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Purifying Rhetoric: Empedocles and theMyth of Rhetorical TheoryStephen Olbrys GencarellaPublished online: 16 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Stephen Olbrys Gencarella (2010) Purifying Rhetoric: Empedoclesand the Myth of Rhetorical Theory, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 96:3, 231-256, DOI:10.1080/00335630.2010.499105

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Purifying Rhetoric: Empedocles andthe Myth of Rhetorical TheoryStephen Olbrys Gencarella

The polymath Empedocles has not been considered a prominent figure in the history of

rhetorical studies nor contemporary appropriations of antiquity, despite the reported

attribution of his invention of rhetoric by Aristotle. This neglect is understandable, as the

surviving fragments of Empedocles’ work provide no significant reference to rhetoric per

se. Attention to the folklore surrounding Empedocles (including legends of his deeds as a

physician and politician, and his association with Pythagoras, Gorgias, and the god

Apollo) is noteworthy, however, as it helps explain ways the ancient Greeks

conceptualized rhetoric as a potentially healing discourse. Analysis of the Empedoclean

tradition discloses a call to redress any human penchant for violence and to resist

tyranny, themes relevant for critical rhetorical studies today. These contributions further

demonstrate an affinity between Empedocles and Kenneth Burke’s concern with the

purification of war, and temper the recent interest in an Isocratean development of

citizens by advancing a more ecumenical perspective on humanity.

Keywords: Empedocles; Origins of Rhetoric; Isocrates; Social Physician; Kenneth Burke

Writing in The Nation in 1967, Kenneth Burke argued that a primary responsibility

for members of a democracy is ‘‘to pause occasionally and ponder the bepuzzlements

of ‘identification’ as they affect our sense of citizenship.’’1 For Burke, citizens must

admonish themselves against stringent identifications with the nation state, money, a

particular party, or foreign allies, as such might rob an individual of a commitment to

humanity and with it, a ‘‘fountain of goodwill’’ that manifests in concern for the

suffering of one’s enemies in war.2 Rather than dismiss Burke’s plea as hopelessly

naıve, I draw from it a question of emphasis for contemporary rhetoricians: shall we

Stephen Olbrys Gencarella is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of

Massachusetts at Amherst. The author thanks John Louis Lucaites and the two anonymous reviewers for their

helpful advice and support, and Melanie Loehwing and Chris Gilbert for editorial assistance. This essay is

dedicated to the memory of Angela Gencarella and Gesualdo DiFazio. Correspondence to: Stephen Olbrys

Gencarella, 414 Machmer Hall, 240 Hicks Way, Amherst, MA 01003-9278, USA. Email: solbrys@

comm.umass.edu.

ISSN 0033-5630 (print)/ISSN 1479-5779 (online) # 2010 National Communication Association

DOI: 10.1080/00335630.2010.499105

Quarterly Journal of Speech

Vol. 96, No. 3, August 2010, pp. 231�256

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occupy ourselves predominantly with citizenship, or with more ecumenical notions

of humanity for which citizenship is one important constituent?

It is certainly not the first time rhetorical studies has faced this question. In the late

1990s, many critical rhetoricians turned to citizenship as the primary site of

engagement. They did so, I believe, in no small part due to a then burgeoning interest

in Isocrates as a parental figure in rhetorical studies, one linking the classical and the

postmodern.3 Takis Poulakos, for example, noted that study of Isocrates could

contribute to contemporary political life through comparison with another time in

which ‘‘the art of rhetoric was called upon to address and resolve problems of

division and unity, fragmentation and consolidation, diversity and cooperation.’’4

This rallying has thrived over the past decade, so much so that Isocrates is now often

compared to Burke himself.5 Indeed, a recent contribution in this journal by Kenneth

Chase epitomizes the extent to which this spirit has permeated American rhetorical

studies, as it advocates Isocrates as a necessary interlocutor for critical rhetoricians

who wish to oppose acts of domination.

There is a problem lurking in this appropriation, however, and it is not a petty one.

Stated simply, for any contemporary rhetorical critic who takes seriously the project

of ad bellum purificandum, Isocrates is a difficult source of inspiration. While setting

aside Victor Vitanza’s attack on Isocrates as a proto-fascist, Chase nevertheless notes a

tendency toward parochialism, elitism, imperialism, and militarism.6 It is further-

more difficult to ignore the martial and xenophobic motives behind Isocrates’

proposition for the ideological unification of the Greek city-states. Certainly, we may

contextualize that agenda within his bearing witness to the Peloponnesian War, just as

we may understand his willingness to accommodate tyrannies in some city-states as

the reality of Greek antiquity, for which democracy was only one viable option for

sociopolitical organization. But alternative perspectives regarding violence did exist

in antiquity, alternatives that should be brought into the conversation concerning

modern appropriations of the ancients.

I will argue that it is time for contemporary rhetorical studies to rethink its

allegiance to Isocrates. I do so in the same manner by which Poulakos made the case

for him, namely by advocating the recovery of another long-silenced influence: the

polymath Empedocles, the man reputed to be Gorgias’s teacher and to whom

Aristotle reportedly attributed the discovery of rhetoric itself. This article contends

that Empedocles’ absence is a disservice both to histories and contemporary

theorizations of rhetoric. I also hope to demonstrate that Empedocles is a far

better-suited candidate to the projects of democratization and the redress of violence.

Similarly, I propose that the legends the ancients told about Empedocles are far more

compelling than the legends we postmodern rhetoricians are telling about Isocrates.

Although all that is certain is that Empedocles ‘‘was a Sicilian, a high-born citizen

of the city of Acragas who lived through the middle years of the fifth century,’’ this

period constitutes the tumultuous decades in which numerous Sicilian cities

abolished tyrannies and established democracies.7 Empedocles composed poetry

(on the nature of the cosmos) and envisioned all humans*regardless of their

affiliations with specific political centers*as fallen creatures who might restore their

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divinity through certain acts of purification. As I intend to show, beyond a strictly

civic pedagogy, Empedocles advanced a kind of admonitory education that Burke

longed for, related as it was to ‘‘a rationale of art*not however, a performer’s art, not

a specialist’s art for some to produce and many to observe, but an art in its widest

aspects, an art of living.’’8

Despite these promising characteristics, it is easy to ascertain why Empedocles has

been eclipsed in American rhetorical studies: he did not leave any work specifically

dedicated to rhetoric or even a logos politikos. I contend, furthermore, that his neglect

by most rhetorical scholars lies in the means by which we still tend to admit to our

canon only those texts overtly engaged with rhetoric qua rhetoric or the power of

language within civic, public, or political arenas, and we tend to omit the work of the

poets and playwrights, the pre-Socratic philosophers, Diotima, and ancient Greek

folklore. Poulakos and his associates themselves had to react against this tendency

toward exclusivity in order to raise Isocrates to prominence, although they

maintained its tenor by focusing attention on a relatively limited number of

‘‘political’’ texts. This essay is an attempt, therefore, to broaden the rhetorical canon.

In order to introduce Empedocles to rhetorical scholars, I examine his biography

(both historical and legendary) and his surviving works. I draw on ancient folklore in

both cases, and therefore should explain a folkloristic perspective, which is rarely

incorporated into histories of rhetoric or contemporary appropriations. Fundamental

to this approach is an appreciation of variation within type. Narratives do not have to

be identical to be related, especially when originating in oral cultures (and thereby

altered as they are transmitted across time and space). One must look, therefore, for

plausible connections and patterns between stories, and in the case of legendary or

mythic narratives, one must further attempt to understand them as discourses

constitutive of a common sense that guides behavior. A folkloristic approach does not

ask whether a narrative is ‘‘true,’’ but rather how members of an originating culture

may have employed it for social and political purposes.

One challenge for any such reconstruction, especially regarding societies now long

past, is that the originating cultural logic may be radically different from that of the

interpreting scholar’s. Burke himself aptly points to this phenomenon in his

discussion of Aristotle’s claim that certain incidents in the Orestes trilogy are

‘‘appropriate’’ without explaining their appropriateness; he determines that Aristotle

‘‘did not explain because, to a Greek of that time, the example was self-evident.’’9 Any

critic of a work from antiquity, then, must in part set upon the task of explaining

what was self-evident to the ancients to a contemporary audience that brings different

expectations to the reading. The folklore of the originating culture may be a resource

that assists this critical purpose by revealing some of its noncanonical and vernacular

rhetorical practices.

After an examination of Empedocles’ biography and surviving works, I turn to the

implications of an Empedoclean spirit in contemporary rhetorical studies. I present a

case that much of Burke’s own work (especially articles produced around the 1950s)

could be understood in this manner, especially as it seeks to reduce warlike attitudes.

As a preview, I will suggest that the social ‘‘surgeon’’ metaphor lauded by some

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proponents of an Isocratean perspective should be complemented by an Empedo-

clean holistic stress on the ‘‘physician,’’ and that Empedocles’ admonition against

violence and tyranny be upheld against an Isocratean allowance of them. Returning to

Empedocles will, I hope, refocus rhetorical studies on Burke’s call for developing a

pedagogy that opposes the human penchant for physical combat and encourages

cathartic arts.

Empedocles in History and Legend

Empedocles’ life was subject to considerable apocryphal speculation, identifying him

as a politician, orator, physician, and magus, and the most infamous account of his

death records that he leapt into the volcanic fire of Mt. Aetna to prove his divinity.

With such scant evidence, contemporary rhetorical scholars may see little reason to

examine his biography, but I would contend that it and complementary legendary

material is important both for understanding his contribution to rhetorical studies

and for a more complete comprehension of how the ancient Greeks themselves

conceptualized rhetoric and its power. By examining the historical and folkloric

components of the narratives surrounding Empedocles, we may also better appreciate

what an Empedoclean spirit would bring to our contemporary circumstances.

The third-century-CE narrative Lives of the Philosophers, composed by Diogenes

Laertius, gathers most of the citations and legends. Although this work was written

six to seven hundred years after Empedocles lived, it demonstrates the longevity of

traditions about him; recorded here, for example, is Aristotle’s claim that Empedocles

‘‘discovered rhetoric [proton rhetoriken eurein] and Zeno dialectic.’’10 As for specific

oratorical works, Diogenes chronicles only two: a speech given against the desire of

Acron the physician to erect a statue honoring his father, and a speech following the

death of Empedocles’ father Meton in which ‘‘tyrannical rule began to emerge; but

then Empedocles persuaded the citizens of Acragas to stop their civil strife and

cultivate political equality.’’11

Plutarch also avers that Empedocles ‘‘exposed the leading citizens for being violent

and plundering public property,’’ but presents no further evidence.12 Diogenes,

however, cites four related reports concerning his commitment to equality.13

According to the first, Empedocles’ ‘‘political activity’’ (politeias) as a ‘‘champion

of the people’’ (tou demotikon einai ton andra) began when he was invited to a dinner

in which the host (a magistrate) held off pouring wine while serving the food. When

the master of the feast, also a politician, arrived, he ‘‘gave an indication of his

inclination to tyrannical rule’’ by commanding the guests drink wine on his order or

have it poured on their heads. The next day, Empedocles brought both men to court

and had them executed. The second account is the aforementioned check on Acron’s

petition to honor his family, which Empedocles objected to on the grounds that it

violated ‘‘political equality’’ (isotetos) by favoring one family over others. The third

account is an obscure reference to his dissolution of a group known as ‘‘the

thousand,’’ for which there is no historical correspondence. Finally, Diogenes recalls

that Aristotle called Empedocles ‘‘a ‘free man’ [who was hostile] to all public office’’

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and that Xanthus claimed Empedocles declined an offer of kingship ‘‘because he

preferred the simple life.’’14 Whether Empedocles’ involvement in Sicilian politics is

real or legendary, we should consider the obstreperous and transformative time

period in which the ancient narratives place him, in order to detail how these stories

utilize Empedocles as a symbol of resistance against abusive and violent tyranny. A

brief history lesson is necessary, therefore, to locate Empedocles within the discourses

of the fall of tyrannies and the ‘‘invention’’ of democracy.

In the fifth century BCE, Sicily was an axis of political and military tension between

Greeks (who had colonized the island) and Carthaginians. Around the time of

Empedocles’ estimated birth, the military leader Gelon became tyrant of the city of

Gela (491 BCE) and plebian insurrection forced out the oligarchy of Syracuse (490

BCE). This deposed oligarchy appealed to Gelon, who used the opportunity to seize

Syracuse (484 BCE) and establish it as his center of power. By 488 BCE, Theron had

become tyrant of the southern city of Acragas (Empedocles’ city of birth),

commencing close relations with Gelon by marrying one of his daughters. In 482

BCE, Theron advanced north to the city of Himera and exiled its tyrant, Terillus, who

therewith appealed to the Carthaginians for assistance. The Battle of Himera, pitting

the forces of the Carthaginian Hamilcar against Gelon and Theron, took place in 480

BCE, reportedly on the same day as the Battle of Salamis.15

Gelon and Theron triumphed, and the latter installed his son, Thrasydaeus, to rule

in Himera. Two years later, Gelon died, and rule eventually passed to his brother

Hieron, who dissolved the alliance with Theron.16 Pindar, Simonides, and Aeschylus

were frequent visitors to these courts. Soon after his ascension, the people of Himera

appealed to Hieron to assist them against Thrasydaeus. Hieron instead informed

Theron, who in turn massacred many Himerians. Around 473 BCE, Theron died, and

the people of Acragas and Himera overthrew and exiled Thrasydaeus in 472 BCE,

forging democracies around 470 BCE that lasted until Carthaginian conquest in 406

BCE. In 467 BCE, Hieron died, and for a brief period in the following year, power was

assumed by a fourth brother, Thrasybulus. Thrasybulus was soon overthrown, and

democracy lasted in Syracuse until circa 405 BCE. Legends locate the rise of Corax and

Tisias within this period; both Thrasydaeus and Thrasybulus became known for

legendary cruelty.

As aforementioned, a folkloristic perspective would look for patterns and themes

shared between narratives, even when the dramatis personae are different. In the case

of folklore concerning Empedocles, anecdotes of his political activity and rhetorical

prowess share many features with the folklore of Corax and Tisias, and with the poet

Stesichorus of Himera, who opposed the encroaching tyranny of Phalaris. As the

latter’s narrative is told in Aristotle’s Rhetoric,

[w]hen the people of Himera had chosen Phalaris as dictator and were about togive him a bodyguard, after saying other things at some length, Stesichorustold them a fable about how a horse had a meadow to himself. When a stag cameand quite damaged the pasture, the horse, wanting to avenge himself on the stag,asked a man if he could help him get vengeance on the stag. The man said he couldif the horse were to submit to a bit and he himself were to mount on him, holding

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javelins. When the horse agreed and the man mounted, instead of gettingvengeance the horse found himself a slave to the man. ‘‘Thus you too,’’ saidStesichorus, ‘‘look out, lest while wishing vengeance on your enemies you suffer thesame thing as the horse. You already have the bit [in your mouth], havingappointed a general with absolute power; if you give him a bodyguard and allowhim to mount, you will immediately be slaves to Phalaris.’’17

To be precise, Stesichorus objects to Phalaris before his tyranny, whereas Empedocles

and Corax rise up after its fall. Still, like Empedocles’ apocryphal biography,

Stesichorus was forced into exile for his political actions. Many other legends

surround Stesichorus; for this essay, most pivotal are his attribution as inventor of the

heroic hymn, his blindness (and the eventual restoration of his sight) for insulting

Helen, and the assertion in the Suda that his real name is Tisias, ‘‘Stesichorus’’ (which

means ‘‘chorus-master’’) being a nickname.18

Elsewhere, I have indicated that Thomas Cole’s reconstruction of ‘‘Korax’’ as a

nickname for Tisias (the other legendary ‘‘inventors’’ of rhetoric) was correct, and

that the titling references the raven (not the crow), the bird stained black by Apollo

for employment of deceptive language such as snitching and lying.19 Read together

with the legends of Empedocles and Stesichorus, a rudimentary pattern emerges of a

heroic Sicilian man of words who resists cruel sovereignty through his art (table 1).20

This representation supports the claim that Empedocles served, partially, as a sort

of folk hero in narratives about resistance to tyranny, tied especially to Apollo and to

Corax. They establish reasons for the depiction of Empedocles as the inventor of

rhetoric, upheld by Quintilian nearly two centuries before Diogenes:

For Empedocles is said to have been the first, after those mentioned by the poets, tohave stimulated things with respect to rhetoric. But the earliest technical writers[artium scriptores antiquissimi] were Corax and Tisias, Sicilians; they were followedby Gorgias of Leontini, also a Sicilian, who was according to tradition a student[discipulus] of Empedocles.21

For his part, Diogenes proffers a similar narrative and cites Empedocles himself as

evidence:

Satyrus says in his Biographies that [Empedocles] was also a doctor and a first-ratepublic speaker; Gorgias of Leontini, at any rate, was his student, and he [Gorgias]was a man exceptional for rhetorical skill and author of a treatise on the topic. Inhis Chronology Apollodorus says that Gorgias lived to the age of one hundred andnine. Satyrus says that Gorgias said that he was present while Empedocles practisedwizardry. And he himself [Empedocles] makes this and many other announcementsin his poetry, where he says:

All the potions which there are as a defence against evils and old age,you shall learn, since for you alone will I accomplish all these things.You shall put a stop to the strength of tireless winds,which rush against the land and wither the fields with their blasts;and again, if you wish, you shall bring the winds back again;and you shall make, after dark rain, a drought timelyfor men, and after summer drought you shall maketree-nourishing streams which dwell in the air;and you shall bring from Hades the strength of a man who has died.22

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To the contemporary eye, the citation of wizardry and potions as evidence of

rhetorical prowess may seem fantastical to the point of absurdity, but they are

fundamental to the Greek concept of rhetoric and should be to any postmodern

inspiration drawn from Empedocles. For the ancients, rhetoric was related to poetry,

healing, and magic, and hence, we need to consider how the legends of Empedocles as

a poet and physician-magus might play into this interpretation.23

In addition to Empedocles’ surviving poetry, Diogenes remarks (citing Aristotle’s

now lost On Poets) that Empedocles employed metaphors and ‘‘other tricks of the

poetic art,’’ and attributes several tragedies, a poem on Xerxes’ expedition in the

Persian War, and a Hymn to Apollo, intentionally burned by his sister or daughter.24

Empedocles’ reputation as a healer spans the thin line separating medicine and magic.

The Suda reports that he produced a medical work, and Galen identifies him with the

Italian school of doctors; Pliny and the Suda also record his problematic relation with

Acron the physician.25

Several stories of miraculous healing or actions are told about Empedocles.

Diogenes, for example, offers three.26 In the first, the Etesian winds were so vehement

as to destroy the crops; Empedocles ordered that asses be skinned and their hides

made into bags, stretched across mountaintops and ridges to stop the winds. For this,

he was given his nickname, Kolusanemas, ‘‘the wind stopper.’’ The second is that

Empedocles cured a woman who was in a trance state, keeping her alive without

breath or pulse for thirty days before restoring her to life; for this, he was called both

a physician (iatros) and a prophet (mantis). The third chronicles that the city of

Selinus suffered a plague due to the stench of a nearby river; Empedocles ended the

Table 1 Motifs of the Sicilian Man-of-Words Legend.

A man who is (a) skilled with words, who (b) invents a discursive practice, and who is (c)nicknamed for (d) a connection to the god Apollo, challenges (e) a cruel tyrant who (f) rules a

Sicilian city, and then (g) is punished for (h) another discursive practice.

Motif Variant 1 Variant 2 Variant 3

A man Tisias Empedocles Tisias(a) skilled with words poet poet rhetorician

rhetorician(b) invents a discursive practice heroic hymn rhetoric rhetoric(c) nicknamed Stesichorus Kolusanemas Korax(d) connected to Apollo music healing courts

poetry(e) challenges a tyrant Phalaris Thrasydaeus Thrasybulus(f) ruling a Sicilian city Himera Himera Syracuse*

and Acragas(g) and then is punished blinded exiled *

exiled reincarnated(h) for a discursive practice slander oratory *

oratory perjury

*The bird korax is associated closely with Apollo as a scapegoat, and is stained for snitching orlying.

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plague by diverting two nearby rivers into the original at his own expense and was

thereby hailed as though a god by the city’s inhabitants.

These descriptions are significant, as they associate Empedocles with Apollo, the

god of healing, the arts, and eloquence (who is otherwise not identified directly in the

surviving Empedoclean texts).27 Perhaps the most salient connection between

Empedocles and Apollo derives from his reported association with the pre-Socratic

philosopher Pythagoras, as Apollo was the ‘‘patron god of the Pythagorean

movement.’’28 Iamblichus, in his Life of Pythagoras, logs a miraculous incident in

which Empedocles prevented a murder by playing a soothing tune with the lyre

(Apollo’s favored musical instrument, which he bartered from Hermes):

A young man had already drawn his sword on his host Anchitus, because he had

publicly condemned and put to death his father, and in his state of confusion and

anger charged at him with the sword raised to strike Anchitus . . . Empedocles

retuned his lyre and by playing a soothing and sedating tune he immediately struck

up what Homer calls ‘‘pain-dissolving, anger-soothing’’ music, ‘‘which makes one

forget everything bad’’; thus he rescued his host Anchitus from death and the

young man from murder. The young man is said to have become from that day on

the most famous of Empedocles’ followers.29

Besides Empedocles (again nicknamed ‘‘the wind stopper,’’ alexanemos), Iam-

blichus (and Porphyry) identifies two other miracle workers in Pythagoras’s train:

Epimenides (nicknamed ‘‘the expiator’’), and Abaris (nicknamed ‘‘the air walker’’).

Epimenides is a quasi-historical figure, but Abaris, who possesses a dart or arrow

given to him by or found in a temple of Apollo, is overly mythical. The dart or arrow

is often associated with those Apollo used to slay the Cyclopes in vengeance for their

having manufactured the thunderbolts with which Zeus slew Apollo’s son, the healer

Asclepius, following his impiety in raising the dead. Apollo’s arrow provided its

possessor, among other things, with the ability to travel on the winds, cure plagues,

and give oracles. According to Iamblichus, upon meeting Pythagoras, Abaris

‘‘returned’’ the arrow to him.

Their association did not end there. In an elaborate tale concerning Pythagoras’s

‘‘irresistible frankness’’ (parresias anupostatou), Iamblichus substitutes Abaris and

Pythagoras for Stesichorus, when they debate the tyrant Phalaris.30 Pythagoras

‘‘answered [Phalaris] in a truly inspired manner, with complete truth and

persuasiveness, so as to bring those listening over to his side.’’31 For this oratorical

display, Abaris regarded Pythagoras not as a sorcerer (ethaumazen), but rather as like

a god (an theon). Phalaris responded with impious, blasphemous actions. Pythagoras

then explained divine communication, the nature of the soul, and bodily diseases, all

while Phalaris threatened to put them to death. On the very day Phalaris ordered

them executed, he himself was slain. Thus Pythagoras liberated the people, fulfilling

an oracle of Apollo ‘‘that the overthrow of Phalaris’ rule would occur when his

subjects became more powerful, more in agreement, and united with one another.

And such they became when Pythagoras was present.’’32 This story conforms to the

general pattern detailed above.

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The life of Pythagoras, akin to Empedocles, is replete with legendary and mythical

material, and the two conflate easily in folkloric narratives. Pythagoras was long

associated with Apollo*in some accounts, he is regarded as the god incarnate,

particularly as Apollo Paeon (the healer).33 According to Iamblichus’s biography,

Pythagoras inspired love of liberty against tyranny in Sicily (including among the

citizens of Himera and Acragas), was the ‘‘inventor’’ of friendship, won several

cases in court or otherwise demonstrated oratorical prowess, and lived*and

remembered*past lives. Pythagoras was especially pious and known to cure by

music, a point Iamblichus reports that Empedocles praised. Pythagoras reportedly

declared that music contributes to health as a form of purification*‘‘medical

treatment through music,’’ both physical and psychological.34

It also brings to the fore a complex nexus of associations between healing,

specialized and artistic language use, and piety. In this tale, Phalaris is impious, and

punished for it, while Pythagoras and Abaris remain pious. This point may help

contextualize the line in Diogenes that Gorgias was present while Empedocles

practiced wizardry (goeteuonti). Both M. R. Wright and Ava Chitwood read this as

‘‘not complimentary,’’ noting the negative connotations of the word for wizard

(goes).35 Peter Kingsley reads this account positively, however, adducing that even if

Gorgias ‘‘had been referring primarily to his teacher’s uncanny rhetorical powers and

mastery of the spoken word . . . this reference of his is inseparable from Empedocles’

own claims to magical powers and would no doubt have gained extra force for just

that reason.’’36

Whether this passage is evidence for Empedocles’ status as a magus is beyond the

scope of this essay. It may say more about Gorgias, whose Encomium of Helen directly

addresses witchcraft, than Empedocles.37 Yet in his own work, Empedocles

admonishes against traditional views of the gods, attributes divine status to all living

beings, upholds Aphrodite over Zeus, and describes sacrifice*the most important

aspect of ancient religion*as abomination. His boast to teach ways to restore the

dead balances on a dangerously precarious line, as myths of Asclepius reveal. But

Empedocles escapes associations with impiety, and even if the ‘‘wizardry’’ comment is

negative, such connotation is very rare for him, who, like Pythagoras, is usually

depicted as piously performing deeds of purification. To explain, I must summarize

the remaining aspects of the Asclepius myth.

It begins when Apollo consorted with Koronis and conceived Asclepius. Koronis,

however, had an affair with a mortal man. The raven (korax), then a white bird,

snitched on her, looking for gain; in vengeful anger, Apollo stained the korax black

and slew Koronis, but rescued the infant from her womb on the funeral pyre. Apollo

brought Asclepius to Chiron the centaur, who taught him the healing arts, and

Athena gave Asclepius a pharmakon, the blood of the Gorgon, bearing the power to

heal and to kill depending on its use. When Apollo slew the Cyclopses in the wake of

Asclepius’s death, Zeus intended to imprison him in Tartarus, a realm of horrific

punishment. Persuaded otherwise, Zeus sentenced Apollo to exile and servitude to a

mortal man. Apollo became a herdsman for Admetus, king of Pherae, and rewarded

Admetus’s tremendous magnanimity with many acts of purification and by helping

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him cheat death; Apollo inebriated the Fates and secured a promise from them to let

another die in Admetus’s place. Only his wife, Alcestis, was willing to do so. Later,

when Admetus demonstrated his generosity and hospitality to Heracles, the hero

went into the realm of the dead and rescued Alcestis.

What might all of this have to do with Empedocles and with rhetoric? Folkloric

narratives are not codes to crack; they bear singular meanings no more than modern

films or novels. But myths also work by rhizomatic association, not logical

progression; hence, we may look for patterns of connections. For example, this

myth demonstrates similarities to Empedocles’ fragments: healing practices, revealed

secrets of life and death, judgment and punishment of divinity to the mortal world

for acts of violence. It also relates to the hospitality of political rulers in legends about

Sicily; Admetus is the counterpoint to Phalaris and other tyrants who host divine

beings known for healing and skill with words. And unlike the korax who seeks

personal gain, Apollo’s artistry cleanses the community and aids the generous. Apollo

also opposes what he takes to be the cruel sovereignty of Zeus, eventually yields to his

judgment, and thereafter finds a way to manipulate the rules, echoing the theme of

resistance to tyranny.

This is not to imply that Empedocles had Apollo in mind for his philosophical

compositions; quite the contrary, philological evidence points otherwise. But it does

support the possibility that the character of Empedocles, wrought from a candidacy

established in his works, elided well with Apollonian themes as his life passed into

legend and myth. While both run the risk of destabilizing the world order, ultimately

they uphold piety and promote purification, ‘‘a means of removing a state of

pollution in which an individual, family, or city would find itself as the result of

committing a certain kind of forbidden action (manslaughter, for example), or failing

to perform a required one (such as sacrifices).’’38 Purification is important not only

for the individual actors, but for the entire community. Simon Trepanier deftly

observes a similar theme in Empedocles’ response to Parmenides. ‘‘In Parmenides’

poem,’’ he writes,

Parmenides is the mortal recipient of a goddess’s teachings. Empedocles, however,as himself a god is the authority for his teachings, while Pausanias and the friendsfrom Acragas are the mortal recipients of his divine revelation. But that is notall . . . While Parmenides rode a chariot beyond Night and Day, far from the beatentrack of men . . . Empedocles the god travels from outside, back into thecommunity. While Parmenides the mortal had to reach the ends of the world tofind true persuasion, Empedocles’ persuasion leaps into the breasts of mortalmen . . . [W]here Parmenides seems to imply that truth and the divine must besought beyond humanity, Empedocles stresses the reintegration of truth and thedivine to the human community and to man himself.39

This Apollonian myth thus points to rhetoric itself, especially as the power of

marked speech or as the moral force constituting boundaries of the natural and social

order*conventions and ambiguities of meaning, piety and impiety, purification and

pollution, being and non-being, life and death*in short, of judgment, human and

divine. Associations with performers in the courts are also salient, for Apollo is, of

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course, the advocate who defends Orestes from matricide in the Eumenides, thereby

curing him (and the city) of pollution and establishing justice.40 In all of these

narratives, we find legends and myths demonstrating resistance to cruel tyranny,

especially as it pollutes society, but whose cure always runs the risk of even greater

pollution if not performed properly. If we wish to understand the ‘‘origins’’ of

rhetoric in ancient Greece or draw inspiration from its culture for our theorizing, we

do well to pay heed to its folklore.

Plato certainly did so; the final statement of Gorgias is a stellar example of his

reconfigurations. Callicles and Socrates have long debated the nature of justice, and

Callicles raises the point that Socrates may be put to death for what he says against

those in power. Socrates agrees, but reasons that such a trial would be akin to a

physician (iatros) tried by children on a charge brought by a cook who wishes to

profit from their gorging. Such a physician, attests Socrates, could either say nothing

or speak the truth*that he cares about the children’s health*but neither would

escape conviction. Callicles wonders if such a man is a resource to the community.

Socrates confirms he is, declaring that a pious man would not choose to escape death

by employing flattering rhetoric (kolakikes rhetorikes); indeed, he continues, only the

wicked fear death.

To illustrate, Socrates tells a story he takes as truth (logos), but which he thinks

Callicles will take as fable (muthos). In the reign of Kronos, it was determined that

souls of the dead would be judged; those found just would go to the Isle of the

Blessed (makaron), those unjust to Tartarus. When Zeus became ruler, Pluton

(Hades) and the inhabitants of the isle lamented that cases were being judged

erroneously. Zeus saw the problem: living men were judging living men. To rectify

this, Zeus decreed that humans would no longer have foreknowledge of their death,

that they would be stripped naked before judgment (so as not to hide a wicked soul in

a fair body), and that the judges would themselves be naked, assigning three of his

sons to the task. Socrates interprets this story to mean that death is ‘‘nothing other

than the separation of two things, the soul and the body, from each other.’’41 The

judges will decide if the soul has atoned properly in life and if it stands curable or

incurable, thereupon assigning it to the Isle of the Blessed or to Tartarus. Those found

frequently in the latter are tyrants, kings, potentates, and public administrators*for,

as Socrates explains, ‘‘the majority of potentates . . . become bad,’’ using their

exceptional freedom for injustice.42 Conversely, Socrates submits that his soul is in

the best of health; Gorgias closes with an invitation for all to embrace such robust life.

The parallels with Empedocles’ fragments and folklore, as well as Apollo’s myths, are

consistent and compelling.

Empedocles’ Surviving Work

It is remarkably difficult to summarize Empedocles’ thought.43 It survives only in

fragments, themselves situated in texts spanning centuries, and is often quoted for

purposes alien to Empedocles. Modern scholars are not unified interpreting his work.

Until recently, for example, most believed he composed two poems, On Nature and

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Purifications; evidence now suggests a single poem, but this remains contentious.

Length constraints prevent elaboration of every proposition found in Empedocles.

A general overview, however, is warranted, for as Brad Inwood comments,

Empedocles ‘‘felt the need to integrate his understanding of the natural world with

a message about the way life was to be lived.’’44 Redress and purification of violence is

a sine qua non of his philosophy.

Empedocles states that humanity*indeed, all living beings*are divinities exiled

from the realm of the blessed ones (makaron) for shedding blood and swearing

falsely. These divinities are not immortal gods in the Olympian sense but long-lived

daimones, a term for intermediary creatures between mortals and immortals. So

exiled, the daimon ‘‘wanders for thrice ten thousand seasons away from the blessed

ones, growing to be all sorts of forms of mortal things through time, interchanging

the hard paths of life’’*in short, metempsychosis.45 The best incarnations, those

closest to the gods and immortals, are of lions and laurel trees, and among humanity,

of prophets, bards, physicians, and leaders of men. All of this is in accord with

universal law (panton nomimon).

Empedocles himself avows, ‘‘I too am now one of these, an exile from the gods and

a wanderer, trusting in mad strife,’’ but one who remembers former incarnations as a

boy, girl, bush, bird, and fish.46 The realm from which the daimones originated is

ruled by Kupris (a name for Aphrodite) rather than by Ares, Zeus, Kronos, or

Poseidon*that is, a goddess of love rather than gods of warfare. No animal sacrifices

take place there, for all creatures share loving friendship (philophrosune). Empedocles

further describes the wetting of altars with the blood of bulls as ‘‘the greatest

abomination among men’’ and ascribes his own exile to terrible deeds done with his

claws for the sake of food.47

Life’s purpose, then, is to purify oneself and by such expiation be relieved from the

wretchedness of this world, perhaps even to escape it. This involves a number of

practices ‘‘to fast from wickedness.’’48 Prime among prohibitions is avoidance of

bloodshed, including sacrifice and consumption of animals, which Empedocles

describes as parents and children killing and eating one another. ‘‘Will you not desist

from harsh-sounding bloodshed?’’ he asks. ‘‘Do you not see that you are devouring

each other in the heedlessness of your understanding?’’49 Expiation also involves

learning the truth about the nature of the gods and the cosmos, a task not easily

accomplished, for most people ‘‘having seen [only] a small portion of life in their

experience . . . soar and fly off like smoke, swift to their dooms, each one convinced

of only that very thing which he has chanced to meet, as they are driven in all

directions. But Beach� boasts of having seen the whole.’’50

Empedocles reveals the truth. The cosmos consists of six eternal characters: four

roots and two forces of change. The four roots are earth, water, aither, and fire*Empedocles offers the first record of this in western history. In another fragment, he

assigns names of gods to the roots: Zeus, Hera, Aidoneus (another name for Hades),

and Nestis. The correspondence between gods and roots has been a point of

controversy since antiquity, complicated by occasional usage of Hephaistos as a

replacement. The two sources of change are Love (Philia) and Strife (Neikos), but the

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former is also called Aphrodite and her various appellations. Considerable debate has

arisen concerning their nature, but most contemporary scholars agree they are moral

as well as mechanical forces of change. Love is the source of attraction; Strife, of

separation. All other things in the cosmos are mixtures of the roots by Love and

Strife, from blood (an equal mixture of all four roots) to celestial bodies.

The cosmos itself oscillates between periods when Love holds total domination and

all things are brought together in a sphere to when Strife dominates and all things

are separated in a whirl. There are lengthy periods between: one that moves from the

sphere to the whirl in a succession of increasing strife, and one that reverses

the process. Our world is in the period escalating toward Strife’s domination.

Throughout both, mixtures combine in different ways to form living beings in stages;

it is in this manner that Empedocles comments on astronomy, the generation of

creatures, embryology, and physiology, especially respiration, involving an exchange

in bodily tubes between blood and air, and for which Empedocles utilizes the

metaphor of a clepsydra. A similar theory of pores explains perception and cognition,

for thought comes from blood. The physical body matters to Empedocles, even with

his emphasis on metempsychosis.

His theory of perception leads Empedocles to conclude that human understanding

is limited by ‘‘what is present’’ for interaction, and so humans ‘‘always find their

thinking too providing different things.’’51 Fools (nepioi, a term also denoting

children) are humans who are unwise and believe that ‘‘what previously was not

comes to be or that anything dies and is utterly destroyed.’’52 This assertion concerns

Empedocles’ subtle response to Parmenides, who proposed two utterly distinct realms

of existence (Being and Non-Being), but it also charges perspectivism as the common

human condition. Limited thusly, humans employ names (onomazetai) such as

‘‘growth’’ or descriptions of birth and death to principles they do not understand (for

there is no growth, only mixture, just as there is only attraction and separation).

Empedocles accordingly admonishes against discourse ‘‘poured out in a vain stream

from the tongues in the mouths of many, who have seen little of the whole.’’53

Nowhere in the surviving fragments does Empedocles systematically comment on

the nature of rhetoric, nor address language’s power, nor offer a theory of discourse

or communication. His account of limited human perception does, however, offer

some insight into a rhetorical perspective. Noting, for example, that humans speak

improperly in describing birth and death, he nevertheless admits, ‘‘I myself also

assent to their convention’’ (nomo d’ epiphemi kai autos), although the meaning here

is problematic.54 Plutarch, in Against Colotes, explains that by this, Empedocles

recognizes the importance of conventional meanings of words, and hence while he

taught that such a perspective was incorrect, ‘‘he did not remove the use of

accustomed terms for them.’’55

Other fragments hint at similar awareness of conventional terms necessary for

persuasion. While Empedocles assumes the truth of his words and warns against

deception, he also recognizes the difficulty of his task, for ‘‘it is very hard indeed for

men, and resented, the flow of persuasion [pistios orme*orme also denotes a military

march] into their thought organ,’’ and ‘‘bad men [kakoi] are strongly inclined to

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disbelieve the strong [krateousin, meaning here a prevailing truth].’’56 Moreover, ‘‘[i]t

is not achievable that we should approach with our eyes or grasp with our hands, by

which the greatest road of persuasion [megiste peithous amaxitos] extends to men’s

thought organ.’’57

These three fragments derive from the second-century-CE Christian theologian

Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis, which sought to suture pagan philosophy and

Christian revelation. Empedocles’ quotation concerning ‘‘the flow of persuasion’’ is

set within his chapter ‘‘On Faith,’’ which reasons that humans must learn the way of

truth through faith. As examples, Clement cites Numa, the Roman king reported to

be a Pythagorean, and Abraham. He then praises and quotes Empedocles. He follows

with citations from 1 Corinthians professing faith in God rather than men, Heraclitus

against lies, and Plato on the purification of the earth by fire and water. Likewise, the

quotation concerning ‘‘the road of persuasion’’ appears in a chapter titled ‘‘God

Cannot Be Embraced in Words or by the Mind’’; therein, Clement discusses how God

exists outside the range of the senses, thereby requiring belief.

Clement cites the quotation regarding ‘‘bad men’’ in his chapter ‘‘The Objects of

Faith and Hope Perceived by the Mind Alone.’’ He argues that wisdom might need to

be hidden from the foolish or presented in their own terms, for people only learn like

through like. Of several supporting biblical citations, most telling is Clement’s

connection between Empedocles and 1 Corinthians 9:22, in which Paul declares he is

a Jew among Jews, a law-abider among law-abiders, an outlaw among outlaws, and a

weak man among the weak, all to win them over to the gospel. Clement interprets

Empedocles as making a case for rhetorical sophistication, if not outright sophistry.

Whether his interpretation is sound*certainly it is motivated by a particular

perspective*is not at issue. What is important is that the three most reasonable

candidates to engage Empedocles’ notions of rhetoric, along with Plutarch’s

commentary on a fourth, predicate that persuasion is difficult and thereby warrant

tactical use of conventional language to speak as does one’s audience.

Plutarch and Clement are considerably later interpreters of Empedocles. It is

necessary to consider, therefore, earlier depictions of his contributions to rhetoric or

to sophistry. Plato’s general response is complicated and, as Trepanier states, includes

both respectful borrowing and parodying in such works as Symposium, Politicus,

Meno, Theaetetus, Phaedo, and Phaedrus.58 In Sophist, for example, the Visitor

comments on philosophers who ‘‘tell us a myth, as if we were children,’’ insisting the

cosmos comprises many things or one thing. He then remarks that certain Ionian and

Sicilian ‘‘muses’’ (muosai) combined both ideas and ‘‘say that that which is is both

many and one, and is bound by both hatred [echthra] and friendship [philia].’’59

While not condemning Empedocles, Plato locates him within a tradition of fluid

allegiance to the many and the one.

Isocrates and Aristotle are far more critical of Empedocles, but there are scant

references to his rhetorical or presumably sophistic practices in their works. Isocrates

in Antidosis warns young men not to be ‘‘stranded in the discourses of the older

sophists,’’ who propose different interpretations of the number of elements

constituting the cosmos; Empedocles and Gorgias serve as primary examples.60

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Isocrates does recommend some time on matters of such philosophy, but not at the

expense of the studies he outlines, comparing what others say as ‘‘resembl[ing]

wonder-workings [thaumatopiiais], which provide no benefit but attract crowds of

the ignorant.’’ His dismissal, then, is one of practicality and moral integrity as would

serve citizens of the polis, for those who wish ‘‘to do something useful must rid all

their activities of pointless discourse and irrelevant action.’’61 While this may be

understood as Isocrates’ competition with other philosophers of his time, it should

not be overlooked by those who seek to appropriate either for contemporary

inspiration. It demonstrates, I think, what is at stake in the current attraction to

Isocrates by rhetorical theorists and critics, namely an attentiveness to pragmatic and

civic concerns such as the forging of an active citizenry and an education predicated

on such morality. But it also dismisses a host of activities as irrelevant to the political

domain, activities that themselves should not be overlooked simply because he

regards them as marginal to the political institutions of Athenian (and a unified

Greek) society.

Aristotle frequently quotes Empedocles*only Plato is referenced more*but most

citations involve critical discussions of Empedocles’ cosmology.62 Aristotle does take

brief aim at his language practices in Rhetoric and Poetics. In the former, Empedocles

serves as Aristotle’s example of the use of obscurity (i.e., amphibolies) ‘‘when

[people] have nothing to say but are pretending to say something,’’ such as

philosophers who employ poetry.63 He compares this rhetorical technique to oracles,

which also may be interpreted in multiple ways. In Poetics, Aristotle describes the

convention of calling anyone who composes in verse a poet, but further quips that the

only thing Homer and Empedocles share is meter64; elsewhere, he cites Empedocles’

examples of metaphor. His criticism of the title of ‘‘poet’’ lingers. The scholion to the

grammarian Dionysius Thrax, for example, follows Aristotle in proclaiming that not

everyone who uses meter is a poet. His two examples are Empedocles, as composer of

natural philosophy, and Apollo, as giver of oracles.65

Although the work (Sophist) in which Aristotle reportedly named Empedocles the

discoverer of rhetoric is lost, other comments might shed light on his ascription. In

Sophistic Refutations, Aristotle explains what ‘‘discovery’’ of a practice entails.66 The

first step of nearly all discoveries, he construes, is a small advance, but one much

more useful than all later additions. His example is rhetoric, in which he expounds

the celebrities of his day are largely superfluous, enjoying a tradition handed down

and appended from Tisias, who followed the discoverers. He also takes issue with the

ways professors of rhetoric such as Gorgias teach not an art, but products, giving their

students speeches to memorize and imitate. Aristotle further mentions Empedocles in

the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics.67 In both, he recounts Empedocles’ assertion

of the principle of like to like in the context of friendship (philia) and dismisses him

on grounds of treating philia as a matter of natural science rather than of human

character and emotion.68 In the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle also mentions Empedocles

arguing the principle through the example of a dog’s preference to sit on floor tiles

that matches its fur color, thereby advancing a basic notion of mimicry.

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In summary, Empedocles’ surviving fragments offer only passing references to the

processes of suasion or language practices, and any attempt to read them as

incontrovertible evidence that Empedocles invented, taught, or theorized rhetoric is

an overreach. But Empedocles’ own work is adaptable to contemporary rhetorical

studies. His theory of moral forces of attraction and separation, emphasis on like to

like, and hierarchy of knowledge admitting perspectivism in discourse, while not

‘‘traditional’’ rhetorical studies, demonstrates early seeding. And if taken together,

Isocrates, Aristotle, Plutarch, and Clement advance an interpretation of his work

resonating with the Sophists in reliance on convention to persuade a particular

audience as an extension of like to like. Similar ratifications could be made for

Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Xenophanes, however, so as Robert Wardy

admonishes, any attribution of rhetoric to pre-Socratic philosophers must be made

with ‘‘extreme reserve.’’69 Still, this point strengthens the claim that contemporary

rhetorical scholars should reexamine the pre-Socratics and other figures (margin-

alized or mainstream) in antiquity for inspiration.

An Empedoclean Legacy in Rhetorical Studies

What might an Empedocles-inspired rhetorical studies look like, and how might it

serve as a corrective to an Isocratean emphasis that generally limits rhetorical action

to the education, formation, and interaction of citizens? How might the narratives

and surviving work of Empedocles inform and point to new avenues for the various

postmodern and ‘‘neo-Sophistic’’ rhetorical movements still developing in the early

twenty-first century? As we consider these pressing questions, it is helpful to examine

how the contributions of Empedocles have been conceptualized to date.

Arguably, Clara Smertenko offered the first serious consideration of his work, in

which she argued that the attribution of rhetoric’s discovery to him refers to a

practice of speechmaking that influenced later thinkers.70 This very general

assessment continued throughout the twentieth century, including the histories of

rhetoric’s origin written separately by George Kennedy and Edward Schiappa, each of

which only briefly mention Empedocles.71 Richard Enos likewise observes a tradition

linking Empedocles to the Sophists through stylistic and arrangement practices, but

offered several provocative extensions regarding Empedocles as a promoter of critical

and self-conscious awareness about human abilities. Enos depicts Empedocles as

inventing a rhetoric grounded in dissoi logoi, an alternative to Aristotlean techne,

although his supporting evidence is scant. He further suggests*prematurely, I

think*that Empedocles ‘‘gave advice on rhetoric,’’ but his discussion represents a

unique attempt to incorporate Empedocles into the canon.72

C. Jan Swearingen only glimpses on Empedocles in her study of rhetoric and irony,

but this observation is notable. Examining the ‘‘Preplatonics,’’ she registers

Empedocles’ particular contribution to both poetic idiom and a formative relativism.

In a later study of Diotima, Swearingen seeks ‘‘to establish grounds for the substantial

ties between love and discourse, desire and rhetoric’’ by turning to ‘‘traces of

Pythagorean teachings’’ and ‘‘parallel themes in Empedocles.’’73 She juxtaposes

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fragments of the latter with quotations from Plato’s Phaedrus and Symposium,

particularly as they reveal Love as a daimon moving between human and divine.

This is a very productive contribution, as it accomplishes several maneuvers

necessary to draw from the ancients. First, Swearingen offers a case for reading

beyond the traditional rhetorical canon. Second, she examines ancient texts in a

comparative rather than competitive manner, exploring relations between the

ancients, even as she recognizes their antagonisms toward each other. Finally, by

placing the stress on love (understood in the ancient Greek sense as the power of

attraction and arousal of bodily and emotional desires), she readies the stage for a

discussion of rhetoric’s potential to reduce violence by promoting identifications

between living beings. In this, Swearingen offers a connection to bridge Empedocles

and Burke.

Although I would argue that Burke’s general intellectual temperament could be

properly understood as Empedoclean, I wish here to examine a particular series of

contributions that he offered spanning the decade of the 1950s, during which he

engages questions of tragedy, catharsis, entelechy, myth, and even mysticism.

Admittedly, Burke does not often allude to Empedocles in the corpus of his work,

and usually does so within the context of Matthew Arnold’s poem dedicated to his

death on Etna. Still, Burke’s interest is noteworthy in that his reference to Empedocles

as a poetic symbol was published in a 1948 article, ‘‘The Imagery of Killing,’’ a

rumination on both tragic exterminations and identification (such as the suicidal

motive of Empedocles) that later formed the opening chapter of A Rhetoric of

Motives.

‘‘The Imagery of Killing’’ considers the notion of identification between an author

and a character appearing in an artistic work. Such analysis fits well within Burke’s

project on motives, in that he examines how even tragic identifications with those

who commit suicide, murder, or war may bear a cathartic and transcendent potential.

Burke reiterates that such use of literature is akin to magic, and he envisions within

such actions a desire to transform principles or traits of oneself found problematic or

evil. For Burke, however, such desire may be vented in horrific ways when taken

outside of the domain of art, as with the Nazi purging of Jews as scapegoats. And in

the conclusion to this article, Burke presents several remarkable suggestions regarding

the abuses of artistic imagery.

First, Burke criticizes attempts to categorize humans by personality types. He

counters that it would be more productive to hire poets to present all the ways the

world might end rather than employ them to convince citizens to yearn for

commodities. The aim of this playful suggestion is to prevent the citizenry from

having ‘‘too local a view of themselves’’ and to adopt a more global perspective for

collective action in facing the conceivable ends of the world.74 Second, he takes

umbrage with violent films and their potential impact on the socialization of children

into adolescence and adulthood. For Burke, these films present brutality as virtuous

and betray the ancient cathartic arts, especially when they rely on a documentary

rather than fictive style. Finally, he concludes that future work must concern rhetoric,

not only because it is the means through which humans articulate strife, but also

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because it presents the possibility of advancing various expressions of love (‘‘strife’’

and ‘‘love’’ being his terms).

These interests continued throughout the decade. For example, in a study of

Othello published one year after A Rhetoric of Motives, Burke began to consider the

significance of the pharmakon and its related form, kartharma (the unclean

phenomena disposed of during a ritual cleansing or sacrifice). Similarly, in ‘‘Three

Definitions,’’ published in 1951, he commenced an examination of sparagmos (ritual

dismemberment) as it relates to the principle of division. And in ‘‘Form and

Persecution in the Oresteia,’’ published in 1952, he indexes an important difference

between an Isocratean and Empedoclean spirit.75 For Burke, the promise of the

Orestes trilogy is that it represents violence in order to purge rather than encourage a

desire for it. He argues that tensions are inescapable in society, and therefore the

poetic arts must continually adapt to those tensions rather than ignore them.

Moreover, although the dramas engage civic tensions, they do so from the vantage

point of more broad social relations (such as friendship and kinship) as represented

through the myths. Disorders within the actual polis are worked out as they reflect

cosmic relations, and hence while tragedy is a useful cure to treat civic and political

tensions, it is not limited to those spheres.

Finally, Burke notes that such tension is inherent to language, but just as language

may be used to stoke these problems, it may also be used to address them. In his

consideration of Apollo’s role in the trial of Orestes, for example, Burke espies the

power of a rhetorician (and of rhetoric in tandem with poetics) as a means to

constitute justice rather than to resort to old notions of violence. The purpose of

myths, then, is not just to correct civic tensions, but to address universal human

concerns as a means to heal divisions produced by language use itself. This is one

reason why Burke objects to art that hides its fictive nature in documentary form; in

attempting to become too local, it loses its ability to call human motives into

question or to make a case for human or even cosmic connections.

Three years after Burke published his comments on the Oresteia, he turned his

attention to a ‘‘Linguistic Approach to Problems of Education.’’ Therein, he agrees

with a comment from a reviewer that his agenda is to translate war into a linguistic

(and artistic) struggle in order to keep it from becoming a material one. To pursue

this task, he advocates an ‘‘admonitory’’ education (rather than a ‘‘promissory’’ one

that emphasizes only the acquisition of employment). Here, I think, is Burke at his

most Empedoclean:

Education, as so conceived, would be primarily admonitory. It would seek to

become a sophisticated and methodized set of parables, or fables. Noting how

man’s distinctive trait, his way with symbols, is the source of both his typical

accomplishments and his typical disabilities, education as so conceived would be

first and foremost ‘‘of a divided mind,’’ and would seek to make itself at home in

such divisiveness.76

He continues in a tone that, mutatis mutandis, suggests the need to correct Isocrates’

parochialism:

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This pragmatic emphasis [of promissory education] may not always be individua-listically motivated. With the project of The Republic for the training of guardians,for instance, the emphasis was rather in the direction of Plato’s yearning thateducation might serve for the triumph of all Greek states, united in a commoncause against the ‘‘barbarians.’’ And nationalistic emphases in general would belonghere; for although there is conceivable an ideal world of nationalisms that would berelated to one another as peacefully as the varied portraits in an art gallery, we needno very difficult fables to admonish us about the ever-ready dialectical resourcewhereby national ‘‘differences’’ may become national ‘‘conflicts.’’

Only a truly ‘‘universal’’ attitude toward educational purposes can modify thisintrinsically competitive emphasis. Such an attitude would be grounded in thethought that all mankind has a major stake in the attempt to discipline anytendencies making for the kind of war now always threatening.77

I cannot here detail all of Burke’s suggestions for how this form of education*‘‘a

kind of smiling hypochondriasis,’’ as he calls it*should unfold, nor can I detail its

echo with his program from decades before, but I do wish to emphasize that Burke

makes clear that any education that would help a citizenry become free necessitates

training in discounting rhetorical persuasiveness, demonstrating ways of democrati-

cally engaging others rather than advancing combat, and promoting international

cooperation by sharpening the sense ‘‘that all men, as symbol-users, are of the same

substance, in contrast with naıve views that in effect think of aliens as of a different

substance.’’78

When Burke suggests that an admonitory education might rely on fables, we

should question specifically what sort of folkloric resources could come to this aid.

Burke partially answers this concern in his return to Apollo and the ‘‘Combat Myth.’’

He accomplishes this first in a review of the mythologist Joseph Fontenrose’s study

Python, followed by his ‘‘Myth, Poetry, and Philosophy,’’ both published in the

Journal of American Folklore in 1960. In these essays, Burke suggests the need to ‘‘use’’

Fontenrose’s study in supererogatory ways, specifically as it reveals the ubiquity of

tensions inherent in language that foster comparable tensions inherent in human

society. Burke is interested, then, in asking the question ‘‘Why the Combat Myth?’’

and in pursuing it across humanity. He suggests that its appeal is not strictly for

entertainment but is also moral, influencing the habits of its audiences, especially in

perfecting the principles of victimage and opposition.

For Burke, the ‘‘worthy cause’’ of criticism with respect to the combat myth would

begin in the recognition that ‘‘[t]he problem of man as the symbol-using animal is

not a subject to be treated as settled.’’79 Ancient myths point, therefore, to issues still

prevalent in the contemporary human condition, and a critic will undertake a project

of unmasking them and addressing them whenever they occur:

If peace is ever to be attained in this world, it will be attained through aneducational system that can systematically study the principles underlying preciselythe ways whereby man, the symbol-using animal, makes his peculiar contributionsto the ‘‘combat myth,’’ in all its variations.80

Hence, while so few of these articles written by Burke attend to Empedocles directly,

they do revolve around the problem of violence and our redress of the cultivation of

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warlike attitudes in the hopes of reducing them. For Burke, tensions will always arise

in human society, and these tensions may quickly become material violence,

especially under tyrannical (or undemocratic) conditions. The arts may provide a

catharsis for these tensions, but only if they are understood as a form of magic rather

than documentary science; this is so because the arts themselves grow out of the

tensions inherent in language use, and hence are a rhetoric that, like the pharmakon,

may be used as medicine or as poison. Furthermore, while these arts may satisfy

concerns at the civic level, they need not be limited to that domain, and rather ask

questions in more universal spirit, seeing tensions as human or even cosmic rather

than too local. Criticism and education, when functioning best, will attend to the task

of demonstrating this power of the arts, especially as a means to resist new formations

of the combat myth and to promote democratic engagements.

Burke’s implicit incorporation of the themes that permeate both the folklore and

the surviving works of Empedocles presses us to conceive of an overtly inspired

Empedoclean rhetorical studies, especially as it might alter the recent appropriation

of Isocrates. Empedocles reminds us of the perennial issues, of course: the

relationship between rhetoric and poetics; between body and ‘‘soul,’’ and the

embodiment of emotion; and between rhetoric and political action. To this

conversation, Empedocles also calls attention to the relationship between rhetoric

and attraction (especially of like to like) and friendship. His attribution as discoverer

of rhetoric also reminds us that we must read beyond texts overtly identified as

rhetorical theory to understand ancient Greek contributions to our current and

future paradigm, three possibilities of which I wish to extend.

First, Empedocles reminds us that our task*perhaps our primary task*as

rhetorical theorists and critics is the redress of violence and tyrannical systems of

inequality (themselves an expression of violence), especially with an eye that resists

nationalism. The emphasis on humanity*of which citizenship is only one aspect*alone separates an Empedoclean spirit from an Isocratean one, insofar as Isocrates

advocated a Greek identity that permitted violence against the outsider. Empedocles

offers a decidedly more ecumenical view, and a global understanding of the human

condition rather than one tied to ethnic or national identity. For Isocrates, the task is

to make citizens and a cultural group; he resolves the tension of human society in the

constitution of political beings, but such constitution alone is not the only solution to

living with others. For Empedocles, the task is to make human beings, if you will, and

to recognize and restore the divinity of those beings through the purification of their

tendencies toward violence. It is for this reason that an Empedocles-inspired

perspective would warrant both a critical perspective (of self and society) and an

emphasis on productive forms of loving, such as friendship. Friends, then, rather

than citizens, would be the formative constitution of political identity, and in so

offering this, Empedocles challenges the very obsession with citizenship (as a state of

being identified with the nation-state and its rights) inherent in liberalism.

Second, Empedocles advances the notion that rhetorical critics adopt the role of

social ‘‘physicians.’’ Michael Calvin McGee first pointed to this direction when he

drew attention to the differences between the work of a surgeon and a diagnostician

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in order to advocate an Isocratean spirit in opposition to a Platonic sensibility.81

There is, however, a limit to and possibly facile corruption of this surgical metaphor,

namely that it requires something (or some bodies) to be cut out of the social order

lest it fester. Empedocles offers a more holistic conceptualization that stands against

any implication of a healthy society predicated on the removal of certain people; an

Empedoclean attitude promotes the kind of ‘‘hypochondria’’ that Burke himself

advocated, for which a democratic advocate would be more concerned to protect the

health of a polity (and of an individual) from the advance of tyrannical systems such

as fascism rather than from presumably dangerous bodies. Conceived thusly, the

Empedoclean physician complements and tempers an Isocratean surgeon (and

recognizes surgery as a last resort), and further restores to rhetorical studies its

constitutive role in a broadly humanistic education rather than limit its influence to a

civic education.

To pursue this metaphor, we should more directly engage the ancient Greek

emphasis on the pharmakon, and rhetoric’s dual role in pollution and purification,

whether social or environmental. It is interesting*and, I think, not merely

coincidence*that Empedocles and Corax, two ‘‘inventors’’ of rhetoric, represent

different aspects of the pharmakon, the former purifying and the latter polluting. If

contemporary rhetorical theorists and critics wish to draw on the ancient Greeks or

those ‘‘physicians of culture’’ such as Nietzsche and Burke who themselves drew

poignantly from the ancients, we need to consider how any specific rhetorical

constitution may or may not serve as a medicine or as a poison, and how that

rhetorical action helps or harms in a given situation.82 Rather than adopt Isocratean

virtues outright, I suggest that we attend to discouraging the arts that poison and

promoting those that cure, recognizing that any critical rhetoric performed with such

an agenda would necessitate discussion of how it conceives poisons and medicines. In

brief, an Empedoclean attitude directs rhetoricians to the task of healing.

In extension, I would argue that Empedocles*whether in the fragments, or

folklore, or modern reception*further reminds contemporary rhetoricians to purify

themselves of scientism and monotheism, the two competing legacies of the late

twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. By predicating this, I do not mean an

actual abandonment of one’s religious belief or an embrace of polytheism. Instead, I

mean to stress the importance of not believing that our way of thinking is the only

way to think about the cosmos; we must interrogate the presumptions of our culture

predicated on science and monotheism, especially as they leave traces on our views of

other cultures (such as the ancient Greeks) and our theorizing for the future.

Empedocles points a way for contemporary rhetoricians to enter a dialogue with

nonwestern rhetorical traditions and theories.83 Moreover, in his work, science and

religion are not necessarily in competition; hence, Empedocles may help us rethink

the rhetorical dilemma we have talked ourselves into in contemporary industrial

society. Minimally, Empedocles reminds us to ask whether we consider rhetorical

theory a science, or art, or both, or neither.

This raises another point, which I will, in respectful jest, refer to as the need

for periodic ritual cleansing in rhetorical theory. It should come as no surprise that I

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propose we break the spell of Athens (in which the emphasis on Isocrates

participates), such that what counts as rhetorical theory is defined by a rather small

scope of orators and philosophers who graced that city. As I have argued herein, it is

insufficient to define ancient rhetoric simply by examining handbooks, speeches, and

commentaries; one profits by considering the relationship of works on rhetoric to

other discourses, especially folklore. Said otherwise, perhaps contemporary rhetorical

theorists will choose to remain safe within the polis and ignore those figures who call

them outside to more dangerous realms, where the volcanic fires smolder. But even

Socrates ventured beyond the walls once, to discuss the nature of rhetoric and listen

to the cicadas.

Third, Empedocles encourages us not to be shy in advocating an art of living,

broadly conceptualized, and to debate what such an art would entail. Contemporary

rhetorical studies matters because it is the heir of an ancient affirmative art, one that

need not give way to an anxiety wrought by the suspicion of those who attempted to

assume regulation over the art of living from rhetoric. This should be apparent, but as

rhetorical studies ventures into closer alliances with critical cultural studies and

performance studies, it should do so not simply for the sake of increasing scholarship

but for advancing an admonitory education, the rooting of which requires an emphasis

on the arts, on love rather than strife, and on never-ending attention to new social

tensions; in making this move, rhetoricians may need to rekindle their alliances with

artists, not just with politicians. Furthermore, the realization that life and coexistence

are aesthetic projects warrants a return to rhetoric’s abilities as a healing art.

Conclusion: The Art of Purification

In this essay, I have explored the attribution of rhetoric’s discovery to Empedocles by

examining his surviving fragments and his historical and legendary biography, all of

which primes him for a reception in contemporary rhetorical studies. I have argued

that although the fragments themselves demonstrate comments on persuasion too

limited to be regarded as rhetorical theory, his overall program of purification and

address of love and strife connects him in copasetic ways, as does his surrounding

cycle of legends and myths about resistance to and punishment of unjust tyranny and

violence. I further demonstrated how those ideas might connect to our contemporary

projects, and how attention to them might restore some of the emphases that

Kenneth Burke himself had planned for rhetorical critics. This study warrants

reconsideration, therefore, of ideas about rhetoric’s origins either taken as fact or

ignored by many contemporary rhetorical theorists.

Empedocles ‘‘discovered’’ rhetoric no more than did Corax, nor did Sicilian

‘‘democracy’’ prompt the systematization of rhetoric; these narratives are ways to tell

stories about the struggle for power in Sicily, but not a historical record of those

struggles. More importantly, they are also ways to tell stories about rhetoric and its

association with pollution and purification lying at the heart of civilization. Stories

explaining rhetoric’s origins, then, are not just about land disputes and poetic tricks.

They are a circulation of narratives addressing themes of rhetoric’s fearful power as

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medicine and poison; as that which distinguishes human, animal, and divine; and as

constituent of judgments that establish the world’s order. If contemporary rhetorical

theorists are not tuned to legend and myth, they might miss what the Greeks are

saying about the magnitude of rhetoric as deinos legein.

In advocating an Empedoclean spirit to correct the recent emphasis and

appropriation of Isocrates, I would underscore that Empedocles, not Isocrates,

advanced a theory of separation and attraction, recognized the dignity of living things,

located humanity within nature, wrote poetry, and advocated a cure for violence. This

legacy should be ignored no longer. A return to Empedocles would not necessitate a

wholesale rejection of Isocrates nor the Isocratean development of citizens, but would

contextualize it as only one part of a more expansive project in admonitory education.

Empedocles stands as a poignant corrective to Isocrates, then, especially as he calls

rhetorical scholars to the task of resisting, reducing, and redressing violence in this

world. And put simply, Empedocles reminds us that often it is not enough to speak

for the polis; to be a good physician, one must speak for all humanity.

Notes

[1] Kenneth Burke, ‘‘Responsibilities of National Greatness,’’ The Nation, July 17, 1967, 47.

[2] Burke, ‘‘Responsibilities of National Greatness,’’ 50.

[3] Arguably, the earliest call for this return to Isocrates is Michael Calvin McGee, ‘‘The Moral

Problem of Argumentum per Argumentum,’’ in Argument and Social Practice: Proceedings of

the Fourth SCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation, ed. J. Robert Cox, Malcolm O. Sillars, and

Gregg B. Walker (Annandale, VA: SCA, 1985), 1�15. See also Michael Calvin McGee,

‘‘Isocrates: A Parent of Rhetoric and Culture Studies,’’ unpublished manuscript, 1986.

Available online at http://mcgeefragments.net/OLD/isocrate.htm.

[4] Takis Poulakos, Speaking for the Polis: Isocrates’ Rhetorical Education (Columbia: University

of South Carolina Press, 1997), 1.

[5] See, for example Ekaterina V. Haskins, Logos and Power in Isocrates and Aristotle (Columbia:

University of South Carolina Press, 2004); Isocrates and Civic Education, ed. Takis Poulakos

and David Depew (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004); Kenneth R. Chase, ‘‘Construct-

ing Ethics through Rhetoric: Isocrates and Piety,’’ Quarterly Journal of Speech 95 (2009): 239�62. As critical rhetoric draws inspiration from Burke, see also Norman Clark, ‘‘The Critical

Servant: An Isocratean Contribution to Critical Rhetoric,’’ Quarterly Journal of Speech 82

(1996): 111�24.

[6] Chase, ‘‘Constructing Ethics through Rhetoric,’’ 254�55. He cites Victor J. Vitanza, Negation,

Subjectivity, and the History of Rhetoric (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997).

[7] Brad Inwood, The Poem of Empedocles (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 6. W. K.

C. Guthrie estimates Empedocles’ life at 492�32 BCE; M. R. Wright suggests 494�34 BCE. W.

K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1965), 128; M. R. Wright, Empedocles: The Extant Fragments (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1981), 6.

[8] Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1984), 66.

[9] Kenneth Burke, Essays toward a Symbolic of Motives, 1950�1955, ed. William H. Rueckert

(West Lafayette: Parlor Press, 2007), 111.

[10] Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, in The Poem of Empedocles, trans. Brad Inwood

(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 8.57. All translations of Diogenes are by

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Inwood. As aforementioned, Aristotle’s work is now lost, and support appears only in

Quintilian (3.1.8), Diogenes’ rough contemporary Sextus’s Adversus Mathematicos (7.6), and

the much later Suda.

[11] Diogenes Laertius 8.72.

[12] Plutarch, Reply to Colotes, in The Poem of Empedocles, trans. Brad Inwood (Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, 2001), 1126b.

[13] Diogenes Laertius 8.63�66.

[14] Diogenes Laertius 8.63. Ava Chitwood notes that similar anecdotes are told about Solon and

Heraclitus. Ava Chitwood, Death by Philosophy: The Biographical Tradition in the Life and

Death of the Archaic Philosophers Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Democritus (Ann Arbor:

University of Michigan Press, 2004), 28.

[15] This symbolism suggests a pivotal moment in which the Greeks pushed out Near Eastern

(Phoenician and Persian) influence.

[16] The alliance was likely dissolved for Theron’s support of another brother, Polyzelus. On

Acragas’s democracy, see Eric W. Robinson, The First Democracies: Early Popular Government

outside Athens (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1997).

[17] Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. George A. Kennedy (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2007), 1393b.

[18] ‘‘Teisias’’ is an alternative name given for ‘‘Tisias.’’ It is important to recall that the Suda is

late and may record here a tradition that is equally late in development but whose value as

folkloric tradition remains.

[19] Stephen Olbrys Gencarella, ‘‘The Myth of Rhetoric: Korax and the Art of Pollution,’’ Rhetoric

Society Quarterly 37 (2007): 251�73.

[20] Cf. Chitwood, Death by Philosophy, 10, on the theme of the philosopher and tyrant. Plato’s

Phaedrus interweaves all three men, directly citing Stesichorus and Tisias, and presenting

several Empedoclean themes.

[21] Quintilian, in The Poem of Empedocles, trans. Brad Inwood (Toronto: University of Toronto

Press, 2001), 3.1.8. Olympiodorus the Younger (Plat. Gorg. proem. 9) and the Suda also mark

this connection, which may ultimately derive from Plato’s Meno (76c), wherein Socrates

associates Gorgias and Empedocles (and his interlocutor) through shared belief in the theory

of sense perception through the pores.

[22] Diogenes Laertius 8.58�59. See George Kerferd, ‘‘Gorgias and Empedocles,’’ Siculorum

Gymnasium 38 (1985): 595�605.

[23] On rhetoric and magic, see William A. Covino, Magic, Rhetoric, and Literacy: An Eccentric

History of the Composing Imagination (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994);

and Jacqueline De Romilly, Magic and Rhetoric in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1976); on medicine, see Ludwig Edelstein, Ancient Medicine: Selected Papers

of Ludwig Edelstein, ed. Owsei Temkin and C. Lilian Temkin, trans. C. Lilian Temkin

(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); and G. E. R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason,

and Experience: Studies in the Origin and Development of Greek Science (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1979). See also Wright, Empedocles, 13�14, on responses to

Empedocles in Ancient Medicine and Sacred Disease.

[24] Diogenes Laertius 8.57. The attribution of a Hymn to Apollo by Empedocles, burned by a

relative, bears all the marks of folklore. Cf. Friedrich Solmsen, ‘‘Empedocles’ Hymn to

Apollo,’’ Phronesis 25 (1980): 219�27.

[25] Galen meth. med. 1.1; Pliny HN 29.1.4�5.

[26] Diogenes 8.60�8.61, 8.70.

[27] The line in Empedocles’ fragment 15*‘‘a defence against evils and old age, you shall

learn’’*perhaps echoes the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, and Empedocles does indicate laurel

leaves (the tree sacred to Apollo) in two fragments, but it is tendentious to suggest intimate

attention to Apollo in the primary work. Furthermore, Greek divinities are multivalent;

Apollo is both a healer and plague-bringer.

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[28] Inwood, Poem of Empedocles, 68.

[29] Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, in The Poem of Empedocles, trans. Brad Inwood (Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, 2001), 113�14.

[30] Iamblichus, De Vita Pythagorica, in Iamblichus: On the Pythagorean Way of Life, trans. John

Dillard and Jackson Hershell (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 214�21.

[31] Iamblichus De Vita Pythagorica 216.

[32] Iamblichus De Vita Pythagorica 221.

[33] Iamblichus De Vita Pythagorica 30.

[34] Iamblichus De Vita Pythagorica 110.

[35] Wright, Empedocles, 10; Chitwood, Death by Philosophy, 40.

[36] Peter Kingsley, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 220.

[37] See also Callicles’ speech in Gorgias (484a), in which he details the way men are taken in

infancy like lions, but enchanted (goeteuontes) to believe in equality, which is against nature.

[38] Richard McKirahan, Philosophy before Socrates: An Introduction with Texts and Commentary

(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), 257.

[39] Simon Trepanier, Empedocles: An Interpretation (New York: Routledge, 2004), 49.

[40] See Keith Sidwell, ‘‘Pollution and Purification in Aeschylus’ Eumenides,’’ Classical Quarterly

46 (1996): 44�57; and Margaret Visser, ‘‘Vengeance and Pollution in Classical Athens,’’

Journal of the History of Ideas 45 (1984): 193�206.

[41] Plato, Gorgias, trans. James H. Nichols Jr. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 524b.

[42] Plato Gorgias 526b.

[43] For the sake of consistency, all translations of Empedocles and of Diogenes Laertius are by

Inwood; the numbering system for Empedocles’ fragments is also Inwood’s. Generally, I

follow scholars in using the more common Latin rather than Greek names throughout (such

as ‘‘Empedocles’’ instead of ‘‘Empedokles,’’ ‘‘Apollo’’ instead of ‘‘Apollon,’’ ‘‘Corax’’ instead of

‘‘Korax’’), except where the translator employs the Greek (such as ‘‘Kupris’’ instead of

‘‘Cypris’’).

[44] Inwood, Poem of Empedocles, 23. Guthrie and Wright see two poems of problematic

compatibility; McKirahan and Inwood, a single poem.

[45] Empedocles, fragment 11.

[46] Empedocles, fragment 11.

[47] Empedocles, fragment 122.

[48] Empedocles, fragment 130.

[49] Empedocles, fragment 126.

[50] Empedocles, fragment 8.

[51] Empedocles, fragments 93 and 94.

[52] Empedocles, fragment 23.

[53] Empedocles, fragment 46.

[54] Empedocles, fragment 22.

[55] Inwood, Poem of Empedocles, 95. Cf. Trepanier, Empedocles, 67�68.

[56] Empedocles, fragments 2 and 3.

[57] Empedocles, fragment 109. Ancient terminology for cognitive functions and organs is

notoriously complicated. Here, Empedocles employs phren, but elsewhere noos and even

metis.

[58] Trepanier, Empedocles, 18.

[59] Plato, Sophist, trans. Nicholas P. White (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993),

242c�43a. Plato also makes direct reference to those who call these forces ‘‘Aphrodite’’ and

‘‘Strife.’’

[60] Isocrates, Antidosis, trans. David Mirhady and Yun Lee Too (Austin: University of Texas

Press, 2000), 268.

[61] Isocrates Antidosis 269.

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[62] Trepanier, Empedocles, 18.

[63] Aristotle Rhetoric 3.5.4.

[64] Aristotle Poetics 1447b.

[65] See scholia to Dionysius Thrax in The Poem of Empedocles, trans Brad Inwood (Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, 2001), 168.8�13.

[66] Aristotle Sophistic Refutations 183a�d.

[67] Aristotle Eudemian 1235a; Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1155a�b.

[68] Cf. A. W. Price, Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1989).

[69] Robert Wardy, The Birth of Rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato, and Their Successors (New York:

Routledge, 1996), 7.

[70] Clara Elizabeth Millerd Smertenko, On the Interpretation of Empedocles (Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 1908), 23.

[71] See George A. Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1994), 18, 47; and Edward Schiappa, Protagoras and Logos: A Study in Greek

Philosophy (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 31, 49, 52�54, 82, 93�94,

128, 142�43, 159, 223�24.

[72] Richard Leo Enos, Greek Rhetoric before Aristotle (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press,

1993), 62. See also Thomas Conley’s review, Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (1994): 377�8,

and Richard Leo Enos, ‘‘Aristotle, Empedocles, and the Notion of Rhetoric,’’ in In Search of

Justice: The Indiana Tradition in Speech Communication, ed. Richard J. Jensen and John C.

Hammerback (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987), 5�22.

[73] C. Jan Swearingen, ‘‘A Lover’s Discourse: Diotima, Logos, and Desire,’’ in Reclaiming

Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition, ed. Andrea Lunsford (Pittsburgh, PA:

University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995), 35. See also C. Jan Swearingen, Rhetoric and Irony:

Western Literacy and Western Lies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

[74] Kenneth Burke, ‘‘The Imagery of Killing,’’ Hudson Review 1 (1948): 165.

[75] Kenneth Burke, ‘‘Form and Persecution in the Oresteia,’’ Sewanee Review 60 (1952): 377�96.

See also ‘‘The Orestes Trilogy,’’ in Essays toward a Symbolic of Motives, 1950�1955, 103�47.

[76] Kenneth Burke, ‘‘Linguistic Approach to Problems of Education,’’ in Modern Philosophies and

Education: The Fifty-Fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, ed.

Nelson B. Henry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), 271.

[77] Burke, ‘‘Linguistic Approach to Problems,’’ 271�72.

[78] Burke, ‘‘Linguistic Approach to Problems,’’ 273, 286.

[79] Kenneth Burke, ‘‘Myth, Poetry, and Philosophy,’’ Journal of American Folklore 73 (1960): 304.

See also Kenneth Burke, ‘‘Review of Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins,’’ in

Journal of American Folklore 73 (1960): 270�71.

[80] Burke, ‘‘Myth, Poetry, and Philosophy,’’ 306.

[81] Carol Corbin, ed., Rhetoric in Postmodern America: Conversations with Michael Calvin McGee

(New York: Guilford Press, 1998), 45.

[82] The idea of a physician of culture is found in Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of

the Greeks, trans. Marianne Cowan (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1962), 27. On

Nietzsche and Empedocles, see David Farrell Krell, Postponements: Women, Sensuality, and

Death in Nietzsche (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); cf. David Farrell Krell, Lunar

Voices: Of Tragedy, Poetry, Fiction, and Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

[83] See, for example, George A. Kennedy, Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural

Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Carol S. Lipson and Roberta A.

Binkley, ed., Rhetoric before and Beyond the Greeks (Albany: State University of New York

Press, 2004); Gananath Obeyesekere, Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amer-

indian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); and

Robert A. Yelle, Explaining Mantras: Ritual, Rhetoric, and the Dream of a Natural Language in

Hindu Tantra (New York: Routledge, 2003).

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