From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordMetharmosamenos means changing the tuning or arrangement; melos is melody.
- In this workIamblichus tells how Empedocles retunes his lyre when a furious youth rushes to kill Anchitos, the host who had condemned the youth’s father.
- In this editionThe story’s claims about musical efficacy should not be translated into evidence for a modern treatment.
- A place to readDescribes the retuned lyre, interrupted attack, and transformed companionship.
Meaning
Metharmosamenos means changing the tuning or arrangement; melos is melody. The adjectives describe a soothing or settling effect. “Therapy” is a convenient analytical heading for the anecdote’s intervention in violent emotion, not a professional diagnosis given by the witness.
Use in the book
Iamblichus tells how Empedocles retunes his lyre when a furious youth rushes to kill Anchitos, the host who had condemned the youth’s father. The altered melody prevents both a death and an act of murder. Homer’s phrase about forgetting grief and anger is inserted to characterize its effect, giving the intervention poetic authority as well as a Pythagorean moral setting. The account makes emotional regulation a demonstrable benefit of philosophical expertise. It does not provide a musical mode, intervals, or a repeatable clinical protocol. The young man’s subsequent distinction among Empedocles’ companions turns rescue into an origin-story of discipleship. Diels identifies the youth with Pausanias by proposing a confusion around Anchitos’ name, but that identification remains editorial rather than explicit narrative fact.
Places to read
- A 15 (legend)Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras. Describes the retuned lyre, interrupted attack, and transformed companionship.
- A 15 (apparatus)Edition’s apparatus, identifying Homer, Odyssey IV 221, and proposing Pausanias. Separates the Homeric quotation and editorial reconstruction from the displayed anecdote.
Translation in this edition
The story’s claims about musical efficacy should not be translated into evidence for a modern treatment. The phrase about forgetting all ills belongs to Homer as quoted by Iamblichus, not to an Empedoclean pharmacological fragment.