“For I have been a boy and a girl, a bush and a bird, and a mute fish from the sea.”
— EmpedoclesDiels-Kranz 31 B117, preserved in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 8.77; approximate English rendering
Commentary
This fragment, preserved in Diogenes Laertius, describes the soul's successive incarnations in different forms of life, a doctrine of transmigration that Empedocles develops in the Purifications. The list of forms, boy and girl, bush and bird, fish, presents the soul as travelling through the whole range of living things. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield relate the doctrine to earlier Pythagorean teachings, which Empedocles is said to have known, and they note its ethical consequence, that the soul must purify itself to escape the cycle. Daniel Graham argues that the doctrine of transmigration is integrated with the physics of mixture, since the soul is itself a mixture of the four roots. Richard Wright observes that the fragment's list has a rhythmic and autobiographical quality that marks it as the poet's own testimony. Jean Bollack discusses the Pythagorean background in detail. The English is approximate, and the Greek should be consulted before quotation, since the list in Diogenes may be abbreviated.
Commentary
This fragment, preserved in Diogenes Laertius, describes the soul's successive incarnations in different forms of life, a doctrine of transmigration that Empedocles develops in the Purifications. The list of forms, boy and girl, bush and bird, fish, presents the soul as travelling through the whole range of living things. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield relate the doctrine to earlier Pythagorean teachings, which Empedocles is said to have known, and they note its ethical consequence, that the soul must purify itself to escape the cycle. Daniel Graham argues that the doctrine of transmigration is integrated with the physics of mixture, since the soul is itself a mixture of the four roots. Richard Wright observes that the fragment's list has a rhythmic and autobiographical quality that marks it as the poet's own testimony. Jean Bollack discusses the Pythagorean background in detail. The English is approximate, and the Greek should be consulted before quotation, since the list in Diogenes may be abbreviated.