Empedocles was born in the Greek colony of Agrigentum in Sicily around 494 B.C. He is best known for having proposed the cosmogonic theory of the four elements that make up all matter: earth, water, fire and air. He wrote in the verse, a practice that had been the norm for Greek philosophers but is generally considered to have ended with him.
University of Liège papyrologist Nathan Carlig identified papyrus P.Fouad inv. 218 as a fragment of the Physica, a verse tract on particle effluvia (invisible particles/vapours that flow off people and materials, impacting their surroundings) and the perceptions of the senses, particularly vision.
Analysis of the text has revealed unexpected connections, including the probable direct source of a passage by Plutarch (2nd century), as well as a dialogue by Plato and a text by Theophrastus, a disciple of Aristotle, both from the 4th century BCE. Unnoticed echoes of Empedocles have also been detected in the comic poet Aristophanes and in the Latin philosopher Lucretius. The study further suggests that Empedocles could be regarded as a precursor of the atomist* philosophers, foremost among whom is Democritus of Abdera.
To grasp the significance of such a discovery, the authors offer an illuminating analogy: imagine that, in a few centuries’ time, all that remains of Victor Hugo are excerpts from Les Misérables in school textbooks, the musical Notre-Dame de Paris, and the programme for a performance of the play Hernani. The discovery of a few pages from an original edition of Hugo’s work would then be a momentous event. This is precisely what specialists in Empedocles are experiencing today. Like the humanists of the Renaissance, who scoured European libraries to unearth lost manuscripts, papyrologists have, since the late 19th century, pursued a similar quest through papyrus texts. “It is, in a way, to borrow Peter Parsons’ words, a ‘second Renaissance’ of ancient literature,” says Nathan Carlig. The publication of this research opens up new perspectives on understanding Empedocles’ doctrine and, more broadly, his work, in order to better situate the philosopher within the history of Greek philosophy and to better define his relationship with his predecessors and successors.”
*Atomist philosophers: philosophers of Ancient Greece who, in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, developed a theory according to which matter is composed of tiny, invisible and indivisible particles which they called atoms, a name derived from the Greek ‘atomos’, meaning ‘that which cannot be cut’.
The newly-discovered P.Fouad inv. 218 verses, their translation and commentary have been published in L’Empédocle du Caire, a book edited by Nathan Carlig, Alain Martin and Olivier Primavesi.
* This article was originally published here
