Divine ascent

Use in the book

B146 identifies a last human stage: seers, hymn-singers, physicians, and chieftains. From there they grow into gods highest in honours. The four occupations are named together; the verse does not make them four consecutive incarnations or rank one above another. Their shared prominence plausibly reflects forms of knowledge, healing, song, and leadership, but the exact rule admitting an individual to each role is not given.

B127's lions and laurels can be read as privileged earlier embodiments, yet their relative placement and complete relation to B146 are not preserved. Calling the passages a ladder is helpful only if the missing rungs and uncertain order remain visible. B147 gives a picture of the result through common hearth and table with immortals and exclusion from human grief.

B112 brings divine status into the speaker's present public appearance: crowned, honoured, and approached for oracles and healing, he declares himself immortal. This is a claim made by the poetic speaker, not an independently verified historical apotheosis. It also creates a fruitful tension with the speaker's confession of exile in B1152. The surviving fragments do not give a securely ordered narrative that tells exactly when or how one status superseded the other.

Places to read

1. B 146.1–3Final human roles are followed by growth into gods.
2. B 127Lions and laurels provide possible privileged stages, without an explicit ordered ladder.
3. B 147The resulting fellowship is portrayed through hearth, table, and absence of grief.
4. B 112.4–12The speaker publicly claims to be an immortal god.
5. B 115.13–14The speaker also calls himself a present exile.

Translation in this edition

“Spring up” retains a growth-metaphor that a flat “become” would lose. The printed order of the quotations cannot by itself reconcile the immortal speaker of B112 with the exile of B1152.

Use in the book

Heraclides’ narrative begins with a sacrificial feast after the healing story. In the morning Empedocles alone is missing. A servant reports a nocturnal voice calling his name and a heavenly blaze, while the others initially investigate. Pausanias then stops the search and interprets the event as worthy of prayer and sacrifice. The account does not narrate an observed bodily ascent: disappearance and reported signs are followed by a participant’s religious inference. That structure differentiates it from Hippobotus’ crater story, which supplies a hidden mortal action and a material clue. Timaeus challenges Heraclides’ setting and asks why no monument or shrine was made if the deification account was believed. Keeping these stages separate prevents a story of ambiguous absence from becoming a straightforward eyewitness record of apotheosis.

Places to read

1. A 1 §§ 67–68 (legend)2Diogenes Laertius VIII 67–68, reporting Heraclides. Gives the feast, absence, servant’s report, search, and interpretation in sequence.
2. A 1 §§ 71–72 (biography)Diogenes Laertius VIII 71–72, reporting Timaeus. Challenges the setting and absence of a memorial associated with the story.

Translation in this edition

The edition describes the story as the earliest and most careful, but its narrative restraint does not authenticate it. Pausanias is a character within the transmitted account, not an independently preserved confirming witness.