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Empedocles' Fertile Fish
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
In a recent article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies Dr O'Brien rejects a suggestion I made some time ago in an attempt to explain the apparent contradiction in our evidence for Empedocles' distribution of living-creatures among the elements. Whereas Aëtius tells us that this distribution took place on the principle of ‘like to like’, Aristotle informs us that Empedocles held that certain aquatic creatures are very fiery and take to the water to cool themselves. It was suggested then that these aquatic creatures mark an exception to the general rule of ‘like to like’ and took to the water to cool themselves, because they have an excessive endowment of the element fire and, therefore, require a rather more powerful cooling-system; in their case, the inspiration of air is inadequate to cool their internal heat.
Although O'Brien is willing to accept that it is ‘very possible’ that Empedocles subscribed to the doctrine of innate heat, he nevertheless does not find this suggestion persuasive. It is not my intention directly to defend my standpoint here. Let it suffice for me to stress again that there are exceptions to the general rule of ‘like to like’ and that Empedocles himself points them out, namely that in the case of such creatures as shellfish and turtles, which manifestly do exist at our present stage of the world's evolution (i.e. when Strife is gaining predominance), it is the earthy part which is uppermost.
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1974
References
1 ‘Empedocles' Theories of Seeing and Breathing’, JHS XL, 1970, p. 167 n. 129, cf., too, Empedocles' Cosmic Cycle (Cambridge, 1969) p. 190 n. 4.
2 Aëtius V, 19, 5 (DK31A72). Aëtius' report may be accepted since it is closely paralleled by Empedocles' theory of the growth of plants, cf. Aristotle de Anima 415b 28 ff. and Theophrastus de Caus. Pl I, 12, 5 (DK31A70).
3 de Respiratione 477a 32 ff. and de Part. Anim. 648a 25 ff. Cf., too, Theophrastus, de Caus. Pl. I, 21, 5 (DK31A73).
4 ‘Empedocles's Fiery Fish’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXVIII (1965), 314–15.
5 It is, perhaps, worth adding here that Empedocles' contemporaries, Anaxagoras and Diogenes, both put forward theories about the respiratory system offish (cf. Arist, de Resp. 470b 30 ff. (DK59A115 and 64A31)).
6 JHS XL (1970) p. 167 n. 131.
7 Plutarch, , Quaest Conv. I, 2, 5 p. 618B (DK31B76)Google Scholar.
8 JHS XL (1970) p. 167 n. 129.
9 A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1965), Vol. II, p. 206 n. 2.
10 Empedocles' Cosmic Cycle (Cambridge, 1969) p. 191.
11 It is noteworthy that O'Brien has to acknowledge that ὅμοια τοῖς νῦν and κατὰ τὴν νῦν γέννησιν ‘could possibly mean simply a period earlier in the formation of the present world’.
12 There is no preposition; nor should it be assumed that ἄγουσα must bear the meaning of ‘leading’ or ‘conducting’ to a place as has been generally supposed. This verb frequently carries the meaning of ‘carry off as captive or booty’, cf., for example, Iliad I 367, IX 594, and Sophocles, , Philoctetes 945Google Scholar. There is an interesting parallel in Sophocles' famous choral ode upon human inventiveness in the Antigone, where Man is invoked in his capacity as a hunter, Ant. 341 ff.:
It is noteworthy, too, that this verb is also used in a metaphorical sense to describe the activity ἐπιθυμία, cf. Aristotle, E.N. 1147a34Google Scholar.
13 It might be objected that Empedocles in B74 could be using πολυσπερέων as a purely ornamental epithet. But in view of the fact that he has deliberately given a different sense to an adjective borrowed from Homer (cf. Iliad 2.804 and Odyssey 11.365), this seems most unlikely.
14 Cf., for example, Milton in Comus, who describes fish as:
‘Thronging the Seas with Spawn innumerable’ and Spenser in Garden of Adonis:
And all the fruitful spawn of fishes' hew
In endless ranks along enranged were,
That seem'd the ocean could not contain them there.’