Empédocle - Un poète et sa réception - Hardt 2011

Un colloque consacré à Empédocle – organisé par Ph. Hardie et D. Nelis – s'est tenu le 14 et 15 octobre à la Fondation Hardt. Quelques intervenants ont accepté de livrer un court résumé de leur intervention. Nous les en remercions.

Simon Trépanier

The first 330 lines of Lucretius' De rerum natura: setting empedoclean expectations

My thesis: Lucretius does not fully disclose his allegiance to atomism (and hence Epicureanism) until DRN I. 330: namque est in rebus inane. Until then, he deliberately misdirects the first-time hearer’s expectations as to the nature of the coming work. The dominant tone, set by generic expectations and repeated adaptations and allusions, is that we are about to hear a Latin Empedoclean epos. Although he does include, among other themes, some atomist terms and imagery, these form a consistent but strictly minortheme. The claim of Empedoclean influence is not controversial for lines 1-145, but I also claim that the material from I.146 to 330 is heavily marked by such allusions. Over that section, however, Lucretius gradually raises the prominence of the atomist theme, yet without openly acknowledging it: the passage thus prepares the ground for the disclosure of line 330. Lastly, once the hearer has understood the poem’s true doctrinal allegiance, s/he can see still appreciate the proem, but from a more informed level.

Simon Trépanier

Lecturer in Classics

School of History, Classics and Archaeology

William Robertson Wing

Old Medical School

Teviot Place

Edinburgh 

EH8 9AG

Gordon Campbell,

Empedocles, Lucretius and Cleanthes On Piety

I argue that there is a complex intertextual relationship between the three philosophical poets Empedocles, Lucretius, and Cleanthes.  Elizabeth Asmis argued in an article of 1982 that Lucretius in his hymn to Venus had used Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus as one of his main models and had systematically replaced Cleanthes’ Zeus, the masculine controlling force of the universe, with Venus, the feminine nurturing cosmic force.  I add some evidence to Asmis’ thesis, especially that the address to Venus in Lucretius’ hymn is unusual and appears to be closely modelled on Cleanthes’ address to Zeus.  Further, I argue that Cleanthes implicitly corrects Empedocles in his hymn, using highly Empedoclean language to substitute Zeus for Empedocles’ Aphrodite as the force that brings the universe into harmony.  Empedocles in his turn had already implicitly corrected Hesiod by claiming that the people of the golden age did not worship Ares, Kydoimos, Zeus, or (pointedly) Kronos but only Aphrodite.  Lucretius and Empedocles, then, attempt to rewind the history of religion and return Aphrodite to her position of honour as what Don Fowler called the ‘feminine principal’.

Gordon Campbell,

Lecturer in Ancient Classics,

National University of Ireland, Maynooth

Marwan Rashed

Empédocle et le Onze : nouveaux indices

Dans une étude antérieure (« Le proème des Catharmes d’Empédocle : reconstitution et commentaire », Elenchos 29, 2008, p. 7-37), je me suis efforcé de montrer que le proème des Catharmes était construit de manière à faire ressortir le nombre onze. On peut, schématiquement, résumer les conclusions factuelles de cette étude aux quatre éléments suivants :

– (i) le proème des Catharmes était composé de trois strophes de onze vers chacune ;

– (ii) Empédocle a fait ressortir cette scansion en utilisant la même attaque marquée, l’apostrophe ὦ φίλοι, au vers 1 [= 112.1 DK] et au vers 12 [= 114.1 DK] ;

– (iii) la mention, dans ce même proème, d’une errance de 30 000 saisons (v. 20 [= 115.6 DK], τρὶς … μυρίας ὧρας), doit être comprise comme signifiant une période de dix fois mille ans ;

– (iv) l’ensemble du proème est placé sous le signe de l’Odyssée, qui fait l’objet de plusieurs citations très reconnaissables pour un auditeur grec (cf. vv. 23-25 [= 115.9-11 DK] et Od. ε 478-80, v. 25 [= 115.11] et Od. ζ 117, v. 30 [= 115.14+121.1] et Od. λ 94).

            La combinaison de ces quatre éléments offre l’une des clés des Catharmes. Le je du poète s’adresse à ses compagnons d’errance à la fin de son propre exil. Voici 10 000 ans qu’Empédocle parcourt les routes pénibles d’une terre étrangère. Cette période fait écho aux errances d’Ulysse lors de son retour à Ithaque. Elle contient donc une interprétation eschatologique de l’Odyssée, selon laquelle le retour d’Ulysse décrirait, sous une forme voilée, le retour du daïmôn, de l’âme, etc. à sa patrie véritable, loin du monde d’ici-bas, après bien des tribulations. L’idée d’une renaissance survenant à la onzième année, un fois un cycle décimal accompli, ne serait donc pas simplement pythagoricienne, mais proviendrait de la rencontre du pythagorisme et de l’exégèse homérique.

            À ce stade, cependant, une question délicate se pose. Les allusions homériques d’Empédocle sont-elles des procédés littéraires inventés par celui-ci, où s’inscrivent-elles dans une exégèse philosophique déjà codifiée du Poète ? Cette question rejoint celle, souvent débattue, des interprétations pythagoriciennes anciennes d’Homère. On se demandera si les exégètes pythagoriciens de l’Odyssée avaient, dès avant Empédocle, interprété arithmologiquement la durée du retour d’Ulysse – et donc placé le retour d’Ulysse dans sa patrie sous le signe du 11, ou si l’on doit cette invention, si l’on reçoit mon interprétation, aux Catharmes d’Empédocle.

En l’absence de sources anciennes explicites, une telle énigme a fort peu de chances de trouver un jour sa solution. Je me retrancherai donc, faute de mieux, sur une difficulté plus modeste. Je tenterai en effet de savoir si d’autres auteurs de l’Antiquité, aujourd’hui conservé, sont suceptibles d’avoir interprété le nombre 11 comme Empédocle l’a fait, au croisement d’Homère et du pythagorisme, et je me demanderai dans quelle mesure cette interprétation peut être indépendante du proème des Catharmes. J’identifierai trois réseaux : Apulée, l’exégèse homérique des Naasséniens, l’idéologie politique de Lucius Cornelius Sylla.

Marwan Rashed

(Paris)

Myrto Garani

The advent of Maiestas (Ovid Fasti 5.11-52)

In the beginning of Ovidʼs Fasti 5 the narrative persona inquires the goddesses about the derivation of the name of May. The Ovidian Muses disagree, being divided into three equal groups. Still, if we take into consideration the fact that the intrinsic trait of the Muses is their harmony, the expectations of the reader about a unanimous etymological interpretation are starkly deceived. In this paper, I explore the way in which the Musesʼ disagreement set the alarm for the reader for an intertextual dialogue with Empedocles and Lucretius in the verses to follow. On this basis, I focus on Ovidʼs first etymological explanation, which is delivered by the Muse Polyhymnia, who derives May from the goddess Maiesta and describes her life ever since her birth (5.9-54). I discuss the way in which Ovid conflates previous accounts on Golden Age by injecting them with specific Empedoclean echoes, which are also associated with other passages – both Ovidian and intertextual (such as Aratus, Ennius, Lucretius and Vergil) –, which are burdened with Empedoclean allusions.

Myrto Garani

(Athènes)

Charles Ham

The Elements in Ovid’s Fasti

This paper has two main sections: the first takes some preliminary steps towards developing a methodology for finding collocations of the four elements in Latin poetry and, beyond this, determing whether they are the “Empedoclean” elements; the second applies this methodology to an interpretation of Ovid’s use of the elements in his treatment of Vesta’s shrine in book 6 of the Fasti.

I open the methodological section by discussing the range of terminology for the four elements in Latin poetry and conclude that the poets seldom use the most basic words for the elements in collocations. I also argue that collocations of fewer than four elements can in some cases  constitute a “citation” of the four-element theory. Once this is established, however, we still need to determine whether or not the elements are Empedoclean, since the four-element theory alone is not enough to constitute an Empedoclean reference. In order for the four elements to have an Empedoclean valence, a poet has to send programmatically Empedoclean signals either at the beginning of his poem or in some equally prominent place. I argue that Ovid does this at the beginning of both his Metamorphoses and Fasti, which, in this respect as in many others, demand to be read almost as a unit.

In the second section of the paper I argue that the “elemental discourse” in Ovid’s treatment of the shrine of Vesta in book 6 of the Fasti has as one of its points of reference the Empedoclean tradition of a battle among the elements in which concord can be achieved, even if only temporarily. This involves an extended intertextual engagement with the opening books of the Metamorphoses, in which Ovid reworks the cosmic and especially elemental history of the Metamorphoses in the history of Vesta’s shrine, which, as others have observed, is depicted as an imago mundi. I argue that Vesta, who is identified as Tellus in the Fasti, and her temple undergo elemental cataclysms comparable to those undergone by Tellus in the Metamorphoses. I argue that Ovid’s framing of the mythological flood and fire in cosmological terms looks back especially to Lucretius’ use of them as emblematic of an ongoing battle between the four macroscopic Empedoclean elements, which suggests that Ovid too can be considered as working within the Empedoclean tradition. Moreover, I argue that the manipulation of elemental balance and imbalance by religious authorities such as Numa and Metellus looks back specifically to the persona of Empedocles presented in some of the fragments and testimonia from the biographical tradition.

Charles Ham

University of Pennsylvania

James Porter

Trusting in Strife

The final half-verse of fr. 115 is surely one of the more startling statements among the Empedoclean fragments. Empedocles is famous for having introduced the cosmological principle of Neikos or Strife into philosophy. Here he is its victim. I won’t discuss the textual provenance of this line, which is not part of the rest of the fragment as cited by Hippolytus or Plutarch, our two primary sources for the fragment, the whole of which is a pastiche put together from these two sources; the correctness of the verse and its placement are secured by integral citations in three other sources.For all its possible interest, the statement Νείκεϊ μαινομένωι πίσυνος remains a puzzle. This is troubling, because the line as it is conventionally understood exists to explain why the speaker, who appears to be Empedocles himself, was exiled from the gods and made into a wanderer. It gives the account of his crime and pollution. In the attested usages, to be pisunos (derived from peithōmai and pisteuō) is to “confidently trust (or believe) in” some external object voluntaristically (whether or not that trust or belief is well placed or misplaced). The sense “abandoning oneself to” and all other associated renderings are forbidden. The semantics of the term won’t allow us to say that the speaker is deluded, given over to Strife, is as mad as Strife itself, or even that his choices and actions are an expression of the madness of Strife. Empedocles in line 14 is pisunos, which means he must be viewed as a conscious agent, not as a slave of his passions. My paper explores the possibilities that follow from this reading of the word's semantics, both for this fragment and for Empedocles' philosophy as a whole, which is to say, why it is that Empedocles can genuinely state that he puts his trust in Strife.

James Porter

Professor of Classics and Comparative literature

University of California, Irvine.

Catherine Osborne

Aristotle's remarks about the poetry of Empedocles and Plato's remarks about science and mythology

In Section A I ask whether Aristotle thought Empedocles was a good poet. I argue that Aristotle admires Empedocles' literary qualities, though he thinks that such literary devices inhibit clear communication, which is important for philosophical writing. When, in the Poetics, Aristotle says that Empedocles is not really a poet, he is defining a "genre", not assessing the poetic or philosophical value of the work. I look at four comments from Aristotle about Empedocles as a writer.

In Section B I take a brief look at some of Empedocles's work. Is the first person singular "I" the poet speaking in his own voice, or is it a tragic character? I look at three texts where the tragic character cries out in despair.

In Section C I compare Plato's distinction between myth and logos with Aristotle's distinction between drama and scientific verse. In the Phaedo Socrates says that proper poetry should include a story. In other works myth is a way to do philosophy that suits certain audiences and certain purposes. I look at four texts that show that Plato was less philistine than Aristotle about the rôle of imagination and creativity in philosophical writing. I suggest that Plato was right to think that philosophy involves the emotions and should be written in a way that invites the audience to become passionate about what they are hearing.

Catherine Osborne,

UEA

M. Laura Gemelli Marciano

Les gages de la Muse : mots et visions dans le poème ésotérique d’Empédocle

En partant de la discussion critique des concepts employés d'habitude pour analyser le poème d'Empédocle (‘littéraire’, ‘poésie didactique’, ‘poésie philosophique’), j'examine d'abord les promesses qu’E. adresse à l'élève, qui constituent les présupposés pour comprendre le caractère de son enseignement, ensuite son invocation aux dieux et à la Muse qui renvoient au contexte sacré d'une instruction ésotérique et enfin les exhortations à voir (ὁράω), observer avec attention (ἀθρέω), regarder d'un œil perçant (δέρκομαι), qui se réfèrent le plus souvent à un genre particulier de vision qui n'est pas celle de la vue comme les mortels l'entendent et l'utilisent. Je montre enfin que ce genre de vision est en parfaite syntonie avec la tradition des devins-thaumaturges dont le modèle est le sage du fr. B129, c'est-à-dire Pythagore.

M. Laura Gemelli Marciano

(Zurich)

Philip Hardie

Horace and the Empedoclean Sublime

Empedocles appears by name twice in Horace, at Epistles 1.12.20 and Ars poetica 465. I argue that in both passages the incidental nature of the introduction of the person of Empedocles is deceptive, and that Horace’s dismissive references to a mad old Greek philosopher veil a deeper concern for the Empedoclean qualities and aspirations of Horace’s own poetry. In both passages the naming of Empedocles coheres with a wider network of Empedoclean images and themes, and points in particular to Horace’s conflicted attitudes towards the sublime as a goal of his poetry. Furthermore Horace’s interest in Empedocles is also a part of his dialogue with three Roman poets central to Horace’s own self-definition as a poet: Ennius, Lucretius, and Virgil, three of the major figures in the line of what I have elsewhere labelled a Roman tradition of ‘Empedoclean epos’ that combines narrative and didactic forms of hexameter epos.

Philip Hardie

Senior Research Fellow

Trinity College, Cambridge CB2 1TQ

David Sider

From Many (Citations) One (Fragment); or How Many Fragments of Empedocles Do We Actually Have?

My talk focuses on the various ways Empedocles ways repeats himself, often with an explicit statement to this effect (note, eg, B21.1-2), and then to note how this may make us rethink what constitutes an Empedoclean fragment. And this in turn, I hope, lead to an enhanced appreciation of Empedocles the Poet. In the first part, I also show how Empedocles often suggests that that his own fragments are as much a part of the kosmos as any concrete object, so as to to sensitize his listeners, especially in B 17, to the idea of doubleness in nature and in his own telling of the story. In the second part, I concentrate on what the new papyrus text further tells us about Empedocles' repetitions, specifically about their frequency and variation. From this I argue that passages that hitherto have been assimilated one to the other are in fact to be regarded as separate fragments, Empedocles both playing with Homeric formulation and further, once again, using his own language to mirror the way the kosmos experiences alteration.

David Sider