Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

> καὶ πῶς τις ἀνάξει αὐτοὺς εἰς φῶς, ὥσπερ > > ἐξ Ἅιδου λέγονται δή τινες εἰς θεοὺς ἀνελθεῖν; > > Plato Republic 521c This study reconstructs Empedocles’ eschatology and cosmology, arguing that they presuppose one another. Part one surveys body and soul in Empedocles and argues that the transmigrating daimon is a long-lived compound made of the elements air and fire. Part two shows that Empedocles situates our current life in Hades, then considers the testimonies concerning different cosmic levels (...) in Empedocles and compares them with the afterlife schemes in Pindar’s Second Olympian Ode and Plato’s Phaedo myth. Part three offers a new edition of section d lines 5–10 of the Strasbourg papyrus of Empedocles that reinforces the connection between transmigration and different cosmic locations for souls. Part four reconstructs Empedocles’ cosmology, identifies three different levels or habitats of soul, and, more tentatively, suggests that Empedoclean “long-lived gods” are best understood as stars. (shrink)

Fragment 17 of Empedocles has long been recognized as the most important in the corpus. In 1998, the significance of this 35-line fragment was further increased by the publication of the Strasbourg papyrus, containing roughly 74 lines of Empedocles.