Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:10:42.876Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Empedocles the Sorcerer and his Hexametrical Pharmaka

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2019

Christopher Faraone
Christopher Faraone*
Affiliation:
The University of [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In one of his fragments, Empedocles addresses his protégé Pausanias, predicting or promising that he will learn pharmaka, a word that is usually understood to mean herbal ‘drugs' or ‘remedies’ for disease, an interpretation that in turn seems to have been encouraged by a modern understanding that Empedocles was an empirically minded medical doctor. An alternate interpretation is suggested, however, by the recently published Getty Hexameters which use the word pharmaka several times to refer to hexametrical incantations that will protect a group of houses or a city from danger. These hexameters, moreover, are inscribed on a lead tablet of late-classical date that most probably came from the Sicilian city of Selinus, a date and a provenance that put its composition in close proximity to Empedocles himself.

Keywords

EmpedoclespharmakonGorgiasincantationPlatoGetty HexametersPaeanprotectionmagicmagiciansorcerersorcerydrugswindnecromancyrainSicilySelinus
Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 53 , 2019 , pp. 14 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © The Australasian Society for Classical Studies 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Armstrong, D. and Ponczoch, J. A. (2011), ‘[Philodemus] on Wealth (PHerc. 1570 cols. VI–XX, PCCC. 4–6A): New Fragments of Empedocles, Menander, and Epicurus’, CErc 41, 97–138.Google Scholar
Armstrong, D. and Ponczoch, J. A. (2013), ‘Empedocles & Philodemus in PHerc. 1570 Col. VI 9–19’, CErc 43, 1–4.Google Scholar
Audollent, A. (1939), ‘Double inscription prophylactique contra la grêle’, MMAI 43, 45–75.Google Scholar
Bollack, J. (1965–69), Empédocle. 3 vols. Paris.Google Scholar
Broadhead, H. D. (1960), The Persae of Aeschylus. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Bury, R. G. (1942), Plato. The Laws. Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar
Carastro, M. (2006), La cité des mages: Penser la magie en Grèce ancienne. Grenoble.Google Scholar
Chitwood, A. (2004), Death by Philosophy: The Biographical Tradition in the Life and Death of the Archaic Philosophers Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Democritus. Ann Arbor.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, A. B. (1940), Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion. Vol. 3.1. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Diels, H. (1969), ‘Uber die Gedichte des Empedokles’ in Diels, H., Kleine Schriften, Burkert, W. (ed.) Darmstadt, 127–46.Google Scholar
Diels, H. and Kranz, W. (1929), Die Vorsokratiker. 16th ed.Berlin.Google Scholar
Dillon, J. and Hershbell, J. (1991), Iamblichus: On the Pythagorian Way of Life. Atlanta.Google Scholar
Eitrem, S. (1928), ‘The Necromancy in the Persae of Aeschylus’, SO 6, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faraone, C. A. (1996), ‘Taking the Nestor's Cup Inscription Seriously: Conditional Curses and Erotic Magic in the Earliest Greek Hexameters’, ClAnt 15, 77–112.Google Scholar
Faraone, C. A. (2004), ‘Twisting and Turning in the Prayer of the Samothracian Initiates (Aristophanes Peace 276–79)’, MH 61, 30–50.Google Scholar
Faraone, C. A. (2006), ‘Gli incantesimi esametrici ed i poemi epici nella Grecia Antica’, QUCC 84, 11–26.Google Scholar
Faraone, C. A. (2011), ‘Hexametrical Incantations as Oral and Written Phenomena’, in Lardinois, A. P. M. H., Blok, J. H., and van der Poel, M. G. M. (eds.), Sacred Words: Orality, Literacy, and Religion. Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World 8. Leiden, 191–204.Google Scholar
Faraone, C. A. and Obbink, D. (eds.) (2013), The Getty Hexameters: Poetry, Magic and Mystery in Ancient Greek Selinous. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiedler, W. (1931), Antiker Wetterzauber. Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Gheerbrant, X. (2017), Empédocle, une poétique philosophique. Paris.Google Scholar
Gregory, A. (2013), The Presocratics and the Supernatural. London.Google Scholar
van Groningen, B. A. (1956), ‘Le Fragment 111 d'Empédocle’, C&M 17, 47–61.Google Scholar
van Groningen, B. A. (1971), ‘Empédocle, Poète’, Mnemosyne 24, 169–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heim, R. (1892), Incantamenta magica graeca latina. Leipzig.Google Scholar
Hicks, R. D. (1925), Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar
Inwood, B. (2001), The Poem of Empedocles. Rev. Ed.Toronto.Google Scholar
Johnston, S. I. (1999), ‘Songs for the Ghosts: Magical Solutions to Deadly Problems,’ in Jordan, D., Montgomery, H., and Thomassen, E. (eds.), The World of Ancient Magic. Athens, 83–102.Google Scholar
Jones, W. H. S. (1918), Pausanias: Description of Greece. Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar
Kingsley, P. (1994), ‘Greeks, Shamans and Magoi’, Studia Iranica 23, 187–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingsley, P. (1995), Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition. Oxford.Google Scholar
Kingsley, P. (2002), ‘Empedocles for the New Millennium’, AncPhil 22, 1–81.Google Scholar
Kirk, G. S. and Raven, J. E. (1963), The Presocratic Philosophers. 4th rev. ed.Cambridge.Google Scholar
Jordan, D. R. and Kotansky, R. D. (2011), ‘Ritual Hexameters in the Getty Museum: A Preliminary Edition’, ZPE 178, 54–62.Google Scholar
Laín Entralgo, P. (1970), The Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity. Trans. Rather, L. J. and Sharp, J. M.. New Haven.Google Scholar
Laks, A. and Most, G. W. (2016), Early Greek Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar
Laskaris, J. (2002), The Art is Long: On the Sacred Disease and the Scientific Tradition. Leiden.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lloyd, G. E. R. (1979), Magic, Reason and Experience. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Martin, A. and Primavesi, O., (1999), L'Empédocle de Strasbourg (P. Strasb. gr. Inv. 1665–1666): Introduction, édition et commentaire. Berlin.Google Scholar
Obbink, D. (1993), ‘The Addressees of Empedocles’, Materiali e discussione 31, 51– 98.Google Scholar
Ohrt, F. (1929), ‘Fluchtafel und Wettersegen’, Folklore Fellows Comunications 86, 1–2,Google Scholar
Race, W. (2000), ‘Explanatory δέ clauses in the Iliad’, CJ 95, 205–27.Google Scholar
Rutherford, I. (2013), ‘The Immortal Words of Paean’, in Faraone and Obbink. 157–70.Google Scholar
Strömberg, R. (1950), ‘The Aeolus Episode and Greek Wind Magic’, Acta Univ. Gotoburg 56, 71–84.Google Scholar
West, M. L. (1982), Greek Metre. Oxford.Google Scholar
Wright, M. R. (1981), Empedocles: The Extant Fragments. New Haven.Google Scholar
Zuntz, G. (1971), Persephone. Oxford.Google Scholar