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Empedocles' Sphairos and Its Interpretations in Antiquity III : Zoogony and Plato's Symposium

Publication at Faculty of Science |
2016

Abstract

This article presents a further discussion of a problem addressed in a previous work, namely the nature of Empedocles' Sphairos, which is taken by us to be a structured whole and not - as it seems to be usually interpreted - an amorphous mixture. This time we study Empedocleas' zoogony, that is, his account of the origin of life.

There are strong parallels between Empedocles' fragments and Plato's Symposium. We have proposed a new reconstruction of the transformations of living beings to fit better our interpretation of Sphairos and Empedocles' cosmic cycle.