Abstract

Few things can be more confusing, or confused, than the ancient reports about Empedocles' astronomy. Attempts in the modern literature at resolving the difficulties invariably either add to the confusion, or end by urging the need to ‘acknowledge the insufficiency of our data and suspend judgment’. In fact, as we will see, it is possible not only to reconstruct Empedocles' own ideas but also to retrace the history of their subsequent misunderstanding.