasure with previously asexual humanity.Footnote ¹³ Thus, the sum of the elements collected here indicates that human beings can be counted as Strife’s most exemplary divisions and, with reference to the generation of living forms, they may well be taken as its highest achievement.

This conclusion points out that not merely Love but also Strife plays a role in the generation of living beings,Footnote ¹⁴ as can also be inferred from a close analysis of the famous simile of the painters in B 23 (= EMP D 60 Laks-Most):

The simile provides an illustration of the work of the painters who, by mixing different colours, give rise to a great variety of ornaments that resemble existing things. The metaphor clearly points to the four elements in the cosmos, whose mixing give rise to all forms of living beings, as anticipated in B 21 (= EMP D 77a Laks-Most).Footnote ¹⁵ The main goal of the simile is to illustrate that, just as a limited number of colours can be mixed in different combinations in order to reproduce all kinds of things, in the same way the four elements, mixed in different combinations, produce all kinds of mortal forms in the physical world.

Additionally, the metaphor emphasizes the painters’ creative action.Footnote ¹⁶ Indeed, the fragment opens by focusing on them as ‘men well taught by the wisdom of their art’. Accordingly, the wonderful creation of ‘forms resembling all things’ is the result of the painters’ skill in taking ‘pigments of various colours’ and mixing ‘them in harmony, the ones more, the others less’. Three references to the artists in the grammatical dual indicate that two painters are presupposed. As Sedley has pointed out,Footnote ¹⁷

Thus, it can be concluded that with the use of the dual forms Empedocles very likely meant to refer to a dual generative agency and hence to both Love and Strife. At least by following the metaphor, it seems the two forces work analogously and simultaneously when generating living beings.

So far, the assumption of Strife’s role in generation has been taken as ensuring a cosmic cycle with two distinct cosmogonic phases of increasing prevalence, and respective zoogonies, of Love and Strife respectively. Specifically, in line with the extant fragments and testimonia, a world with its formations of plants and animals is shaped when, after Strife’s disruption of the Sphairos, Love gradually expands her influence over the elementsFootnote ¹⁸ and is destroyed when she unites again everything into the Sphairos (the so-called ‘world of Love’). However, the standard hypothesis on the cosmic cycle assumes that, in the opposite stage of the cycle, a second world occurs, which is shaped in the period from Strife’s first incursion into the Sphairos until the complete separation of the elements (the so-called ‘world of Strife’).Footnote ¹⁹ Since we have sure evidence only for the world of Love, the question that needs now to be addressed is whether Empedocles also argued for a second world?

7.1.2 One or Two Worlds?

Let us explore this issue ab ovo. The core of the question concerning Empedocles’ two worlds rests upon the interpretation of the first five lines of B 17 (= EMP D 73.233–37 Laks-Most), which can be considered as the very beginning of Empedocles’ strictly physical account.Footnote ²⁰ These run as follows:

In lines 1–2, Empedocles claims that he will tell a twofold tale (δίπλ’ ἐρέω), which includes the essential tenet of his cosmic cycle: the elements at one time grow to be only one form and at another time become many things again.Footnote ²² Then, at lines 3–5, Empedocles introduces the birth and death of mortal beings,Footnote ²³ which is said to be double (δοιὴ δὲ θνητῶν γένεσις, δοιὴ δ’ ἀπόλειψις). However, to what does this double birth and death of mortals correspond? While the standard interpretation reads lines 4 and 5 as referring to two separate, indeed opposite, stages in the cosmos – a phase of increasing Love culminating in the Sphairos, the other phase of increasing Strife ending in total separation – I contend that a more attentive reading of these lines shows that the double nature of birth and death is not so much linked with two opposite and separate cosmic phases as with the main activity and power of the two forces.

If we first look at line 4, the focus is on πάντων σύνοδος which, by hinting at the unification of all things, may indicate the phase of increasing Love culminating in the Sphairos, as the advocates of the two-world hypothesis maintain. However, in order for line 4 to make any sense, σύνοδος must indicate the whole process rather than the sole result of unification; for the Sphairos does not beget any birth, but the increasing unification culminating in the Sphairos does. My proposal, therefore, is to read σύνοδος as the cosmic process of unification, connected with Love’s influence, that affects all things (πάντων). In parallel, at line 5, διαφυομένων indicates Strife’s action of differentiation. Thus, the birth and death of living beings can be said to be double in the first place because they are due to two modes (and two agents) of generation and destruction: Love’s unification and Strife’s separation.Footnote ²⁴ Are these two modes of birth and death associated with two separate cosmic periods and worlds?

This question seems to find an answer in another set of verses, where the double zoogony theme is presented anew. Specifically, some lines of the Strasbourg papyrus add novel elements to the discussion of the lines of B 17 (= EMP D 73.233–66 Laks-Most), by questioning the standard two-world hypothesis:Footnote ²⁵

These lines open with Empedocles prompting Pausanias to use his eyes to see where the ‘remains’ (l. 295: ὅ̣σ̣[σ]α … λοιπά) of ‘the coming-together and the unfolding of generation’ (l. 294: ξύνοδόν τε διάπτυξίν τε γενέθλης) ‘encounter a larger body’ (l. 293: μείζονι σώμ̣[ατι). Put another way, Empedocles is here arguing that the living beings Pausanias can see in the world can serve as a large field of observation of that which, ‘even now’ (l. 295: νῦν ἔτι), remains of ‘the coming-together and the unfolding of generation’. The inference is that basically all species of flora and fauna we see in our world display visible residues of ‘the coming-together and unfolding of birth’. Then, the passage closes, by way of a ring composition, with the promise that Pausanias will see the ξύνοδόν τε διάπτυξίν τε γενέθλης (l. 300).

As Trépanier has demonstrated, the terms xynods and diaptuxis represent a verbal echo of B 17.3–5 and thus refer to the theme of the double birth and death of mortals mentioned there, as ‘[ξ]ύνοδος is identical with its predecessor, and διάπτυξις is a good match for διαφυομένων’; which means ‘the unification–separation motif is maintained, this time within a single line’.Footnote ²⁶ Building upon this conclusion, Sedley argues that, first, ‘the “coming-together and the unfolding of birth” emphasized by its framing position in both 294 and 300, seems to encapsulate the double zoogony theme’, and thus, ‘as the passage amply demonstrates, the double zoogony is clearly presented as the origin of life as we know it now’.Footnote ²⁷ Second, Sedley concludes that the verses of the papyrus are evidence that the two-world hypothesis is untenable: how could Pausanias see remains of a double zoogony, if Love’s and Strife’s zoogonies occur in two completely distinct worlds? More precisely, since the world of Love comes to an end in the Sphairos, how could Pausanias, who is thought to inhabit the world following the disruption of the Sphairos,Footnote ²⁸ see in familiar things what remains of Love’s generations? For the words of the papyrus to make any sense, the double zoogony must occur in the same cosmos.Footnote ²⁹

I would argue that an analogous conclusion can be drawn from B 26.1–5 (= EMP D 77b.1–5 Laks-Most):

As we have seen in Chapter 4.1, the fragment can be described as a concise depiction of the cycle from the point of view of the four elements, the subject of these lines.Footnote ³¹ In fact, the focus is on their behaviour as the cycle revolves. Empedocles depicts their working as an oscillation between ‘dominion’ on the one hand, and ‘death’ and ‘subordination’ on the other (‘in turn they dominate … in turn they perish … they are subdued’). The wording φθίνει εἰς ἄλληλα in line 2 is picked up by ὑπένερθε γένηται in the last line, which therefore depicts the ‘death’ of the elements previously announced in the fragment. Indeed, line 7 describes the elements being subdued when they grow into the totality: the Sphairos. In the Sphairos, under the hegemony of Love alone, the elements are so thoroughly mixed that they cannot be distinguished from one another. Here, moreover, they are at rest.Footnote ³²

As a plausible inference, the idea of ‘subordination’ of the elements likely indicates their loss of ‘identity’ and motion. Since the elements are dominated in the Sphairos, they will, in turn, dominate in the cycle when Strife succeeds in effecting division and movement. This means, in other words, that the elements’ dominion takes place when they are distinct as many things. In fact, separation and multiplicity enable the elements to be distinguished and known as such. B 26.3–4 (= EMP D 77b.3–4 Laks-Most), by presenting the elements as αὐτὰ γάρ ἐστιν ταῦτα and the ingredients of mortal beings (δι᾽ ἀλλήλων δὲ θέοντα / γίνοντ᾽ ἄνθρωποί τε καὶ ἄλλων ἔθνεα θηρῶν) might echo the idea of their dominion mentioned at line 1 (κρατέουσι). As a result, B 26 (= EMP D 77b.3–4) suggests that, from the point of view of the elements, the cosmic cycle can be depicted as an alternation of two main phases: the phase of their subordination in the One (or Sphairos) and the phase of their dominion when they are divided into many things.

Moreover, B 26.4–6 (= EMP D 77b.4–6 Laks-Most) zooms in on the elements forming living beings (‘they become human beings and the tribes of other beasts’). Specifically, whereas line 4 focuses on the elements as ingredients of mortal beings, lines 5–6 specify that mortal beings are the result of a double zoogony. Indeed, they are brought about by processes of both union and separation, sometimes when the elements come together into one order because of Love (line 5) and sometimesFootnote ³³ when they are borne apart because of Strife (line 6). Finally, line 7 attests that the elements as ingredients of this double zoogony are subdued in the Sphairos.

The interpretation of lines 5–7 poses some problems. The conjunction εἰσόκεν at line 7 introduces the formation of the Sphairos as the event bringing the previous circumstances to completion and thus ending the previous state of things. This suggests that the lines preceding line 7 depict the cosmic events that are chronologically prior to the formation of the Sphairos. Accordingly, advocates of the one-world hypothesis generally maintain that line 7 is an indication that the previous lines depict the zoogony of the sole world of Love. Yet this raises a problem: while line 5, by indicating Love’s union as the generative factor, fits their schema perfectly, line 6 points to Strife’s role in generation, which is generally neglected by the one-world hypothesis. In contrast, the advocates of the two-world hypothesis read line 6 as a clear indication of a second zoogony in a second world during increasing Strife.Footnote ³⁴ But this reading raises a challenge to their reconstruction: according to the two-world hypothesis, Strife’s world and mortals are not subdued because the elements grow together to be a single totality, as stated in line 7, but rather because they are completely separated into the whirl of elements.Footnote ³⁵

In view of these problems, Reference SedleySedley (2007: 39–40) argues that the picture of the cosmic cycle one can draw from these lines is comparable to that reconstructed from the papyrus verses: a cycle with two zoogonies and only one world. This, he claims, is because ‘the sequence of 5–7 tells us that the roots are formed into living things by alternately (5) coming together through Love in a process of cosmic unification and (6) being forced apart through Strife, until finally (7) they are altogether unified in the sphere’, and it therefore follows that ‘[i]f the sphere were simply the culmination of each phase of increasing Love, the sequence of these three lines would make no sense’.Footnote ³⁶ With all this given, Sedley reconstructs a cycle of regular oscillations in the same cosmos between temporally separated stages, in which Love and Strife cyclically increase and decrease in power and in turn produce their respective zoogonies. In such a cycle, the sphere will eventually return, but only after several revolving turns. In other words, Sedley argues for a cycle where the Sphairos is a merely sporadic event because B 26 (= EMP D 77b Laks-Most) only makes sense if the Sphairos does not intervene between Love’s and Strife’s phases and zoogonies every time a new cycle comes about.

In contrast to Sedley’s hypothesis, I contend that we can still make sense of the sequence of B 26.5–7 (= EMP D 77b.5–7 Laks-Most) without eliminating a regular Sphairos, thereby saving the possibility of a recurrent macrocosmic alternation between One and Many, which, as we have seen above, is clearly emphasized by Empedocles in B 17.1–2 (= EMP D 73.233–34 Laks-Most) and in a number of other passages, as well as by Plato and Aristotle.Footnote ³⁷ My point is that, just as we should not align Love’s and Strife’s zoogonies with Love’s and Strife’s (spatially and temporally) opposite worlds, as Sedley convincingly shows, there is no reason to assign (temporally) distinct phases to the zoogonies of Love and Strife according to their respective unfolding. In fact, B 26.5–6 (= EMP D 77b.5–6 Laks-Most) need not be read as referring to two opposite periods of increasing unification and increasing separation with their respective creations of plants and animals.Footnote ³⁸ Rather, we can understand these lines as referring to two distinct (modes of) generation of living beings in a unique zoogonic phase within a unique world. Accordingly, in the same cosmic and zoogonic period, living beings are sometimes brought about (and at other times destroyed) by unions of parts thanks to Love (l. 5), and the same happens at other times due to the separation of compounds effected by Strife (l. 6) until the elements (and living beings formed out of them) are gradually subdued in the Sphairos.Footnote ³⁹

7.1.3 The Double Zoogony Reconsidered

Having established the grounds on my revised reading of Empedocles’ double zoogony, I will now turn to several further verses that also add weight to my interpretation. To begin, thanks to the Strasbourg papyrus, we can now allocate an already known fragment, B 20 (= EMP D 73.302–8 Laks-Most), within Empedocles’ On Nature with a great level of precision, as it corresponds to lines 302–8 of its first bookFootnote ⁴⁰ and is the continuation of the papyrus verses I quoted in Section 7.1.2 above. At line 300 Empedocles reiteratesFootnote ⁴¹ his promise that Pausanias will see, in common things and processes, the ξύνοδόν τε διάπτυξίν τε γενέθλης, a wording that, as we saw above, refers to the double zoogony introduced at B 17.3–5 (= EMP D 73.235–7 Laks-Most). In the ensuing verses Empedocles provides Pausanias with examples of this double birth and death of mortals taken from the familiar world:

Through these verses, we are told that Pausanias will see evidence (more precisely: λοιπά or ‘remains’, as stated in the above-quoted EMP D 73.294 Laks-Most) of the effects of a double zoogony in ‘the illustrious bulk of mortal limbs’, which Empedocles first illustrates using the example of a human being. We are said to be limbs that come together into one mortal body at the age of maturity, and, at another time, wander separately due to the influence of Strife (this image may refer to the unsteady limbs of an elderly body).Footnote ⁴² However, at the end of the passage Empedocles tells us that the same effects can also be observed in all other living forms: plants, fish, wild beasts and birds.

As Sedley puts it, Empedocles’ illustration clarifies that

Thus, in B 20 (= EMP D 73.302–8 Laks-Most) the body conditions characteristic of diverse phases of our own lifetime (namely, maturity and old age) are taken as an indication of the effects, indeed, of concrete, visible residues, of ‘the alternating dominance of Love and Strife in each of us’.Footnote ⁴⁴ This alternating dominance is the result of the coming together and separating of generation (ξύνοδόν τε διάπτυξίν τε γενέθλης), hence of Empedocles’ double zoogony. This means that in B 20 (= EMP D 73.302–8 Laks-Most) the double zoogony is presented as Love and Strife that compete against each other in our bodies and, by alternately prevailing, determine the way their conditions change; that is, the way we grow.

I would argue that the same idea is implied in PStrasb. d–f 1–4 (= EMP D 76.1–4 Laks-Most):Footnote ⁴⁵

The subject of the first two lines is most likely ‘limbs that fall apart’.Footnote ⁴⁶ As the parallel passage of B 20 indicates, the falling apart of the limbs could hint at human old age preluding death. The phrase π̣εσέ[ει]ν̣ καὶ π̣[ότ]μ̣ον ἐπισπε̣ῖν recalls epic expressions belonging to the domain of dying, which is also hinted at by the notion of ‘dire necessity’ and the image of ‘putrefaction’ at line 2 and is plainly referred to by the expression of ‘destinies of death’ decreed by the Harpies at line 4. At lines 3–4, moreover, Empedocles argues that, although we have been experiencing Love thus far, we will soon be under the dominion of the Harpies; that is, of Strife.Footnote ⁴⁷ Thus, both the image of the limbs falling apart and, above all, the idea of us being alternately in the hands of Love and Strife can be seen as further references to the result of the ξύνοδόν τε διάπτυξίν τε γενέθλης, which affects the way our condition changes over time. In brief, like in B 20 (= EMP D 73.302–8 Laks-Most), in this passage too the result of Love’s and Strife’s competing actions and alternating prevalence on the given elements and compounds can be taken as a depiction of Empedocles’ notion of the double zoogony.

This conclusion can be expanded through the analysis of Aëtius’ report on Empedocles’ zoogony:

According to Aëtius, Empedocles argued for four distinct zoogonic stages: (1) single parts or single body limbs; (2) hybrid organisms resembling images of fantasy (or dream images) that arise when the single parts come together; (3) living beings arisen when the parts grow together in conformity with one another; and (4) sexed beings like men and women.Footnote ⁴⁹

Yet, despite this clarification, Aëtius does not provide us with sufficient elements to answer exactly how these stages fitted into the cosmic cycle. All we can say is that he returns us to what seems to be just one zoogonic sequence that ends, as expected, with men and women (current living beings). Moreover, from Aëtius’ text it can be inferred that the first three zoogonic stages seem to derive from one another through an increase in unions of parts into more complex and better-integrated organisms. On the contrary, we know from Empedocles’ lines that men and women derive from whole-natured beings.Footnote ⁵⁰ Thus, they do not seem to be related to the other three generations growing through unions of parts.

The apparent lack of a relation between the past zoogonic stages and the actual generation of human beings has given rise to a scholarly puzzle concerning the whole zoogonic picture provided by Aëtius. The major question has concentrated on the way in which Aëtius’ sequence can be interpreted to return a coherent zoogonic development, given that the first and the last stage of the sequence seem to have no direct relation. It is worth noting, moreover, that the majority of scholars read in Aëtius’ text S. Karsten’s emendation, ὁλοφυῶν in place of ἀλληλοφυῶν.Footnote ⁵¹ As οὐλοφυεῖς are called the forerunners of men and women in B 62.4, scholars generally derive from Aëtius’ report a sort of development: between the first and the second zoogonic stage occurring by unions, and between the third and fourth zoogonic stage occurring by separation. However, since also according to this interpretation men and women of the fourth zoogonic stage are unrelated to the first stage of single limbs, the central question of a coherent zoogonic development in Aëtius’ report remains unanswered.Footnote ⁵²

Nevertheless, Aëtius’ report can also be read without expecting an account of zoogonic ‘evolution’ throughout all its stages. In principle, Aëtius’ record of Empedocles’ zoogony could entail a sequence of stages, which need not necessarily develop from one another. In this respect, whereas the first three zoogonic stages could be read as Love’s growing prevalence over parts, the fact that mankind is not related to the other stages, but rather results from whole-natured beings, may be taken as Strife’s counterpart to Love’s prevalence. An analogous idea could be argued with reference to the second zoogonic stage. Whereas scholars generally maintain that it represents a further step in Love’s generating action, since hybrid organisms resembling dream images arise when the single limbs start to come together, the origin of such imperfect beings, whose unfinished nature makes them unable to survive, can be equally attributed to Strife’s endeavour to impede Love’s more complete formations. In this sense, the images of fantasies of the second zoogony can be regarded as Strife’s products,Footnote ⁵³ rather than as a step of Love’s generative action. Considerations of this sort let us appreciate that Aëtius’ report can be understood in ways that do not necessarily require either a sort of evolutionary narrative or two spatially and temporally separate zoogonic phases and worlds. In fact, as we will see, there is room for diverse readings of Aëtius’ report as well as for further specifications with reference to Empedocles’ zoogonic picture.

To begin, while he does not refer to any distinction between zoogonic periods or phases of Love and Strife in two distinct worlds,Footnote ⁵⁴ Aëtius seems to distinguish between past zoogonic stages and the actual generation of living beings in terms of an essentially different mode of procreation. Whereas past zoogonic stages came from one of the elements ‘such as earth or water’ – hence, they came by spontaneous generation – actual living beings are able to reproduce by sexual intercourse. In other words, the distinctive element of the actual zoogonic stage is indicated in reproduction through offspring from two parents of the same species.Footnote ⁵⁵ This is seen as a fundamental step in the generation and development of living beings. In fact, sexual reproduction has ensured that sexed beings can reproduce by themselves, and this has rendered spontaneous generation and the direct action of any of the principles unnecessary.Footnote ⁵⁶ Moreover, it has brought about sexed species that have imposed themselves upon those of the past zoogonic stages. Yet they have not replaced them entirely;Footnote ⁵⁷ indeed, past unions endure in the present world, for instance, as steps of the embryo’s growth.

In a 2005 study, Gemelli Marciano showed that Empedocles argued for embryology as an analogical reproduction of his zoogony, contending that ‘conception in the womb mirrors in a minor key the primordial one of the composition of bodies in the earth’.Footnote ⁵⁸ In particular, she argued that Love’s zoogony, as a narration of origins, offers a paradigm for the present form of sexual generation ‘that reproduces on a smaller scale the mechanism of “that generation”’.Footnote ⁵⁹ As is attested in Aristotle’s On the generation of animals (723a 23–25), Empedocles argued for the male and the female seed acting together in generation, since, as Aristotle puts it, according to Empedocles ‘the nature of the limbs is separated, partly (in the body) of the man, [partly in the body of the woman]’. The fact that the generation of the limbs is separated between the male and the female seed entails that the foetus must be formed by separated (male and female) limbs coming together, as happened in the second and third zoogonic stages.

However, our sources indicate that not only Love’s but also Strife’s zoogony offers a paradigm for the embryological formation. After having quoted the lines of B 62 (= EMP D 157 Laks-Most) on the origin of men and women from whole-natured beings, Simplicius, following Aristotle, equates Empedocles’ whole-natured beings to the human seed. For the human seed has a ‘whole nature … in the proper sense of the word, being completely and thoroughly itself, exactly what it is, because there has not yet been any separation in it’.Footnote ⁶⁰ By undergoing division in the maternal womb, the seed will produce sexual differentiation in the embryo. The inference from Simplicius’ words is that Strife’s separation of whole-natured beings that in the past gave origin to sexed species offers a paradigm for sexual differentiation in the embryo.Footnote ⁶¹

The conclusion we can draw from this is twofold. First, the embryo is brought to light by processes claiming the endurance of both Love’s and Strife’s past zoogonic generations in the present formations. As a result, embryology reveals that no zoogonic stage can be completely separated from the actual generation of life forms. No zoogonic products, moreover, can be completely removed from the world Pausanias inhabits. Otherwise, how could distant origins still determine the present functioning of reproduction if those zoogonic stages relevant for the reproduction of current living forms populated a world that is completely unrelated to the present world – a world that was extinguished before the present world was even formed – as the two-world hypothesis maintains? Put differently, how could current living beings function in the same way as mortal forms belonging to a time and world that ended without leaving any traces in the present world?Footnote ⁶²

Second, having seen above that present-day human beings are the highest result of Strife’s generation and that sexual reproduction is capable of greatly increasing multiplicity, the embryo, which as the result of the sexual act can be seen as the symbol of Strife’s prevalence over Love, nevertheless owes its development to both modes of operation of Love and Strife. Indeed, it is because Love and Strife, by acting alongside and competing against each other, shape it through a double pattern of union and separation that the embryo develops in the womb in the way it does. Because of this, the embryo could be taken as paradigmatic of the results of a zoogony that is double in the sense I am stressing here.

As I would now argue, each product in each zoogonic stage could be described as the result of Love’s and Strife’s competing action and alternating prevalence, just like the embryo. In this respect, it is worth considering, for instance, what Simplicius says about the single limbs of the first zoogonic stage: ‘the limbs, being still in single parts (μουνομελῆ) through Strife’s separation, wandered apart, still longing for mixture with one another’ (De Caelo 587. 18–19; my emphasis). Simplicius’ words invite the reading that the way of being and working of the single limbs is the direct effect of their being under the concurrent but rival influence of Love and Strife. In fact, it can be inferred that, although being μουνομελῆ and wandering without a whole body because of Strife’s separation, the single limbs long for mixture because of the influence of Love. Additionally, we could assume that single limbs sprang from the earth by means of the pressure of fire flying upwards to reach its celestial homologous.Footnote ⁶³ This suggests that it is the movement of like to like, connected to Strife,Footnote ⁶⁴ that makes things emerge from the earth. Yet the final make-up of the limbs is the specific work of Love, as several Empedoclean fragments attest.Footnote ⁶⁵

Moreover, when achieving more and more power over Strife, Love’s influence succeeds in causing an increase of mixture among separate limbs. Yet these mixtures, because of Strife’s opposition, are like dream images, indeed they are imperfect attempts that either are unable to survive and perish or just survive as monsters.Footnote ⁶⁶ Analogously, whole-natured beings come to light from the earth, thanks to Strife’s influence, which leads subterranean fire to combine with heavenly fire.Footnote ⁶⁷ They could in theory undergo further separation; yet it could be assumed that this is impeded at first by Love, who preserves them whole-natured. However, in the aftermath Strife prevails and gives rise to two distinct sexes, forming men and women. Nevertheless, their reciprocal attraction and sexual unions could be seen as the work of Love,Footnote ⁶⁸ who tries to recreate their original unity.Footnote ⁶⁹ But her attempt fails when sexual intercourse brings a third being to light, thereby increasing multiplicity. For this reason, the new-born is a disgrace.Footnote ⁷⁰ Nonetheless, they are furnished with ‘lovely limbs’ (B 62.7 [= EMP D 157.7 Laks-Most]), arranged together by Love, which make human beings able to master a knowledge that, in some cases, can even resemble divine wisdom.Footnote ⁷¹

This reading suggests, in conclusion, that there are no products of a generation that strictly belongs to Love or Strife alone. Rather, each living form can be traced back to the concurrent and competing action of Love and Strife. Indeed, the two rival forces, by alternately prevailing, determine the way in which each and every living form grows during its whole lifetime. This entails that Love and Strife are both fundamental to any zoogonic formation.

This point is not new as scholars have already acknowledged that, regardless of the zoogonic phase we examine, zoogonic formations always need the concurrent influence of Love and Strife.Footnote ⁷² In contrast, the new claim I am making is that the concurrent and competing action of Love’s unification of parts and Strife’s separation of whole compounds at the birth, growth and death of living beings is precisely what Empedocles means by δοιὴ δὲ θνητῶν γένεσις, δοιὴ δ’ ἀπόλειψις in B 17.3 (= EMP D 73.235 Laks-Most). On this reading, Love and Strife implement a double schema of birth and death, in which Love’s unifying force and Strife’s separating power, being equally procreative and destructive, concurrently work, indeed compete against each other, on given elements and compounds of a unique zoogonic phase. By doing so they leave traces of their action in the way all living forms come to be, grow and perish.

I would also like to emphasize that this reading is suggested by Empedocles’ own words. In fact, in the papyrus lines I have analyzed in Section 7.1.2, the ξύνοδόν τε διάπτυξίν τε γενέθλης – that is, Empedocles’ rewording of his notion of the double birth and death of mortals mentioned at B 17.3 (= EMP D 73.235 Laks-Most) – is spelled out as the result of the alternated dominance of Love and Strife in each of us, because of which our body conditions change during our lifecycle. It follows that the effects of Love’s and Strife’s concurrent and competing action on us and, by extension, on each living form, which determines our birth, death and each single phase of our growth, is precisely what Empedocles calls ‘double zoogony’.

More specifically, while the two forces work on given elements and compounds alongside, indeed in conflict with, each other, Love could temporarily prevail and unite simple parts in more complex, integrated organisms; for instance, as when she forms single limbs by mixing four elements (Love’s mode of birth). Furthermore, by increasing unification – for instance when Love achieves the Sphairos – compounded beings are brought to an end (Love’s mode of death). Alternatively, Strife’s prevailing influence could separate compounds into simpler organisms; for instance, as when men and women are formed from whole-natured beings (Strife’s mode of birth). Then, by undergoing further separation, simple organisms could ultimately dissolve into the four basic elements and die (Strife’s mode of death). In any case, the ξύνοδος and διάπτυξις γενέθλης that Love and Strife implement on the same given organism determines its lifecycle; namely, each single phase of its growth over time.

7.1.4 The Double Zoogony and the Cosmic Cycle

Before moving on to the first of this chapter’s central arguments, if we are to appreciate the implications of the interpretation offered above for the reconstruction of the cosmic cycle, it is worth briefly emphasizing what follows. Thus far, we have seen that Empedocles’ fragments most likely dismiss the reconstruction of two (spatially and temporally) distinct worlds per cycle since they illustrate a double zoogony occurring in a single world (see PStrasb. a(ii) 23–30 [= EMP D 73.293–300 Laks-Most]). Moreover, they portray the double zoogony as the result of a double schema of birth and death under the concurrent, opposite actions of Love’s unification and Strife’s separation, that compete against each other in each and every compound and, by alternately prevailing, determine all phases of its growth (B 20 [= EMP D 73.302–8 Laks-Most]). Admittedly, the examined fragments do not exclude that the double zoogony, even under my revision, could occur in two distinct zoogonic phases in the same cosmos, as Sedley proposed: one phase under the increasing power of Love, the other phase under the increasing power of Strife. However, since, as we have seen, the extant fragments by no means require this assumption to make sense of Empedocles’ double zoogony, my claim is that the hypothesis of two distinct zoogonic phases is, in light of the revision implemented here, simply redundant.

Instead, the interpretation I am proposing has, first, the advantage of being more ‘economical’. Indeed, a reconstruction of zoogonic phases in which Love and Strife duplicate their generative action, by working in the exact same way twice in different stages of the cosmos, would turn out to be ‘Empedocles’ flagrant breach of explanatory economy’,Footnote ⁷³ for which it is difficult to find a convincing reason in the fragments. More plausibly, Love’s and Strife’s zoogonies occur not only in the same world, but also in the same zoogonic phase. Here, Love and Strife work against each other on all elements and compounds. As a consequence, some living beings come about as a result of union when Love happens to prevail over parts, others as a result of separation when Strife happens to have the upper hand over wholes. Analogously, some are destroyed by an increase in unions, others by an increase in separations. Nonetheless, as it develops and grows due to Love’s and Strife’s competition and alternate prevalence, each living being can always be traced back to both forces and their modes of action.

Second, my interpretation better fits those fragments and testimonia that portray Empedocles’ cycle as a regular oscillation between One and Many. In fact, in contrast to Sedley’s, my reconstruction accommodates a constant return of the Sphairos, which alternates regularly with one single phase, that of the Cosmos. This is, after all, the picture of the cycle that B 26 (= EMP D 77b Laks-Most) seems to suggest on closer inspection. As I argued in Section 7.1.2, B 26 (= EMP D 77b Laks-Most) depicts the cycle from the point of view of the elements as a regular oscillation of two major periods: that of their dominion under Strife (B 26.4–6 [= EMP D 77b.4–6 Laks-Most]), in which they shape our Cosmos and its inhabitants, and that of their subordination in Love’s Sphairos (B 26.7 [= EMP D 77b.7 Laks-Most]). More precisely, whereas line 4 introduces the world in terms of compounds of elements forming mortal beings, lines 5 to 6 specify that this occurs through a double zoogony, hence through Strife’s and Love’s competition and alternating ‘assault’ on elements and compounds. Then line 7 attests that the world with its double zoogony is ended by the cyclical return of the Sphairos.

In conclusion, my revision of the double zoogony accords with a regular alternation of Sphairos and Cosmos. These coincide respectively with Love’s and Strife’s cyclical oscillation and respective dominion, hence with union and separation and, therefore, with One and Many. On my reconsideration of the double zoogony, in other words, the cosmic cycle is a constant alternation of two major phases, which matches the twofold nature and power of Love and Strife and also the twofold character of the discourse (δίπλ’ ἐρέω) that Empedocles promises to tell in B 17.1 (= EMP D 73.233 Laks-Most) when he introduced the cycle for the first time.

7.2.1 Cosmology and the Conflict between Love and Strife

Following the reconstruction I offered above, the cosmic cycle consists of a regular alternation of two main phases: the phase of the Cosmos/Many at the dominion of Strife and the phase of Sphairos/One by Love. In virtue of the influence of the two opposite forces, the two cosmic phases are antithetical: the Sphairos, as we have seen in Chapter 4.3, is the most beautiful, divine form of the universe and embodies Empedocles’ ideal of perfection resulting from Love’s thoroughly symmetrical blend of the four elements. As such, it represents the cosmic phase of peaceful (and restful) One. In contrast, we will see that the phase of the Cosmos, as it is brought about by Strife’s separation of the One, coincides with differentiation, movement and conflict bringing about the multitude of things and living beings we can see in our world. In order to fully apprehend the extent of the cosmic conflict in our world, in what follows I will offer a detailed reconstruction of Empedocles’ cosmology.

At the beginning of his physical exposition (B 17.1–2 [= EMP D 73.233–34 Laks-Most]), Empedocles asserts that the cosmic phase of Many arises from the One – πλέον’ ἐξ ἑνός– just as the One arises from the Many – ἓν ηὐξήθη … / ἐκ πλεόνων. To expand on the origin of the Many, we can say that Strife, in due time, penetrates the Sphairos, destroying the harmonious and peaceful mixture of all things and so the elements, which have been thoroughly mixed and at rest thus far, are suddenly put in motion. In this way, Strife gives the start to the history of our Cosmos. As Graham points out, our sources suggest that it starts with ‘a gradual separation of one kind of stuff before another … While there is some problem in sorting out the roles of aether, fire, and air, the sources are agreed on the fact that the lighter elements separated first and began to form the heaven.’Footnote ⁷⁴ In other words, our sources invite the reading that Strife’s intrusion into the One coincides with a gradual infiltration causing the elements to move, converge towards their own homologous parts and reach a specific position in space.Footnote ⁷⁵ Light elements, such as fire and air, fly upwards, whereas earth coagulates in the centre and water and moist air occupy the region between earth and fire.Footnote ⁷⁶ In so doing, the elements arrange themselves in large cosmic masses which move in a whirlFootnote ⁷⁷ and form what could be considered the skeleton of our world.Footnote ⁷⁸

In its gradual invasion of the Sphairos, Strife pushes Love into the middle of the vortex of elemental masses, while Strife itself occupies the deepest region of the whirl.Footnote ⁷⁹ As soon as Love reaches the centre of the whirl,Footnote ⁸⁰ she starts regaining power and bringing together the elements to form heterogeneous compounds and thereby all forms of living beings:

Through the lines of B 35 (= EMP D 75 Laks-Most), we are told that, while Love gradually expands from the centre of the whirl, achieving more and more compounds of elements, Strife tries to impede Love’s unions by keeping things unmixed. As has long been acknowledged, the ‘metaphor is probably military’Footnote ⁸¹ and so Empedocles envisaged the mixing in battle of Love and Strife as the very cause of the origin of the multifarious forms of life we see in the world.Footnote ⁸² This agrees with the idea that, as we have seen above, zoogonic formation is due to the competing action and alternating prevalence of Love and Strife on elements and compounds. Analogously, the military metaphor aptly captures the concurrent action of Love and Strife in other departments of the Cosmos as well as at the level of the macrocosm where, as we have seen, their oscillation coincides with the alternance of One and Many. It is safe to assume that the two principles engage in a constant battle, a tug-of-war, whenever both are present, and that sometimes one principle pulls more than the other and temporarily gains the upper hand. Speculating on this point, I would argue that the temporary prevalence of one principle over the other force can result, from time to time, in blissful or sorrowful ages of the world.

In this regard, there are some Empedoclean lines that hint at a past age of the world governed by Cypris and depicted as a sort of golden age characterized by peaceful relationships among people and animals:

From these two fragments we apprehend that there was a time under queen Cypris, during which neither Strife nor any other male, warlike gods had influence on human beings. For this reason, as nobody dared to slaughter animals and offer them in sacrifice, thereby committing ‘the greatest pollution’, people worshipped their queen with bloodless offerings. Moreover, peace reigned among all living beings: as long as ‘friendliness glowed’, wild beasts and birds as well as all other animals were tame.

Because of Love’s hegemony and its subsequent effects of peace and harmony – Cypris just like Aphrodite is another name for the Empedoclean principle of Love – some scholars are inclined to identify the reign of Cypris in B 128 (= EMP D 25 Laks-Most) with the perfect happiness of the Sphairos.Footnote ⁸³ In contrast to this interpretation, however, it is worth noting that, apart from the reasons already given in Chapter 3.1, the notion of a royal dominion over human beings that follows human social practices (e.g., in its relations with the divine sphere) and behaves justly towards animals most probably harks back to a society of the past – not to mention that the Sphairos is the cosmic form of the absolute One and thus cannot allow the existence of any other being besides itself. It thus seems safer to argue that through these verses Empedocles depicts a past age of our world, during which Love happened to have temporary prevalence over Strife.

Furthermore, the emphasis on a past time invites the reading that Empedocles is speaking from a position in which the roles are reversed and Strife is now dominating over living beings. Strong evidence of this is that, in contrast to the events described in the past reign of Cypris/Love, animal sacrifice had become an established and shared ritual practice, which may well be associated with Strife’s influence. In fact, the age in which Empedocles and Pausanias happen to live seems to be particularly characterized by Strife’s prevalence. Alongside the pervasive nature of ritual sacrifice, current men and women also use sexual reproduction to perpetuate their kind, thereby increasing fragmentation and multiplicity at the expense of the whole and One. Indeed, for this very reason and as established in Section 7.1.1, current men and women can be considered as Strife’s highest achievement in generation.

Additionally, Empedocles is explicit about living in a time that is deplorable:

As we have seen in Chapter 1.5, throughout these lines Empedocles expresses the pains caused by the miserable condition he is condemned to live within our world. He curses ‘that pitiless day’ when he stained his hands with ‘terrible deeds about feeding’ and condemned himself to the awful life he is now living. The awful condition humans experience is linked to the destinies of death that Strife, through the Harpies, imparts to people. Indeed, the image of death is emphasized both in the first lines, where the limbs are said to ‘encounter their lot, putrefying … under dire necessity’, and in lines 8–10. As argued in Chapter 1.5, the πολυβενθ̣[έα χῶρον at line 8 could be taken as a reference to the ἀσυνήθεα χῶρον of B 118 (= EMP D 14 Laks-Most) that, as we have seen in Chapter 2.2.2, is to be identified with the underworld realm of the dead. In this respect, the ‘myriads of pains’ that ‘will be present to the heart of unwilling humans’ could be a hint to the proverbial horror souls experience in Hades. All this clearly conveys the idea that not only Pausanias and Empedocles but all of us as well are living in an age of the world that is chiefly shaped by Strife’s influence and is, for this reason, utterly miserable.

In conclusion, the impression we gain from Empedocles’ verses is that the cosmic war between Love and Strife, namely their alternance in power, shapes every single department of the universe: from the macrocosmic oscillations between One and Many, to the history of the Cosmos and its alternating ages, down to the zoogonic stages and the alternating phases of growth that compose each life cycle of every single mortal being. We do not know how many opposite ages have preceded or will come after our current age, but what we do know is that at the due time, not merely Strife’s age, but its hegemony over the elements as a whole – namely the phase of the Many and, consequently, the Cosmos with all its diverse living beings – will come to an end due to Love’s last onrush, which will succeed in uniting everything into one form alone, the Sphairos. In so doing, Love assures the regular alternation of One and Many and the eternal character of the cosmic cycle.

7.2.2 Theogony, the Cosmos and Rebirth

As we have seen thus far, while we are living in an age that is characterized by Strife’s prevalence, men and women are, with reference to living forms, Strife’s highest achievement. Can we identify in other living forms the highest achievement of Love’s generation? In what follows I will show that the appropriate combinations of single limbs into harmonious and perfectly functioning human beings of the third zoogonic stage can be taken as Love’s generative products. As will be argued, Love’s blissful humankind corresponds to the race of the gods, so that Love’s anthropogony really is a theogony. In arguing this, it will be shown that, in light of Hesiod’s myth of the five races, Empedocles’ blissful race of the gods, who live a long-lasting life, is systematically contraposed to the miserable race of Strife’s humankind, which experiences sorrows and old age and is destined to many deaths.

In outlining this, I will pursue a double goal. First, I aim to demonstrate that, as well as any other living being, gods too have a place in this world and their vicissitudes and life cycles, as well as those of any other mortal, occur in our Cosmos. As we will see, this claim ultimately provides evidence that Empedocles’ concept of rebirth and the promise of salvation it entails can be staged within the cosmic cycle.

Second, the opposition between long-lasting gods and mortals dying many times is mirrored by the cosmic conflict between Love and Strife, a conflict that shapes our world and its history. Indeed, as I would argue, the antinomy between despicable humankind and blissful divine nature structures the physical opposition between Strife and Love and the way they work in the cycle. This conclusion will therefore be substantial evidence of how closely and fundamentally interconnected Empedocles’ cosmic cycle and his concept of rebirth are.

To come to this conclusion, however, I need to resume the investigation put forward in Section 7.1.3 on the zoogonic stages postulated by Empedocles and expand it to reconstruct a narrative of the zoogonic events in our world. Above I argued that the first and especially the third zoogonic stage, by displaying an increase in unions of parts and the formation of increasingly complex and better integrated living beings, show Love’s prevalence over her rival Strife. By regaining her strength after Strife’s complete separation of the Sphairos, Love, from the centre of the whirl, starts combining the four elements into basic organisms, each with just one specialization. Empedocles calls them ‘single limbs’ or ‘single-limbed’ (organisms) and, as we have seen in Section 7.1.3, he makes them the products of the first zoogonic stage:

This primitive set of living forms is depicted as single body parts roaming around: faces without necks, arms without shoulders, and eyes without faces. As Sedley puts it: ‘We may be confident that this primitive stock of autonomous eyes included a variety of types with different specializations. Similar assumptions can be added about the variety of wings, paws, and so on. The stock of limbs and organs was therefore an immensely rich one.’Footnote ⁸⁵

Although the living forms described are very simple organisms, they are products of intelligent design. We know this because we have a series of fragments in which Empedocles depicts the formation of limbs and organs as the result of Love arranging the four elements in carefully calculated proportions. For instance, as we have seen in Chapter 6.3.3, blood was formed out of an equal amount of four elements ‘anchored in the perfect harbours of Cypris’ (B 98.3 [= EMP D 190.3 Laks-Most]). Similarly, bones were made of two parts water, four parts fire and two parts earth, ‘fitted together marvellously by Harmony’s adhesives’ (B 96.4 [= EMP D 192 Laks-Most]). On the basis of these fragments, we may imagine that Empedocles postulated further proportioned elemental mixtures out of which Love designed the great variety of animal limbs.Footnote ⁸⁶

In contrast to the careful, intelligent design at work in the first zoogonic stage,Footnote ⁸⁷ the living forms of the second stage result from casual encounters of single parts.Footnote ⁸⁸ Through fragments B 59 (= EMP D 149 Laks-Most) and B 61 (= EMP D 152 Laks-Most) we are told that single limbs, desiring to join with one another, randomly come together as each happened to meet (ταῦτά τε συμπίπτεσκον, ὅπηι συνέκυρσεν ἕκαστα, B 59.2 [= EMP D 149.2 Laks-Most]).Footnote ⁸⁹ The result is the formation of hybrid organisms, which can be described as monsters or, according to Aëtius’ definition, dream images:

In Simplicius’ commentary on these lines,Footnote ⁹⁰ the reference to the limbs’ desire for unions is a hint at Love’s influence. However, both the fact that the encounters of limbs occurred by mere chance rather than by design and the notion that their random encounters resulted in badly integrated, hybrid monsters (either with too many equivalent limbs or with limbs of different animal species coming together) invite the reading that Strife now takes the upper hand and prevents a more suitable assembly. As has already been mentioned in Section 7.1.3, the fact that the combinations resulting from casual encounters were not fit for survival and therefore perished or survived as monsters may well be seen as a sign that Strife succeeded in thwarting Love’s increase. Be that as it may, the presence of these hybrid combinations in Empedocles’ account of the origin and development of life can be seen as his way both to rationalize the existence of figures belonging to a mythological past, such as the Minotaur, satyrs and the like, and to give an aetiological explanation of present-day forms of hybridization, such as cases of hermaphroditism or congenital deformity.Footnote ⁹¹

Whereas hybrid and monstrous forms of living beings were unable to survive, when single body parts combine with each other appropriately, ‘these became animals and endured due to the fact that they supplied each other’s needs, the teeth cutting and mashing the food, the stomach concocting it, the liver converting it to blood’.Footnote ⁹² The appropriate combinations among limbs, as described here, are those that occurred during the third zoogonic stage. Their suitable assembly can be seen as the result of Love’s increasing influence. More precisely, having gradually expanded her power to Strife’s detriment, Love was able to communicate to single parts a desire not just for unions but for appropriate combinations. Thus, the limbs stopped coming together at random and began instead to mix and grow in conformity with one another. The result is a stock of complex yet harmonious living beings, composed in proportionate forms, being apt to fulfil their needs and therefore able to survive.

That the appropriate combinations of single limbs include living forms that are comparable to human beings is clearly stated by Simplicius: ‘the combination of a human head with a human body causes the whole to survive’.Footnote ⁹³ It is also a natural inference from Empedocles’ fragments. Since he enumerates human parts and organs among those single limbs assembled by Love in the first zoogonic stage, while failed hybrids in the second stage included features of men and women, it is only natural to assume that human parts could combine with each other and survive as a whole human being.Footnote ⁹⁴

However, this conclusion presents us with a problem. As we have seen above, human beings are the principal, indeed the exemplary product of Strife’s generative divisions. How are we to explain this apparent incongruity between human beings resulting from Love’s unions and those that came about because of Strife’s separations?Footnote ⁹⁵ I would argue that, in line with traditional anthropogonic accounts, which often present a series of past human races before the present one, Empedocles thought of Love’s anthropogony as a race of the past, replaced by Strife’s current formations.

In this respect, Empedocles’ account of two different models of anthropogony can be explored in terms of similar traditional accounts, exemplified in Hesiod’s myth of the races in his Works and Days.Footnote ⁹⁶ As is well known, Hesiod recounts the story of humanity in five races, each of which is extinguished (or will be extinguished in the future), while the subsequent race is created ex novo, without any direct continuity with the previous ones. Most of the races presented by Hesiod are characterized by metals in descending order of value (gold, silver, bronze and iron), thereby symbolizing a deterioration. However, the steady decline is interrupted by the fourth race, that of the heroes. Not only are they not associated with any metal, but are also explicitly said to be better and more just than their immediate predecessors.

Thus, the first race corresponds to the golden race, the most blissful human age, on which I will say more below.Footnote ⁹⁷ This succumbed to the silver race, worse than the first, ‘like the golden one neither in body nor in mind’. The silver race was then followed by the people of the bronze race, who were said to be entirely different from those of the silver race and to care only for ‘the painful work of Ares’. After the bronze race, there followed the race of heroes, which represents an improvement over the preceding one, while the current race, the race of iron humans, is characterized as the absolute worst.Footnote ⁹⁸

Zooming in on a close reading of this Hesiodic tale, we can say that, despite a few perplexities that its structure presents,Footnote ⁹⁹ it emphasizes the dichotomy between the golden race and all other human races, especially between it and the present iron race. In his analysis of Hesiod’s account, G. W. Most recognizes a pattern of interpretation that ‘organizes the five groups into three basic sub-groups: first the golden race; then the silver race; then a third group made up of the bronze race, the heroes and the iron men together’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Most’s tripartite structure rests upon the observation that Hesiod expressly negates any similarity between the first and the second races and between the second and the third races, yet, in contrast, makes no such differentiation among the last three. The differentiation between the three sub-groups identified by Most mainly consists of the fact that the first two races have a biological constitution which is different from that of the last three. Most clarifies this point as follows:

Thus, people of the golden age are exceptional from a biological point of view, as they are characterized by the lack of what makes us essentially human: old age.

For this reason, additionally, while the golden race is essentially different from all other races that will follow, the humans of the iron race seem to be characterized in a very special way in contrast to the golden race. Each characteristic that identifies the golden human beings has a counterpart in what the people of the iron race lack, and vice versa. For instance, besides lacking old age, golden humans also had a spirit free from care, toil and distress. They lived delighted in festivities, lacking all evils, while being relieved from field labour, since ‘the grain-giving fields bore crops of their own accord, much and unstinting’ (Erga 116–17). For these reasons, their way of life approaches a divine existence. Furthermore, the golden humans’ mode of death was also exceptional, as they were overcome during sleep. Moreover, as we have seen in Chapter 3.3.2, after death, they received from Zeus the gift of immortality and became terrestrial, beneficial gods.Footnote ¹⁰²

Human beings of the iron race, in contrast, experience old age as well as hard labour. Instead of living careless and delighted in festivities, iron humans ‘will not cease from toil and distress by day, nor from being worn out by suffering at night, and the gods will give them grievous cares. For these people good things will be mingled with evil ones’ (Erga 177–79). Moreover, they will be overcome by many kinds of death, some more terrible than others. Even if they die well, lastly, they will certainly not be rewarded with divine honours.

Hesiod’s description of the people of the iron race seems to have inspired Empedocles’ depiction of the human beings of the fourth zoogonic stage.Footnote ¹⁰³ Indeed, both are presented as the generation of humans now inhabiting the world, who know old age, toil, sorrow and cares. Furthermore, Empedocles makes the present human race deplorable in many respects and indeed so terrible that he would have preferred his own annihilation to his share in human nature and sorrowsFootnote ¹⁰⁴ – a wish that is reminiscent of Hesiod’s when he introduces the iron race: ‘If only then I did not have to live among the fifth men, / but could have either died first or been born afterward!’Footnote ¹⁰⁵

Moreover, we have already seen that the evil nature of our race is linked to the fact that it is under the influence of Strife. Indeed, in a more general sense it can be said that sorrows, old age, labour, misery, death and other evils alike are a result of Strife’s power. In this sense, it is worth observing that one of the features characterizing the last three races of Hesiod’s account in contrast to the former two is that they practised ‘the painful works of Ares’. As Hesiod tells us, war entered human life with the bronze race and continued, through the heroes, until the present time. It is then safe to assume that the first two races, and above all the golden race, lived in a time when war was not a human activity. Similarly, Empedocles postulates a ‘golden age’ in which humans were free from crimes and war, as we have seen above.

The idea of a human race at the hand of Love invites comparison with Love’s appropriate combinations of the third zoogonic stage. To put it differently, it is not impossible to assume, along the lines of the Hesiodic anthropogony, that Cypris’ reign was inhabited by a past human race that, because of Love’s influence, was ‘golden’ and therefore without experience of evil things. Not only was Cypris’ mankind free from the terrible habit of sacrificing and eating animals, but it could also be assumed that Strife having limited or no power over it means they had no experience of grief, disease, toils, sorrow, painful cares and any other negative thing that in Empedocles’ thought is associated with Strife. To corroborate this idea, it is worth mentioning, by way of contrast, that, as we saw in Section 7.1.1, Strife’s current humanity is characterized in pejorative terms as pitiful, foolish, driven by vague sensations, leading to quick death and even dying many times.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Among the evils introduced into this world by Strife, we can enumerate sexual reproduction, a preferential way to increase multiplicity in the cosmos and, for this reason, an activity Empedocles recommends not to pursue.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ As we have seen above, sexual reproduction seems to be the marker of the living beings of the current zoogonic stage, whereas the living products of the past three zoogonic stages grew by spontaneous generation. The inference is that Love’s humans did not use sexual intercourse to perpetuate their kin, and this makes them biologically distinct from Strife’s humans.

By pursuing the comparison with Hesiod a little further, I would offer the following reconstruction. Just as Hesiod’s golden humans became gods upon earth, Love’s anthropogony represented, in Empedocles’ account, the origin of the gods. My suggestion, which may at first sound very similar to that of Sedley’s,Footnote ¹⁰⁸ is not that Love’s anthropoi are in fact theoi, but rather that, just as Hesiod’s golden humans became gods ‘once the earth covered up this race’,Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Love’s humans became gods once Strife’s onrush ended Love’s blissful age to start a new age of the world. Along the lines of Hesiod’s account, in other words, Love’s humans – an extraordinary offspring from a biological, social and moral point of view – became long-lived gods once Love’s age was coming to an end. They built a community away from the land of mortals, in which neither Strife nor pain nor evil will ever partake (see B 146–47 [= EMP D 39 and D 40 Laks-Most]).

On this reading, Empedocles’ anthropogony of Love is in fact a theogony – it explains how and when, in a past age of the Cosmos, long-lived gods came to be.Footnote ¹¹⁰ This claim has a double implication with regard to the first, major argument of this chapter. First, as well as any other living being, gods too have a place in the space and history of our world.Footnote ¹¹¹ This entails that both mortals who become gods by ascending the scale of rebirths and gods who become mortal by descending the same scale, can claim a place in our cosmos. Second, according to my reconstruction of the theogony of Love, the opposition between long-lasting gods and mortals dying many times is mirrored by the conflict between Love, author of the blissful gods, and Strife, genitor of our miserable offspring, a conflict that shapes our world and its history. Indeed, as I would argue, the antinomy between despicable humankind and blissful divine nature structures the physical dichotomy between Strife and Love and their conflict in our world.

7.3.1 The Metaphor of Conflict in the Narrative of the Cosmos

To justify the claim that Empedocles’ cycles are loaded with moral import, it is useful to resume the investigation, pursued in Section 7.1.2, of Empedocles’ use of the metaphor of conflict in his cosmological narrative, and compares it with Heraclitus’, who drew from the same metaphor domain in his representation of the cosmos.Footnote ¹¹⁵ While Empedocles’ metaphors are demonstrably reminiscent of those of Heraclitus, a comparative focus can shed light on their power to convey moral import in Empedocles’ cosmology.

There are two fragments that give prominence to the notion of conflict in Heraclitus’ philosophy. The first is B 53 (= HER D 64 Laks-Most):

This passage is comprised of three major statements: (1) War is the father of all and king of all,Footnote ¹¹⁶ (2) War showed some people as gods, others as humans and (3) War made some people slaves and others free. Whereas claims (2) and (3) are meant to illustrate the immense power of War on the fate of humans and gods,Footnote ¹¹⁷ claim (1) introduces Polemos as ‘father and king of all’, and hence as the personification of the generative and ruling principles respectively. In contrast, the traditional characterization of Ares, the war-god par excellence and therefore the alter ego of Polemos, is different to the images of king and, above all, father we find here. In the Homeric epics, Ares is ‘men-slaying’, ‘pernicious to men’ and an ‘uncontrollable warrior’ who ‘is never satiated with war’.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Elsewhere, by recounting in which way the gods intervene in the Trojan war, Homer narrates that Ares, in his attempt to kill Diomedes, is wounded by Pallas Athena who was defending the mortal warrior. In pain, Ares comes to his father Zeus to seek retribution for his offence, but Zeus addresses his son in these terms: ‘Most hateful to me are you of all gods that hold Olympus; for ever is strife dear to you and wars and fighting. You have the unbearable, unyielding spirit of your mother.’Footnote ¹¹⁹

Moreover, Heraclitus’ fragment displays more figurative language than appears on first reading. The sequence πάντων μὲν πατήρ … πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς echoes the epic formula of Zeus.Footnote ¹²⁰ By referring to War in the same terms that traditionally depict Zeus, Heraclitus makes Polemos the supreme divine principle of his pantheon. The verb ἔδειξε strengthens this idea, evoking the typical signal of Zeus’s ruling power, when he provides omens showing a gesture of his favour or disfavour.Footnote ¹²¹ As a result, War is characterized as the greatest deity and, as such, rules over every existing thing.Footnote ¹²² In short, Heraclitus’ representation of war as the generative and ruling principles of the world, his aim to replace Zeus with Polemos as the head of the Greek pantheon and, lastly, the notion that everything in the world, including human and divine destinies, is at the hands of War, all create a new, positive picture of war in contrast to traditional representations, which generally abhor conflict and its god(s).

The idea that war is a positive state of things is also evident in the representation of conflict Heraclitus provides in B 80 (= HER D 63 Laks-Most):

Just like B 53 (= HER D 64 Laks-Most), this fragment is also constructed around three major statements: (1) War is common; (2) justice is strife (δίκη is ἔρις)Footnote ¹²⁶ and (3) all things happen by (means of or according to) strife. Claim (3) resembles the idea we already found in B 53, that everything in the world is in the hands of War. Claim (1), ‘war is common’, is Heraclitus’ reply to Homer, who in Il. 18.309 has Hector say ‘Enyalios (i.e., Ares) is common (xynos) and kills even the killer (κτανέοντα κατέκτα).’ In the context of the Trojan war, which notoriously saw a great deployment of forces by both sides, the notion of a common war expresses the idea that war is a shared state of things affecting each one of the very many warriors on the battlefield, independently of the front they fight on or the cause they fight for. Indeed, it can fairly be said that war affects not only those who concretely fight, but their families, communities and cities more broadly. From this point of view, war can be defined as ‘common’ because it is a widely shared state of things.

However, the second part of Hector’s reflection, ‘Enyalios … kills even the killer’, which he makes just after he has killed his valorous enemy and before being killed by Achilles, lends to the notion of a common war the idea of an impartial destiny (of death). In fact, thanks to his ability to make the killer become the killed, Ares indiscriminately distributes widespread death among warriors, regardless of the party they belong to, the virtue and courage they may show in battle or the more or less noble origin they may have. Thus, the epic tradition depicts Ares, the god of war, as common qua shared (that is, universal) and also impartial.Footnote ¹²⁷

Heraclitus inherits this idea, but reformulates it in an original and rather positive way, as demonstrated in fragments B 1 (= HER D 1 Laks-Most) and B 2 (= HER D 2 Laks-Most), which use expressions similar to those employed to speak of war, but with reference to the notion of logos.Footnote ¹²⁸ Specifically, in B 2 (= HER D 2 Laks-Most) Heraclitus complains that, although the logos is common (τοῦ λόγου δ’ ἐόντος ξυνοῦ;Footnote ¹²⁹ an expression that closely recalls τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν in B 80 [= HER D 63 Laks-Most]) and, as such, ought to be followed by all, most people live as if they had a private understanding. Similarly, in B 1 (= HER D 1 Laks-Most),Footnote ¹³⁰ Heraclitus rebukes (ordinary) people who are uncomprehending of the logos and behave as if they had no experience of it. Yet the logos is that principle according to which all things come to pass: γινομένων γὰρ πάντων κατὰ τὸν λόγον τόνδε, which closely recalls fragment B 80: γινόμενα πάντα κατ’ ἔριν, ‘all things come to pass according to strife’.

The opposition between the common logos and people’s private understanding (ἴδια φρόνησις) as well as the notion that every existing thing comes to pass according to the common logos/strife, bestow to the concept of xynos the sense of ‘public’. Accordingly, xynos expresses the idea of something shared, impartial and ‘of public property’: it belongs to everyone (and everybody/everything comes to pass according to it) and, as such, can potentially be known by everybody. All this bestows to the Homeric concept of a common Ares new meanings. As we have seen above, the Homeric adjective xynos defining a shared and impartial Ares indicates not only the universal character of war, but also its irrational and random nature, issuing destinies of death by mere chance. On the contrary, the Heraclitean notion of a common war is re-defined in terms of a principle that not only is of universal nature and determines how everything comes to pass, but it is impartial because it belongs to everyone and being of ‘public property’, it does not respond to criteria of self-will.

This last concept agrees with the equation of justice and strife we find in (2), which is defined by Kahn as ‘utterly perverse’.Footnote ¹³¹ Admittedly, it is provocative with reference to the conventional representation and common perception of strife as the principle that is systematically opposed to right and justice.Footnote ¹³² Heraclitus’ claim that justice and strife are one and the same instance can be associated with another fragment, B 114 (= HER D 105 Laks-Most) in which the logos is again defined as xynos and is said to be like the law for a city, indeed as the divine law that nourishes all urban laws.Footnote ¹³³ Law is, if anything, the main instrument of justice: it is a super-partes institution that regulates and keeps in order all relevant relationships among the members of a given community, while aiming at minimizing, or peacefully solving, possible conflicts. The inference is that, on a cosmological level, the logos has an analogous function: it is a super-partes principle that acts impartially in order to regulate the relationships among all existing things and, in this way, it guarantees order in the cosmos. Moreover, the comparison between conflict and logos, which is also clearly proposed through B 114 (= HER D 105 Laks-Most), in view of not only the focus on law, but also the use of xynos, can be extended to include now a comparison between conflict and law, making conflict the super-partes principle governing all relationships in the cosmos. This notion allows us to conclude that Heraclitus’ redefinition of conflict amounts to presenting it as common qua of public property and also impartial qua super-partes. It is in this novel sense that it can be identified with justice.

Heraclitus’ equation, like the previous personification of Polemos, is a way to characterize the notion of war in positive terms. However, this characterization is perceived as estranging and we are left wondering how these metaphors are to be translated in order to convey a meaningful representation of the cosmos?Footnote ¹³⁴ What we can safely say, instead, is that Heraclitus’ metaphor use of the conceptual domain of conflict is highly innovative. Heraclitus emphasizes aspects that are not commonly perceived as the most characteristic traits of this domain and, in order to focus on them, he must linger on estranging comparisons, bold identifications and unexpected images that are perceived as ‘utterly perverse’: Polemos as the father and king of all and hence War as the new Zeus, strife being identical to justice, conflict as the law of nature, etc. On the other hand, he completely conceals elements that are normally associated with the notion of conflict. There is no hint at attacks and defences, oppressed and oppressors, injuries and compensations, crimes and reparations, suffering and death. Heraclitus’ metaphor use emphasizes a positive qua a-moral image of conflict: opposing fronts facing each other that are nonetheless united by the same shared (universal), impartial destiny. Thus, by overturning traditional perception and common sense, Heraclitus makes the metaphor of conflict illustrate a principle that can be compared to the law of the cosmos and can even be identified with justice.

When we return to Empedocles, we see that he is particularly reminiscent of Heraclitus’ metaphor of conflict as the principle generating and arranging the world. Indeed, as we have seen, Strife is not only the force that, by destroying the Sphairos and restoring multiplicity, lays the basis for the world as we know it now, it is also the principle generating our disgraceful human race. As the genitor of humankind, Empedocles’ Strife very closely resembles Heraclitus’ notion of War, ‘father of all’. Additionally, by laying the groundwork for our world, Strife is, like Heraclitus’ Polemos, ‘ruler of all’.

Moreover, there is a more cogent sense in which Empedocles’ metaphor of conflict as a principle generating and regulating the cosmos recalls the Heraclitean notion of Polemos. With its destruction of the Sphairos, Strife is the initiator of a conflict of a cosmic and all-embracing relevance, and much more powerful in generation than Strife itself. As we have seen above, Empedocles’ military metaphor can be said to construct the whole narrative of his cosmic system: it illustrates the competing action of Love and Strife at the macrocosmic level of the cyclical alternation of One and Many, in the alternating phases of the Cosmos as well as in the zoogonic formations and even in the way each single living being is born, perishes and grows in its life cycle. Put differently, while in Heraclitus War is the principle and law of the cosmos, in Empedocles too, a permanent conflict is the conditio sine qua non of the existence and shape of the cosmic cycle and, above all, of our world. Indeed, such a cosmic conflict, which pervades every department of the universe, generates and nourishes our cosmos and life in it.

Whereas in this respect, Empedocles’ metaphor use closely resembles the Heraclitean notion of war forming, arranging and regulating every existing thing, in contrast to Heraclitus, as we will see more thoroughly below, Empedocles renounces an a-moral description of conflict and, on the contrary, constructs his military metaphor precisely around those traditional elements Heraclitus decided to conceal. In fact, Empedocles employs the domain of conflict in such a way as to emphasize, in his cosmological narration, the emotional and, above all, moral implications that tradition and common perception usually associate with the idea of conflict. The result is a cosmic principle that, in contrast to Heraclitus’ positive representation of War, has highly negative characterizations. Indeed, Empedocles seems never to miss an opportunity to point out Strife’s most negative aspects in opposition to Love.

7.3.2 Moral Elements in Empedocles’ Metaphor of Conflict

As I am going to argue hereafter, the moral elements that Empedocles exploits in his metaphor of conflict are above all clear in the antithetical construction of the nature and working of the two forces in the cosmic cycle. To begin, Empedocles makes Strife the principle and cause of evil things, whereas Love is the principle and cause of good things. Accordingly, Love is designed as a positive, unifying and creative force, whereas Strife is the negative, separative and destructive principle.Footnote ¹³⁵ That Love is the positive principle whereas Strife is the evil power is made clear by Aristotle: ‘if you follow what Empedocles really means … you will find that Love is the cause of good things and Strife of evil things’.Footnote ¹³⁶ Aristotle’s claim finds support in Empedocles’ fragments, where Love and Strife are usually associated with positive and negative characteristics respectively. For instance, in B 17 (= EMP D 73.233–66 Laks-Most), Strife is characterized as ‘accursed’ or ‘wretched’ (οὐλόμενον), whereas Love is the principle whereby people think friendly thoughts and accomplish deeds of concordance. Therefore she is also called Joy and Aphrodite.Footnote ¹³⁷ Analogously, in B 35 (= EMP D 75 Laks-Most) Love’s renewed unfolding among the elements is a ‘gentle-thinking immortal drive of blameless Love’Footnote ¹³⁸ that produces an increase in voluntary unions of the elements.Footnote ¹³⁹ Elsewhere it is said that under Love all things desire each other, whereas under Strife, ‘all things are divided in form and are separated’.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ Additionally, it is worth noting that here Strife is called Kotos, ‘Rancour’ or even ‘Vengeance’. Moreover, B 22 (= EMP D 101 Laks-Most) states that, under Love, the elements (or things) are ‘receptive of mixture’ and ‘love each other’, while under Strife they are ‘enemies most different in birth and mixture and moulded forms, in every way strangers to unification and terribly sad because they were born from Strife’.Footnote ¹⁴¹ Further pejorative attributes of Strife are worth noting, such as κακῆισι … Ἐρίδεσσι (B 20.4 [= EMP 73.302–8]) and νείκεϊ μαινομένωι (B 115.13 [= EMP D 10.13 Laks-Most]).

As we can see, certain emotions, such as happiness and love on the one hand, and sadness and hate on the other, are associated with the two principles of Love and Strife respectively. Accordingly, the actual age of the world under the dominion of Strife is sorrowful and characterized by crimes among living beings, whereas Love was able to implement in the past a blissful and peaceful reign, as has been argued in Section 7.2. Similarly, the products of Strife’s generations, most notably human beings, are characterized in a pejorative way, as we have seen in Section 7.1.1. Thus, Love and Strife are able to communicate not only their respective powers of aggregation and separation, but also contrasting emotions, upon which humans act justly or unjustly.

Furthermore, even though Love and Strife are equally involved in the cosmic conflict and the cosmic cycle can be seen as a necessarily regular and fixed exchange of power between Love and Strife, the pejorative characterization of Strife in contrast to Love, including the negative elements identifying their respective products, invites the reading that Strife is the evil force which causes the cosmic conflict and, as such, it is the offender. To this, it can be added that Strife initiates the cosmic conflict by disrupting the Sphairos, the most peaceful and beautiful form of the universe, indeed Empedocles’ ideal of perfection and the prototype of godhood in his physical system.Footnote ¹⁴² While ending this ideal state of things, furthermore, Strife’s action brings about a phase that is characterized in opposite terms to the Sphairos; indeed, the world is unequal, fragmented, in chaotic movement, warlike and miserable. This again conveys the idea that Strife is portrayed as perpetrating an offence against the principle of goodness, putting an end to Love’s perfect blend of elements.

In parallel, Love’s involvement in the cosmic conflict can be seen as her necessary response to Strife’s offence. B 35 (= EMP D 75 Laks-Most) shows that Love enters the battle when Strife has already occupied most, if not all, ‘territories’ she occupied before, segregating her in the whirl with no power over the elements she previously controlled. In other words, Love seems to assume the role of the defender of assaulted entities and territories. Thus, whereas Strife is the offender and oppressor that bears responsibility for a violent, though necessary, attack, Love is made as the offended party that enters war only to resume peace, pursuing the heroic task of protecting her sphere of action and recovering the ideal form of the universe. For this reason, in Empedocles’ eye and narrative, she clearly occupies the moral high ground.

7.3.3 Individual Choice and the Cosmos

Yet why is Strife simultaneously the cause of the Cosmos and our existence and the principle of evil? Shouldn’t Empedocles have concluded against Homer, and in accordance with Heraclitus, that Strife ultimately is a good father and a just king of all? I would argue that the reason behind Empedocles’ pejorative representation of Strife rests upon the context of religious beliefs within which he developed his philosophy. In other words, the metaphor of the cosmic conflict makes two things clear: first that our world and ourselves as its inhabitants are the result of a violent aggression perpetrated by evil Strife against the ideal form of the universe and against Love, the principle of good; and second, by conveying this picture of the world, the metaphor scenario of the cosmic conflict gives us a fundamental, physical reason for Empedocles’ religious notion that our earthly existence is a disgrace, our race despicable and the world we live in a horrible place that we should try to escape as soon as we can. As we can see, the religious pessimism that animates Empedocles’ view of human life and the destiny of the individual finds in his cosmology its physical foundation. This retrospectively shows that Empedocles’ cosmological account – and the metaphor domain of conflict he used to convey it – constitutes the ideal philosophical backdrop against which the doctrine of rebirth can be played out.

However, as we have seen throughout this book, Empedocles taught a way to escape the cycle of rebirths and the evils of this world, which, as we can now see, also rests upon our choice for Love in contrast to Strife. As has been argued in Chapter 6.4, Empedocles urges Pausanias to initiate himself into his philosophy and thereby learn the truth about the nature of things, while behaving justly according to a precise set of purificatory rules. In doing so, Pausanias will be able to transcend his mortal nature and become a god. However, although gods part from Strife and live a long-lasting blissful existence in their festive, divine community, Strife is not yet subdued altogether (it will be once Love takes absolute dominion over the elements and forms the Sphairos) but remains nonetheless able to influence even individual deities. As the lines of B 115 (= EMP D 10 Laks-Most) and above all the personal vicissitude of Empedocles show, just like human beings, blessed gods can choose to trust Strife and so be exiled to this world, where they work their chain of rebirths. Thus, while Empedocles clearly places great importance on the individual’s choice for Love, the question that remains open is whether this choice could have an impact on the shape and state of our world. The fragments do not provide us with firm clues to answer this question, but the fact that this pivotal choice by the individual is conceived within the moral aspects of the cosmological design invites the reading that individual moral responsibility is not limited to determining the person’s fate, it might even play a role in the cosmic drama; that is, in the battle between the two forces.

As has been established, mortal and divine individuals, who wittingly or unwittingly trust in Strife, must undergo a chain of births and deaths which, for a very long time, will transform them into diverse mortal beings. As we have seen in Chapter 5.2, individual rebirths are, from a physical perspective, patterns of diallaxis, connected, on the level of the elements, to the increase of multiplicity. Thus, the individuals’ choice for Strife, by keeping them in the chain of mortality and rebirth, increases the fragmentation of the cosmos and the multiplicity of existing things. Accordingly, personal choice for Strife entails moral responsibility not only for the fate of the single individual, but also for cosmic fragmentation and disorder, which is Strife’s task in the cycle.

From this it can be deduced that individuals are morally responsible – even though they are not aware of this – for shaping the Cosmos in a way that increases discordance among things, and hence produces fragmentation, disorder and multiplicity.Footnote ¹⁴³ In parallel, by initiating themselves into Empedocles’ philosophy and living a pure and just way of life, individuals escape rebirths and mortal nature, while reducing cosmic fragmentation. Thereby, they make themselves morally responsible not only for their individual destiny of divine nature but also for cosmic peace, harmony and concordance, which is Love’s pursuit in the cosmic cycle.

In conclusion, the same path that leads human beings to their release from rebirth and to blissful, divine reward leads the Cosmos towards an increase in concordance, harmony, wholeness and unity. By choosing either Love or Strife, in other words, individuals are active agents not only of their own individual fate, but also of the destiny and shape of the Cosmos. Thus, the harmony or dis-harmony of the world can be enhanced by the just or unjust behaviour of humans. The choice for Love, finally, is pivotal to assuring her increasing influence over her rival force and to thereby making the world a place in which peaceful and concordant relationships between individuals prevail, even if conflicting relationships cannot be completely eliminated – in short, in making the world a better and happier place. In fact, what can be learned from Love’s golden reign of the past is the possibility that another reign of Love can be realized again, if only we endorse the right party in the cosmic conflict and fight at Love’s side. Empedocles’ philosophy now teaches us how to do so.Footnote ¹⁴⁴