Aether

Use in the book

The treatise transmitted as Aristotle’s letter to Alexander distinguishes aether from the four elements. It links the word with the heavens’ perpetual circular running, rejecting a derivation from burning. Elsewhere the word occurs in the description of the eagle’s proper upper region.

Places to read

1. I.40.1.5Aether is the uncorrupted celestial element, distinct from the four.
2. I.49.68.10The eagle returns to the upper air, the region suited to it.

Translation in this edition

“Aether” is retained for the celestial substance; “upper air” expresses the regional sense in the Hermetic comparison. The two renderings make the function of the word visible.

Images and comparisons

In the Isis-Horus dialogue, birds returning to their own heights illustrate the assignment of souls to appropriate regions. The eagle’s upper air participates in that comparison; the passage is not introducing a new fifth-element theory.

Use in the book

Aither is one of the named ingredients from which the forms and colours of mortals arise in B 712. B 98 mixes all-shining aither with Earth, Hephaestus, and rain to produce blood and flesh. B 109 locates divine aither both in the recogniser and in what is recognised. These are substantial roles in embodied life, not merely ornamental references to a remote sky.

Its spatial appearances are equally varied. B 38 gives it a circling, enclosing function in this edition's translation, which joins “Titan” to “aither.” The Greek coordinates the two with “and,” so reading Titan and aither separately must remain a live alternative. B 54 sends it beneath earth with long roots. B 1002 uses it for the medium passing through bodily channels and participating in the water-catcher analogy. The latter alternates aither, air, and breath in a way that prevents a rigid one-word, one-altitude scheme. B 37's statement that aither increases aither instead stresses continuity of kind amid the changes.

The exile narrative also makes aither active: its force drives the wanderer to sea and its eddies receive him again from the sun. B 135 extends what is lawful through wide-ruling aither and light, using the cosmic reach of the term to express the scope of a norm. Neither passage defines aither as the substance of the travelling daimon.

The introduction reports interpretations in which Zeus corresponds to air or aither, as well as other mappings. These remain interpretations. One must especially resist reading aither here as a securely distinct fifth element. The four-root account is Empedoclean; the later terminology and classifications associated with Plato and Aristotle are not its unspoken key.

Places to read

1. B 98.1–5Shining aither participates in the near-equal mixture which produces blood and flesh.
2. B 54Aither extends down beneath earth with long roots.
3. B 100.1–252Aither enters and leaves bodily passages and plays the corresponding role in the clepsydra comparison.
4. B 115.9–12Aither is an agent and region of the wanderer's expulsion.
5. B 135Wide-ruling aither marks the uninterrupted cosmic extension of what is lawful.
6. B 38The English joins “Titan aither,” while the Greek has the coordinating “and”; a separate Titan and aither reading must remain visible.

Translation in this edition

The edition’s retention of “aither” is a warning against overtranslation, not a precise scientific definition. B 38 prints Τιτὰν ἠδ' αἰθὴρ, coordinating “Titan and aither,” whereas the English gives “the Titan aither.” The translation therefore makes a syntactic decision which should not be treated as a secure identity. Reading Titan separately does not by itself establish a fifth root.

Use in the book

Ps.-Plutarch’s introductory enumeration in A30 gives fire, water, aither and earth, where other enumerations use air. The subsequent account nevertheless speaks of air as well. At A332 both Aëtius and the Homeric Allegories gloss Zeus through heat and aither, connecting aither with the fiery divine name rather than simply assigning it to the root elsewhere called air.

Aëtius’ cosmogonic sequence at A49 separates aither first, fire second, then earth; water comes from compressed earth and air is exhaled from water. Heaven is made from aither in that report. Philo’s transmitted account also begins with aether’s separation but has air and fire ascend together and describes aether revolving around the central earth. The common priority of separation is useful evidence; it does not erase differences in what the ensuing materials do.

A reader reconstructing a single cosmology should therefore distinguish at least three questions: what a witness calls the fourth root, what a divine-name gloss equates with Zeus, and what material is separated first in a cosmogony. The same English label cannot answer all three.

Places to read

1. A 30 (testimony)Ps.-Plutarch, Stromateis, in Eusebius P.E. I 8,10. Uses aither in the fourfold enumeration but air in the ensuing cosmological narrative.
2. A 33 (testimony)2Aëtius I 3,20; Homeric Allegories, in Stobaeus. Includes aither in the gloss of Zeus.
3. A 49 (testimony)Aëtius II 6,3; Philo, De providentia II 60. Both accounts begin with separation of aither; their subsequent spatial accounts are not identical.

Translation in this edition

Philo survives here through Latin translated from Armenian, itself representing lost Greek. Its Latin vocabulary cannot independently establish Empedocles’ exact Greek usage; the parenthetic Greek in this edition is explanatory.