The Poem of Empedocles: A Text and Translation and with an Introduction by Brad Inwood. Rev. ed.

Daniel M. Kolos is president of Benben Books, a company publishing
scholarly works.

Presocratic, equally influenced by Parmenides, Xenophanes, and
Pythagoras, Empedocles was born in Sicily but lived his life in Western
Greece. Away from home, he was obsessed with being an exile. Although
his poetry reflects his thoughts about the natural world, when he writes
about notions of how life is to be lived, the reader has to remember
that Empedocles probably means the life of the exile.

The reason for the new edition is the discovery of 70 more lines from
papyrus fragments. Inwood uses this new material to convince us that the
Poem of Empedocles is a single unit and not, as others argue, two units.
Later Greek editors, he claims, divided the Poem into separate sections
on nature and on religion. Since both our intellectual and religious
culture contain much Greek philosophical influence, reading Empedocles
can be quite revealing. He tackles problems of original sin, good and
evil, as well as immortality and reincarnation half a millennium before
Christianity. Some 2500 years before brain research and neurology,
Empedocles searched for consciousness in what he calls the
“thought-organ.”

Inwood has divided his work into four very useful units. The
introduction covers scholarship on Empedocles and addresses the
philosophical problems of his time. Inwood misses the crucial issue that
it was Parmenides who confused the unity of the human mind and forcibly
split reality into two. Empedocles ignored this split and it was
Aristotle who finally designated the two parts “physical” and
“metaphysical.”

Part 2 places the fragments of Empedocles’ Poem in context of how
other classical writers used them. Inwood quotes all later Greek and
Roman philosophers and commentators without his own commentary. It is
both intriguing and entertaining to read how Empedocles’ verses become
twisted and misquoted.

Part 3, “Testimonia,” lists all classical references made to
Empedocles, biographic, literary, and doctrinaire. The reader having
been thoroughly prepared, Part 4 provides the extant fragments,
including the 70 new lines. Inwood also adds copious notes,
bibliography, concordances, and indexes.