From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The word“Kin-murder” is an interpretive heading, not a compound noun quoted from the fragments.
- In EmpedoclesThe transformed son of B137 is still the sacrificer's son even though his outward form has changed.
- In this editionThe edition's B137 leaves the agents of the cries and supplications less transparent than a fully continuous narrative would.
- A place to readChanged form conceals family relations across reciprocal scenes of slaughter.
Meaning
“Kin-murder” is an interpretive heading, not a compound noun quoted from the fragments. B137 names father, beloved son, mother, and children, then describes the eating of their own or dear flesh. B136's “one another” makes the violation reciprocal.
Use in the book
The transformed son of B137 is still the sacrificer's son even though his outward form has changed. The father raises him, prays, and kills him, deaf to the cries around the sacrifice. The poem does not ask the reader merely to imagine that animals are like family: within the narrative of altered forms, the familial relationship is actual. The son's altered shape and the father's failure to understand generate the horror.
The second half reverses and multiplies the scene. A son seizes his father; children seize their mother; they tear out life and eat the flesh of their own. Such reversibility gives the passage a general moral force. B136's brief rebuke supplies its cognitive diagnosis: mutual devouring occurs in heedlessness of mind. Recognition of continuity across forms would make the practice appear differently.
B138's phrase about drawing off psychē with bronze can be compared to this violent removal of life, although its original sentence is lost. Here psychē is translated “life,” and the quotation survives because Aristotle discusses figurative language. It must not be used to smuggle a fully developed theory of an immortal soul into B137 or B1152. The ethical argument is vivid and specific even where its psychological mechanics remain unstated.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
The edition's B137 leaves the agents of the cries and supplications less transparent than a fully continuous narrative would. The family relations at the opening and close are clear; the intermediate scene should not be expanded with invented speakers or victims.