Abstract

By establishing a link between Homer’s, Hesiod’s and Empedocles’ similar textual expressions, we are allotted to assert that the fourth line of Empedocles’ fragment 115 (FVS 31) is authentic. We must read the first words of this line so: ὅς κεν ἑκὼν ἐπίορκον… This emendation of Empedocles’ text implies that the guilty god (or man or Blessed) whom Empedocles’ fragment mentions, is not urged by an (positive or negative) outside element, nor is deceived by a god or a man, acts quite willingly and like the Hatred to which he adheres, and behaves like an human being. However he differs from the disloyal man; for, once punished and cleansed, he is allotted to go back to the society of the Gods or the Blessed, whereas the disloyal man becomes blind or dies, as the myth of the Sicilian Palici testifies. Empedocles refers to this myth when he is speaking over the goddess Nestis.