Eikas cheers to all! This month’s Eikas program was on Guidance of the Soul in Epicureanism. Nathan Oglesby published a video titled Epicurean Ecology in his YouTube channel Nathanology, and also published the essay The Epicurean guide to digital life, Big Think published Epicurus and the atheist’s guide to happiness, and Natalie Haynes facilitated Standing up for Lucretius. Speaking of Lucretius, the YouTube channel Eclectic Humanist has videos titled:
An Intro to Lucretius
Book I: the Material Cosmos, Book II: Fun With Atoms
Book III: Death the Soul, and Other Good Things
Book IV: How We Know Things
Book V: From Primeval Ooze to Poetry
Book VI: Concluding with a Plague
I’ve enjoyed following this YouTuber and strongly recommend his channel for its in-depth exploration and appreciation of Lucretius.
Tiny Epics published Aphrodite the Light Bringer, which mentions Lucretius at the closing of the video, reminding us that De rerum natura is in actuality a work of polytheistic piety. Lucretius offered and consecrated the poem as a libation at the feet of Venus when he, at the opening of the poem in Liber Primvs, invoked Venus for inspiration, declaring that it is Venus alone who rules all of nature (“sola gubernas“, verse 21) and who can assist peace (“tu sola potes tranquilla pace iuvare“, verse 31), and asking her to give an immortal charm to the poem.
Hermarchus, on Empedocles
Diogenes Laertius [tmíma/portion 25 in the Laertian numbering system] reports that Hermarchus of Mitilene, the second Scholarch of the Epicurean Garden and successor of the Hegemon, wrote 22 books on Empedocles which he described as “excellent”:
Next came Epicurus’s successor Hermarchus, son of Agemortus, a citizen of Mitylene, the son of a poor man and at the outset a student of rhetoric. There are in circulation the following excellent works by him: Correspondence concerning Empedocles, in 22 books …
This is an encyclopedic amount of literary output, and indicates that Hermarchus considered Empedocles to be a thought-provoking philosopher, and that Empedocles must have had a seminal influence on Epicurean philosophy and on many later generations of Epicureans. Philodemus later avidly encouraged his disciples to study a collection of all the writings of the founders titled “Pragmateia“, which must have included these 22 books.
Who Was Empedocles
Like Epicurus, Empedocles combined many of the ideas he inherited into his own system of thought, creating a new nexus in the evolution of the ideas that were circulating in his culture.
He was a bit eccentric, and mixed mysticism with proto-scientific curiosity. He wrote two poems: “Purifications” (which contained his religious and ethical thought) and “On Nature”. He was heavily influenced by the Orphic mysteries, which taught liberation from the wheel of reincarnation (through initiation and purifications), and was seen as a type of medicine man. He was also reported to have been a disciple of Pythagoras, which makes sense in light of his belief in reincarnation.
He was against authoritarianism (abolished a council of life-long magistrates, instituted term limits, and included people of all social classes in the new council), helped the poor, and also (like the first prophet Zoroaster, who may have been an influence) defended vegetarianism and fought against cruelty to innocent animals.
He had been revered as a living god while alive, and upon his death legends emerged about his manner of death. In Icaro-Menippus, a comedic dialogue written by the second century satirist Lucian of Samosata, Empedocles’ final fate is re-evaluated. Rather than being incinerated in the fires of Mount Etna, he was carried up into the heavens by a volcanic eruption. Although a bit singed by the ordeal, Empedocles survives and continues his life on the Moon, surviving by feeding on dew.
Why 22 Books?
We will never know with full certainty why Empedocles deserved 22 books by Hermarchus, or why the biographer chose to describe them as “excellent”. In this essay, I will speculate about what these books may have contained by comparing what we know about Empedocles with what Epicurus, Philodemus, and Lucretius later wrote.
Arguments Against Reincarnation
Lucretius’ arguments against reincarnation may have been derived from, or inspired in, Hermarchus’ reactions to Empedocles in his 22 works. In his third book, he argues that we have no memory of previous lives, questions how a soul could slip into a body, and rejects and even ridicules the idea of souls waiting to incarnate (Liber Tertivs 670-782).
Against the Rhetors
Laertius reports:
Aristotle, in his Sophist, says that Empedocles was the first person who invented rhetoric.
This may have been an additional bone of contention for Hermarchus, evidence for which we would later find in Philodemus’ Rhetorica. There, Philodemus argues that rhetoric does not give true expertise in any field of knowledge other than rhetoric, and that experts in each field are best equipped to teach it. He also argues at length against the unethical practices of rhetors.
Theory of Vision by Emission
Empedocles believed that the eyes emit rays that allow for vision (sort of like how Cyclops from Xmen emits laser rays from his eyes), rather than light particles entering the eye from outside. The portion of Liber Qvartvs in De rerum natura that discusses the five senses may have drawn–in part–from Hermarchus’ refutation of this theory.
The Evolution of the Theory of Natural Selection
Empedocles had a primitive version of evolution by natural selection, but he believed in an “island of Doctor Moreau” version of it, where humans with heads of oxen and other hybrid creatures emerged, but did not survive because their shape was not conducive to survival. Ergo, we imagine that Hermarchus may have had an issue with this, and Lucretius’ insistence (in Liber Qvintvs 878-924) that each species produces offspring according to its kind may be a later attestation of this.
But Centaurs ne’er have been, nor can there be
Creatures of twofold stock and double frame,
Compact of members alien in kind …… Wherefore, the man who feigns
Such beings could have been engendered
When earth was new and the young sky was fresh
(Basing his empty argument on new)
May babble with like reason many whims
Into our ears …… each sole thing
Proceeds according to its proper wont
And all conserve their own distinctions based
In nature’s fixed decree.
While Lucretius is not quite Darwinian yet, his account is an improvement on the ideas that preceded him, and he may have been drawing from refutations in Hermarchus’ 22 books on Empedocles.
The Four Elements
Empedocles had a theory of the four elements (which he called “roots”). He associated them with four deities–a fact which may have inspired Paul’s disparaging mention of the elements in his New Testament epistles.
Empedocles’ four elements idea was clearly a precursor to the atoms and void theory of Democritus and the atomists, who at once reacted against and built upon his ideas. This was probably an important part of Hermarchus’ arguments in his 22 books.
If four things make up the whole and in those four all things break up again, how can the four be called the stuff of things rather than the reverse: the things, of them? For one begets the other; They trade off colors and whole identities, every passing hour. – Lucretius, in DRN, Liber Primvs, 762-769
One of the key features of the primitive atomic theory was that primal atoms do not have complex properties, and that properties like color and such emerge only after they combine into more complex bodies.
The arguments by the atomists against the four elements, and in favor of the atoms and void theory, may have involved the case study of water. We know (from Lucretius’ detailed and accurate description of the rain and condensation cycles) that early Epicureans had carefully observed how water becomes vapor / gas when exposed to heat, and becomes ice when cold, and we see clearly that the solid, gaseous, and liquid states may exist within the same element at different temperatures. Therefore, it is inaccurate to say that these four “elements” of water, rock, air, and fire are the primal eternal particles, since we observe that particles change from one to the other elements.
Linked to these refutations is the argument along the lines that “nothing can come from nothing”.
Something ever unchanging must survive, lest all the world be broken down to nothing. For whatever changes and leaves its natural bounds is instant death of that which was before. Now therefore, since those elements I just mentioned do go through changes, they must be composed of others which can nowhere suffer change, else all the world will be reduced to nothing. – Lucretius, in DRN, Liber Primvs, 790-797
Love and Strife
Empedocles taught that love and strife (attraction and repulsion) were two basic forces of nature similar to the Yin and Yang of Taoism. These forces were at once physical, ethical and cosmological.
Speaking poetically, he associated Love with Aphrodite, which begs the question: might this add a layer of meaning to the initial portion of Lucretius’ poem, which shows Venus overcoming Mars? Might this be a way to say that love overcomes strife, that attraction overcomes repulsion? Lucretius’ choice to address Venus may have been, in part, inspired in Empedocles’s belief that Aphrodite represents “the great creative force in the cosmos”.
It should not surprise us that Empedocles–like other contemporary and preceding Greek philosophers–is believed to have studied with the magoi (Zoroastrian priests). This theory of love and strife / attraction and repulsion in nature and in ethics is quite reminiscent of Asho Zartosht’s explanation in his Gathas of the two primal mentalities that exist in the cosmos: the Constructive Mentality (Spenta Mainyu) and the Destructive Mentality (Angra Mainyu).
The two foremost mentalities, known to be imaginary twins, are the better and the bad in thoughts, words, and deeds. Of these the beneficent choose correctly, but not so the maleficent. When the two mentalities first got together, they created “life” and “not-living”. Until the end of existence, the worst mind shall be for the wrongful, and the best mind shall be for the righteous. – Avesta, Yasna 30.3-4
Perhaps Empedocles continued the lineage of the Magi in a Greek context? Like the Zoroastrian version, his belief in Love and Strife as primal cosmic principles led to a conception of time, ages, and cycles dominated by either Love or Strife, and he imagined a long-forgotten golden age where Love (Aphrodite) had ruled.
No Atoms and No Void
They posit motion, but remove the void from things; they leave their matter soft and porous … yet never admit void to their substances. – Lucretius, in DRN, Liber Primvs, 742-745
Lucretius elsewhere cites the example of sponges, and the argument that motion requires empty space for bodies to move into. Immediately after this passage, Lucretius says:
Then, of the cutting of things they make no end whatever, nor any stopping place for breakage nor any fixed “least size” in all the world …
Which indicates that Empedocles denied the existence of a-tomoi (atoms, uncuttable particles), but atomism provides a better answer to the questions considered here than the model that posits four primal elements. These arguments must have occupied portions of Hermarchus’ 22 books.
Empedocles’ Influence on Lucretius
Among the philosophers mentioned and criticized in DRN, Empedocles occupies a larger part than the rest. Lucretius, in Liber Primvs 714-715, argues against “those who think the world is made of four things, composed of fire and earth and air and rain. Chief in their ranks, Empedocles …”, and yet the poet praises Empedocles’ “godlike mind”, a term which he also uses for Epicurus. After praising both the land and the people of his birth, Lucretius says of Empedocles:
“… yet (the land) had nothing to outshine this man, nothing more saintly, wonderful, beloved. Yes, more: the writings of his godlike mind declare and propound his brilliant theories, so that we scarce believe him born of man.” – Lucretius, in DRN, Liber Primvs, 729-735
Lucretius then goes on to refer to all the other philosophers he has mentioned recently as “lesser men in a thousand signal ways, inferior far” to Empedocles, and yet all of these thinkers (Empedocles included)
“… in basic doctrine they came crashing down–great men they were, and great was the fall thereof!” – Lucretius, in DRN, Liber Primvs, 740-741
Why is so much praise mixed into this criticism? I believe it’s because even if the ancient Epicureans were reacting against some of his ideas, we know that they also endorsed and developed some of his other ideas and considered them indispensable within the Epicurean system–as in the case of the belief that evolution occurs by blind natural selection, with nature taking its course as in Taoism, and with no Aristotelian teleology. Therefore, they had to recognize the important advance made by Empedocles when considered against preceding and contemporary thinkers, even if they criticize his errors elsewhere.
Frank Copley, in his translation of De rerum natura (page 18, note 9) goes as far as to argue that Lucretius probably modeled De rerum natura on Empedocles’ On Nature.
Conclusion
There must have been many more discussions in Hermarchus’ 22 books, perhaps criticizing the Orphic, Pythagorean, and mystical tendencies of Empedocles, and celebrating or elaborating some of his other ideas. However, the above should give us clues as to the evolution of ancient thought as it happened among the Epicureans, together with a sense that just as we continue the conversations of Epicurus, Metrodorus, Lucretius, Philodemus, and others when we gather at Eikas, similarly our predecessors were also continuing the conversations of their own predecessors, rejecting some ideas and expanding on their arguments elsewhere, and slowly perfecting their own theories in this manner.
