already prepared to find that Empedokles called the elements gods; for all the early thinkers had spoken in this way of whatever they regarded as the primary substance. We must only remember that the word is not used in its religious sense. Empedokles did not pray or sacrifice to the elements.
Empedokles regarded the "roots of all things" as eternal. Nothing can come from nothing or pass away into nothing (fr. 12); what is is, and there is no room for coming into being and passing away (fr. 8). Further, Aristotle tells us, he taught that they were unchangeable.[1] This Empedokles expressed by saying that "they are always alike." Again, the four elements are all "equal," a statement which seemed strange to Aristotle,[2] but was quite intelligible in the days of Empedokles. Above all, the four elements are ultimate. All other bodies might be divided till you came to the elements; but Empedokles could give no further account of these without saying (as he did not) that there is an element of which Fire and the rest are in turn composed.[3]
- ↑ Arist. De gen. corr. B, 1. 329 b 1.
- ↑ Ibid. B, 6. 333 a 16.
- ↑ Ibid. A, 8. 325 b 19 (R. P. 164 e). This was so completely misunderstood by later writers that they attribute to Empedokles the doctrine of στοιχεῖα πρὸ τῶν στοιχείων (Aet. i. 13, 1; 17, 3). The criticism of the Pythagoreans and Plato had made the hypothesis of elements almost unintelligible to Aristotle, and a fortiori to his successors. As Plato put it (Tim. 48 b 8), they were "not even syllables," let alone "letters" (στοιχεῖα). That is why Aristotle calls them καλούμενα στοιχεῖα (Diels, Elementum, p. 25).
Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns. Another view identified Hera with Air, which is the theory of Plato's Cralylus, and Aidoneus with Earth. The Homeric Allegorists further identified Zeus with Fire, a view to which they were doubtless led by the use of the word αἰθήρ. Now αἰθήρ certainly means Fire in Anaxagoras, as we shall see, but there is no doubt that in Empedokles it meant Air. It seems likely, then, that Knatz is right ("Empedoclea" in Schedae Philologicae Hermanno Usenero oblatae, 1891, pp. 1 sqq.) in holding that the bright Air of Empedokles was Zeus. This leaves Aidoneus to stand for Fire; and nothing could have been more natural for a Sicilian poet, with the volcanoes and hot springs of his native island in mind, than this identification. He refers to the fires that burn beneath the Earth himself (fr. 52). If that is so, we shall have to agree with the Homeric Allegorists that Hera is Earth; and surely φερέσβιος Ἥρα can be none other than "Mother Earth." The epithet seems only to be used of earth and corn.
