From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordPharmaka in B 1112 are remedies or potent agents against ills.
- In EmpedoclesB 1112 promises knowledge with extraordinary practical scope.
- In this editionThe final object of B 1112 is menos, rendered “strength,” not an occurrence of psychē or daimōn.
- A place to readA series of promised powers begins with remedies and ends with leading a dead man’s strength from Hades.
Meaning
Pharmaka in B 1112 are remedies or potent agents against ills. Alkai are defences or protections, here against old age. B 112's euēkea baxin is a healing utterance sought by sufferers. Menos andros names a man's strength or vital force in the final promise of B 1112.
Use in the book
B 1112 promises knowledge with extraordinary practical scope. The hearer will learn remedies against illness and defences against ageing, stop and restore winds, turn rain into seasonable dryness and summer drought into tree-nourishing streams, and lead the strength of a dead man out of Hades. The series connects human vulnerability, agriculture, weather, and the boundary of death. It is a programmatic assertion of power, not a surviving manual of techniques.
The exclusive address, “for you alone,” makes the promise part of a privileged relation between teacher and hearer. It does not disclose the means of transmission or demonstrate an institution of initiation. The statement that the hearer will learn and the statement that the speaker will accomplish these things are both present; their relation should not be flattened into a modern claim that one person gives another an experimentally established medical treatment.
B 112 presents the public counterpart: visitors seek oracles or a healing word after long suffering. That scene explains why the teaching would matter to its audience while also staging the poet's prestige. B 146 places physicians alongside seers, hymn-singers, and leaders near the culmination of the return to divine honour. Healing belongs within a wider religious and social field.
The introduction warns that later stories of wind control and revival may have been fashioned from B 1112. The resemblance between legend and verse is not independent corroboration. The lexical relation to B 232 also deserves attention: pharmaka there are pigments. The noun's broad material range prevents the reader from assuming that every occurrence concerns medicine. Nothing in these fragments establishes present-day efficacy or authorizes attempts to reproduce the promised powers.
Places to read
- B 111.1–92A series of promised powers begins with remedies and ends with leading a dead man’s strength from Hades.
- B 112.9–12Crowds seek a healing utterance against disease.
- B 146.1–3Physicians are named with other honoured human roles.
- B 23.3Pharmaka refers to painters’ colouring materials.
- Introduction I (editorial discussion)The editor treats miracle anecdotes as possibly derived from the poem.
Translation in this edition
The final object of B 1112 is menos, rendered “strength,” not an occurrence of psychē or daimōn. “Defences against old age” is a poetic promise, not a modern medical recommendation. The edition provides no recipe or procedure by which the claims could be tested.