Death traditions

Use in the book

Diogenes compiles disappearance after a feast, the crater leap, death following a wagon accident and broken thigh, a hanging told in Homeric language, and a fatal slip into the sea through old age. He also preserves ages of sixty, seventy-seven, and one hundred and nine, and a tomb report at Megara. The literary and evidential forms vary: Heraclides supplies a dramatic disappearance, Hippobotus a revealing object, Demetrius of Troezen a Homeric recasting, and the doubtful Telauges letter another ending. Aristotle’s age of sixty is one ancient claim among these, though used by Apollodorus for chronological criticism. The collection should not be reduced either to a favored sensational story or to an unqualified statement that all alternatives are equally credible. Their attribution, source character, and compatibility with other evidence differ. Timaeus’ insistence on an obscure end after departure is particularly valuable as an ancient challenge, but it does not fill the gaps with independently known circumstances. The dossier is strongest as evidence for the difficulty of knowing how Empedocles died and for the narrative expectations attached to an exceptional philosopher.

The differences in presentation are as significant as the differences in outcome. The feast story withholds an observed death and asks how absence should be interpreted. The crater story supplies both hidden intention and a clue that exposes it. The wagon story gives an ordinary sequence of injury, illness, and death despite the philosopher’s extraordinary reputation. The Homeric account recasts an ending through borrowed poetic language. The sea story is assigned to a letter whose trustworthiness had already been questioned. To list the five without their literary vehicles would imply a uniform body of evidence that the Life does not actually provide.

The ages cannot be used as harmless decorative details either. Sixty supports Apollodorus’ rejection of an implausibly late military involvement; seventy-seven accompanies the accident narrative; the much larger figure belongs to a competing longevity tradition. Selecting an age therefore changes the chronological reconstruction. The grandfather’s namesake victory further creates a mechanism by which facts can move across generations. No continuous life can be produced simply by retaining every attractive detail and discarding only the most spectacular ending.

Later literature has different purposes. Horace’s joke depends on the right of the eccentric poet to refuse rescue, Milton’s passage classifies an ambition as foolish, and Arnold uses the inherited scene for a modern dramatic crisis. Their vividness explains why one ending became especially durable, but their repetition adds no independent observation. A scholarly lexicon should distinguish the historical question, what happened, from the reception question, what kinds of ending later writers found fitting. The dossier is richly informative about the second even where it remains inconclusive about the first.

Places to read

1. A 1 §§ 67–68 (legend)2Diogenes Laertius VIII 67–68, reporting Heraclides. Presents disappearance after a sacrificial gathering.
2. A 1 §§ 69–70 (legend)Diogenes Laertius VIII 69, reporting Hippobotus. Supplies the crater ending.
3. A 1 §§ 73–74 (biography)2Diogenes Laertius VIII 73–74, citing Aristotle, Demetrius of Troezen, and the Telauges letter. Collects accident, hanging, sea-death, ages, and a tomb.
4. A 1 §§ 71–72 (biography)Diogenes Laertius VIII 70–72, reporting Timaeus. Offers withdrawal and uncertainty against the miraculous endings.
5. A 16 (reception)Horace, The Art of Poetry. Reuses the death as a literary exemplum rather than resolving the ancient evidence.
6. Appendix II Milton (reception)John Milton, Paradise Lost III 469–473. Transforms the inherited ending into a moral example of folly.
7. Appendix II Arnold (reception)Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna II 402–416. Adapts the crater ending to a modern dramatic crisis.
8. A 1 §§ 51–52 (biography)Diogenes Laertius VIII 51–52, reporting Apollodorus. Distinguishes the homonymous grandfather and uses the reported age at death to reject the late Syracuse military chronology.

Translation in this edition

The apparatus corrects the name Demetrius where manuscripts have Democritus. The source’s literary noose account must not be treated as a clinical or eyewitness description. The Telauges letter was already deemed untrustworthy earlier in the Life.