Purifying Rhetoric. Empedocles and The Myth of Rhetorical Theory

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Purifying Rhetoric: Empedocles and the

Myth of Rhetorical Theory
Stephen Olbrys Gencarella
Published online: 16 Aug 2010.
To cite this article: Stephen Olbrys Gencarella (2010) Purifying Rhetoric: Empedocles
and the Myth of Rhetorical Theory, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 96:3, 231-256, DOI:
10.1080/00335630.2010.499105
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Quarterly Journal of Speech

Vol. 96, No. 3, August 2010, pp. 231256
Purifying Rhetoric: Empedocles and

the Myth of Rhetorical Theory
Downloaded by [Universidad de los Andes] at 07:06 21 March 2015
Stephen Olbrys Gencarella
The polymath Empedocles has not been considered a prominent figure in the history of
rhetorical studies nor contemporary appropriations of antiquity, despite the reported
attribution of his invention of rhetoric by Aristotle. This neglect is understandable, as the
surviving fragments of Empedocles work provide no significant reference to rhetoric per
se. Attention to the folklore surrounding Empedocles (including legends of his deeds as a
physician and politician, and his association with Pythagoras, Gorgias, and the god
Apollo) is noteworthy, however, as it helps explain ways the ancient Greeks
conceptualized rhetoric as a potentially healing discourse. Analysis of the Empedoclean
tradition discloses a call to redress any human penchant for violence and to resist
tyranny, themes relevant for critical rhetorical studies today. These contributions further
demonstrate an affinity between Empedocles and Kenneth Burkes concern with the
purification of war, and temper the recent interest in an Isocratean development of
citizens by advancing a more ecumenical perspective on humanity.
Keywords: Empedocles; Origins of Rhetoric; Isocrates; Social Physician; Kenneth Burke
Writing in The Nation in 1967, Kenneth Burke argued that a primary responsibility
for members of a democracy is to pause occasionally and ponder the bepuzzlements
of identification as they affect our sense of citizenship.1 For Burke, citizens must
admonish themselves against stringent identifications with the nation state, money, a
particular party, or foreign allies, as such might rob an individual of a commitment to
humanity and with it, a fountain of goodwill that manifests in concern for the
suffering of ones enemies in war.2 Rather than dismiss Burkes plea as hopelessly
nave, I draw from it a question of emphasis for contemporary rhetoricians: shall we
Stephen Olbrys Gencarella is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst. The author thanks John Louis Lucaites and the two anonymous reviewers for their
helpful advice and support, and Melanie Loehwing and Chris Gilbert for editorial assistance. This essay is
dedicated to the memory of Angela Gencarella and Gesualdo DiFazio. Correspondence to: Stephen Olbrys
Gencarella, 414 Machmer Hall, 240 Hicks Way, Amherst, MA 01003-9278, USA. Email: solbrys@
comm.umass.edu.
ISSN 0033-5630 (print)/ISSN 1479-5779 (online) # 2010 National Communication Association
DOI: 10.1080/00335630.2010.499105
232 S. O. Gencarella
occupy ourselves predominantly with citizenship, or with more ecumenical notions

of humanity for which citizenship is one important constituent?
It is certainly not the first time rhetorical studies has faced this question. In the late
1990s, many critical rhetoricians turned to citizenship as the primary site of
engagement. They did so, I believe, in no small part due to a then burgeoning interest
in Isocrates as a parental figure in rhetorical studies, one linking the classical and the
postmodern.3 Takis Poulakos, for example, noted that study of Isocrates could
contribute to contemporary political life through comparison with another time in
which the art of rhetoric was called upon to address and resolve problems of
division and unity, fragmentation and consolidation, diversity and cooperation.4
This rallying has thrived over the past decade, so much so that Isocrates is now often
compared to Burke himself.5 Indeed, a recent contribution in this journal by Kenneth
Chase epitomizes the extent to which this spirit has permeated American rhetorical
studies, as it advocates Isocrates as a necessary interlocutor for critical rhetoricians
who wish to oppose acts of domination.
There is a problem lurking in this appropriation, however, and it is not a petty one.
Stated simply, for any contemporary rhetorical critic who takes seriously the project
of ad bellum purificandum, Isocrates is a difficult source of inspiration. While setting
aside Victor Vitanzas attack on Isocrates as a proto-fascist, Chase nevertheless notes a
tendency toward parochialism, elitism, imperialism, and militarism.6 It is furthermore difficult to ignore the martial and xenophobic motives behind Isocrates
proposition for the ideological unification of the Greek city-states. Certainly, we may
contextualize that agenda within his bearing witness to the Peloponnesian War, just as
we may understand his willingness to accommodate tyrannies in some city-states as
the reality of Greek antiquity, for which democracy was only one viable option for
sociopolitical organization. But alternative perspectives regarding violence did exist
in antiquity, alternatives that should be brought into the conversation concerning
modern appropriations of the ancients.
I will argue that it is time for contemporary rhetorical studies to rethink its
allegiance to Isocrates. I do so in the same manner by which Poulakos made the case
for him, namely by advocating the recovery of another long-silenced influence: the
polymath Empedocles, the man reputed to be Gorgiass teacher and to whom
Aristotle reportedly attributed the discovery of rhetoric itself. This article contends
that Empedocles absence is a disservice both to histories and contemporary
theorizations of rhetoric. I also hope to demonstrate that Empedocles is a far
better-suited candidate to the projects of democratization and the redress of violence.
Similarly, I propose that the legends the ancients told about Empedocles are far more
compelling than the legends we postmodern rhetoricians are telling about Isocrates.
Although all that is certain is that Empedocles was a Sicilian, a high-born citizen
of the city of Acragas who lived through the middle years of the fifth century, this
period constitutes the tumultuous decades in which numerous Sicilian cities
abolished tyrannies and established democracies.7 Empedocles composed poetry
(on the nature of the cosmos) and envisioned all humans*regardless of their
affiliations with specific political centers*as fallen creatures who might restore their
Purifying Rhetoric
233
divinity through certain acts of purification. As I intend to show, beyond a strictly

civic pedagogy, Empedocles advanced a kind of admonitory education that Burke
longed for, related as it was to a rationale of art*not however, a performers art, not
a specialists art for some to produce and many to observe, but an art in its widest
aspects, an art of living.8
Despite these promising characteristics, it is easy to ascertain why Empedocles has
been eclipsed in American rhetorical studies: he did not leave any work specifically
dedicated to rhetoric or even a logos politikos. I contend, furthermore, that his neglect
by most rhetorical scholars lies in the means by which we still tend to admit to our
canon only those texts overtly engaged with rhetoric qua rhetoric or the power of
language within civic, public, or political arenas, and we tend to omit the work of the
poets and playwrights, the pre-Socratic philosophers, Diotima, and ancient Greek
folklore. Poulakos and his associates themselves had to react against this tendency
toward exclusivity in order to raise Isocrates to prominence, although they
maintained its tenor by focusing attention on a relatively limited number of
political texts. This essay is an attempt, therefore, to broaden the rhetorical canon.
In order to introduce Empedocles to rhetorical scholars, I examine his biography
(both historical and legendary) and his surviving works. I draw on ancient folklore in
both cases, and therefore should explain a folkloristic perspective, which is rarely
incorporated into histories of rhetoric or contemporary appropriations. Fundamental
to this approach is an appreciation of variation within type. Narratives do not have to
be identical to be related, especially when originating in oral cultures (and thereby
altered as they are transmitted across time and space). One must look, therefore, for
plausible connections and patterns between stories, and in the case of legendary or
mythic narratives, one must further attempt to understand them as discourses
constitutive of a common sense that guides behavior. A folkloristic approach does not
ask whether a narrative is true, but rather how members of an originating culture
may have employed it for social and political purposes.
One challenge for any such reconstruction, especially regarding societies now long
past, is that the originating cultural logic may be radically different from that of the
interpreting scholars. Burke himself aptly points to this phenomenon in his
discussion of Aristotles claim that certain incidents in the Orestes trilogy are
appropriate without explaining their appropriateness; he determines that Aristotle
did not explain because, to a Greek of that time, the example was self-evident.9 Any
critic of a work from antiquity, then, must in part set upon the task of explaining
what was self-evident to the ancients to a contemporary audience that brings different
expectations to the reading. The folklore of the originating culture may be a resource
that assists this critical purpose by revealing some of its noncanonical and vernacular
rhetorical practices.
After an examination of Empedocles biography and surviving works, I turn to the
implications of an Empedoclean spirit in contemporary rhetorical studies. I present a
case that much of Burkes own work (especially articles produced around the 1950s)
could be understood in this manner, especially as it seeks to reduce warlike attitudes.
As a preview, I will suggest that the social surgeon metaphor lauded by some
proponents of an Isocratean perspective should be complemented by an Empedoclean holistic stress on the physician, and that Empedocles admonition against
violence and tyranny be upheld against an Isocratean allowance of them. Returning to
Empedocles will, I hope, refocus rhetorical studies on Burkes call for developing a
pedagogy that opposes the human penchant for physical combat and encourages
cathartic arts.
Empedocles in History and Legend

Empedocles life was subject to considerable apocryphal speculation, identifying him
as a politician, orator, physician, and magus, and the most infamous account of his
death records that he leapt into the volcanic fire of Mt. Aetna to prove his divinity.
With such scant evidence, contemporary rhetorical scholars may see little reason to
examine his biography, but I would contend that it and complementary legendary
material is important both for understanding his contribution to rhetorical studies
and for a more complete comprehension of how the ancient Greeks themselves
conceptualized rhetoric and its power. By examining the historical and folkloric
components of the narratives surrounding Empedocles, we may also better appreciate
what an Empedoclean spirit would bring to our contemporary circumstances.
The third-century-CE narrative Lives of the Philosophers, composed by Diogenes
Laertius, gathers most of the citations and legends. Although this work was written
six to seven hundred years after Empedocles lived, it demonstrates the longevity of
traditions about him; recorded here, for example, is Aristotles claim that Empedocles
discovered rhetoric [proton rhetoriken eurein] and Zeno dialectic.10 As for specific
oratorical works, Diogenes chronicles only two: a speech given against the desire of
Acron the physician to erect a statue honoring his father, and a speech following the
death of Empedocles father Meton in which tyrannical rule began to emerge; but
then Empedocles persuaded the citizens of Acragas to stop their civil strife and
cultivate political equality.11
Plutarch also avers that Empedocles exposed the leading citizens for being violent
and plundering public property, but presents no further evidence.12 Diogenes,
however, cites four related reports concerning his commitment to equality.13
According to the first, Empedocles political activity (politeias) as a champion
of the people (tou demotikon einai ton andra) began when he was invited to a dinner
in which the host (a magistrate) held off pouring wine while serving the food. When
the master of the feast, also a politician, arrived, he gave an indication of his
inclination to tyrannical rule by commanding the guests drink wine on his order or
have it poured on their heads. The next day, Empedocles brought both men to court
and had them executed. The second account is the aforementioned check on Acrons
petition to honor his family, which Empedocles objected to on the grounds that it
violated political equality (isotetos) by favoring one family over others. The third
account is an obscure reference to his dissolution of a group known as the
thousand, for which there is no historical correspondence. Finally, Diogenes recalls
that Aristotle called Empedocles a free man [who was hostile] to all public office
Purifying Rhetoric
235
and that Xanthus claimed Empedocles declined an offer of kingship because he

preferred the simple life.14 Whether Empedocles involvement in Sicilian politics is
real or legendary, we should consider the obstreperous and transformative time
period in which the ancient narratives place him, in order to detail how these stories
utilize Empedocles as a symbol of resistance against abusive and violent tyranny. A
brief history lesson is necessary, therefore, to locate Empedocles within the discourses
of the fall of tyrannies and the invention of democracy.
In the fifth century BCE, Sicily was an axis of political and military tension between
Greeks (who had colonized the island) and Carthaginians. Around the time of
Empedocles estimated birth, the military leader Gelon became tyrant of the city of
Gela (491 BCE) and plebian insurrection forced out the oligarchy of Syracuse (490
BCE). This deposed oligarchy appealed to Gelon, who used the opportunity to seize
Syracuse (484 BCE) and establish it as his center of power. By 488 BCE, Theron had
become tyrant of the southern city of Acragas (Empedocles city of birth),
commencing close relations with Gelon by marrying one of his daughters. In 482
BCE, Theron advanced north to the city of Himera and exiled its tyrant, Terillus, who
therewith appealed to the Carthaginians for assistance. The Battle of Himera, pitting
the forces of the Carthaginian Hamilcar against Gelon and Theron, took place in 480
15
BCE, reportedly on the same day as the Battle of Salamis.
Gelon and Theron triumphed, and the latter installed his son, Thrasydaeus, to rule
in Himera. Two years later, Gelon died, and rule eventually passed to his brother
Hieron, who dissolved the alliance with Theron.16 Pindar, Simonides, and Aeschylus
were frequent visitors to these courts. Soon after his ascension, the people of Himera
appealed to Hieron to assist them against Thrasydaeus. Hieron instead informed
Theron, who in turn massacred many Himerians. Around 473 BCE, Theron died, and
the people of Acragas and Himera overthrew and exiled Thrasydaeus in 472 BCE,
forging democracies around 470 BCE that lasted until Carthaginian conquest in 406
BCE. In 467 BCE, Hieron died, and for a brief period in the following year, power was
assumed by a fourth brother, Thrasybulus. Thrasybulus was soon overthrown, and
democracy lasted in Syracuse until circa 405 BCE. Legends locate the rise of Corax and
Tisias within this period; both Thrasydaeus and Thrasybulus became known for
legendary cruelty.
As aforementioned, a folkloristic perspective would look for patterns and themes
shared between narratives, even when the dramatis personae are different. In the case
of folklore concerning Empedocles, anecdotes of his political activity and rhetorical
prowess share many features with the folklore of Corax and Tisias, and with the poet
Stesichorus of Himera, who opposed the encroaching tyranny of Phalaris. As the
latters narrative is told in Aristotles Rhetoric,
[w]hen the people of Himera had chosen Phalaris as dictator and were about to
give him a bodyguard, after saying other things at some length, Stesichorus
told them a fable about how a horse had a meadow to himself. When a stag came
and quite damaged the pasture, the horse, wanting to avenge himself on the stag,
asked a man if he could help him get vengeance on the stag. The man said he could
if the horse were to submit to a bit and he himself were to mount on him, holding
javelins. When the horse agreed and the man mounted, instead of getting
vengeance the horse found himself a slave to the man. Thus you too, said
Stesichorus, look out, lest while wishing vengeance on your enemies you suffer the
same thing as the horse. You already have the bit [in your mouth], having
appointed a general with absolute power; if you give him a bodyguard and allow
him to mount, you will immediately be slaves to Phalaris.17
To be precise, Stesichorus objects to Phalaris before his tyranny, whereas Empedocles

and Corax rise up after its fall. Still, like Empedocles apocryphal biography,
Stesichorus was forced into exile for his political actions. Many other legends
surround Stesichorus; for this essay, most pivotal are his attribution as inventor of the
heroic hymn, his blindness (and the eventual restoration of his sight) for insulting
Helen, and the assertion in the Suda that his real name is Tisias, Stesichorus (which
means chorus-master) being a nickname.18
Elsewhere, I have indicated that Thomas Coles reconstruction of Korax as a
nickname for Tisias (the other legendary inventors of rhetoric) was correct, and
that the titling references the raven (not the crow), the bird stained black by Apollo
for employment of deceptive language such as snitching and lying.19 Read together
with the legends of Empedocles and Stesichorus, a rudimentary pattern emerges of a
heroic Sicilian man of words who resists cruel sovereignty through his art (table 1).20
This representation supports the claim that Empedocles served, partially, as a sort
of folk hero in narratives about resistance to tyranny, tied especially to Apollo and to
Corax. They establish reasons for the depiction of Empedocles as the inventor of
rhetoric, upheld by Quintilian nearly two centuries before Diogenes:
For Empedocles is said to have been the first, after those mentioned by the poets, to
have stimulated things with respect to rhetoric. But the earliest technical writers
[artium scriptores antiquissimi] were Corax and Tisias, Sicilians; they were followed
by Gorgias of Leontini, also a Sicilian, who was according to tradition a student
[discipulus] of Empedocles.21
For his part, Diogenes proffers a similar narrative and cites Empedocles himself as
evidence:
Satyrus says in his Biographies that [Empedocles] was also a doctor and a first-rate
public speaker; Gorgias of Leontini, at any rate, was his student, and he [Gorgias]
was a man exceptional for rhetorical skill and author of a treatise on the topic. In
his Chronology Apollodorus says that Gorgias lived to the age of one hundred and
nine. Satyrus says that Gorgias said that he was present while Empedocles practised
wizardry. And he himself [Empedocles] makes this and many other announcements
in his poetry, where he says:
All the potions which there are as a defence against evils and old age,
you shall learn, since for you alone will I accomplish all these things.
You shall put a stop to the strength of tireless winds,
which rush against the land and wither the fields with their blasts;
and again, if you wish, you shall bring the winds back again;
and you shall make, after dark rain, a drought timely
for men, and after summer drought you shall make
tree-nourishing streams which dwell in the air;
and you shall bring from Hades the strength of a man who has died.22
Purifying Rhetoric
237
Table 1 Motifs of the Sicilian Man-of-Words Legend.
A man who is (a) skilled with words, who (b) invents a discursive practice, and who is (c)
nicknamed for (d) a connection to the god Apollo, challenges (e) a cruel tyrant who (f) rules a
Sicilian city, and then (g) is punished for (h) another discursive practice.
Motif
Variant 1
Variant 2
Variant 3
A man
(a) skilled with words
Tisias
poet
Tisias
rhetorician
(b) invents a discursive practice

(c) nicknamed
(d) connected to Apollo
heroic hymn
Stesichorus
music
poetry
Phalaris
Himera
Empedocles
poet
rhetorician
rhetoric
Kolusanemas
healing
(e) challenges a tyrant

(f) ruling a Sicilian city
(g) and then is punished
(h) for a discursive practice
blinded
exiled
slander
oratory
Thrasydaeus
Himera
and Acragas
exiled
reincarnated
oratory
perjury
rhetoric
Korax
courts
Thrasybulus
Syracuse*
*
*
*The bird korax is associated closely with Apollo as a scapegoat, and is stained for snitching or
lying.
To the contemporary eye, the citation of wizardry and potions as evidence of

rhetorical prowess may seem fantastical to the point of absurdity, but they are
fundamental to the Greek concept of rhetoric and should be to any postmodern
inspiration drawn from Empedocles. For the ancients, rhetoric was related to poetry,
healing, and magic, and hence, we need to consider how the legends of Empedocles as
a poet and physician-magus might play into this interpretation.23
In addition to Empedocles surviving poetry, Diogenes remarks (citing Aristotles
now lost On Poets) that Empedocles employed metaphors and other tricks of the
poetic art, and attributes several tragedies, a poem on Xerxes expedition in the
Persian War, and a Hymn to Apollo, intentionally burned by his sister or daughter.24
Empedocles reputation as a healer spans the thin line separating medicine and magic.
The Suda reports that he produced a medical work, and Galen identifies him with the
Italian school of doctors; Pliny and the Suda also record his problematic relation with
Acron the physician.25
Several stories of miraculous healing or actions are told about Empedocles.
Diogenes, for example, offers three.26 In the first, the Etesian winds were so vehement
as to destroy the crops; Empedocles ordered that asses be skinned and their hides
made into bags, stretched across mountaintops and ridges to stop the winds. For this,
he was given his nickname, Kolusanemas, the wind stopper. The second is that
Empedocles cured a woman who was in a trance state, keeping her alive without
breath or pulse for thirty days before restoring her to life; for this, he was called both
a physician (iatros) and a prophet (mantis). The third chronicles that the city of
Selinus suffered a plague due to the stench of a nearby river; Empedocles ended the
plague by diverting two nearby rivers into the original at his own expense and was
thereby hailed as though a god by the citys inhabitants.
These descriptions are significant, as they associate Empedocles with Apollo, the
god of healing, the arts, and eloquence (who is otherwise not identified directly in the
surviving Empedoclean texts).27 Perhaps the most salient connection between
Empedocles and Apollo derives from his reported association with the pre-Socratic
philosopher Pythagoras, as Apollo was the patron god of the Pythagorean
movement.28 Iamblichus, in his Life of Pythagoras, logs a miraculous incident in
which Empedocles prevented a murder by playing a soothing tune with the lyre
(Apollos favored musical instrument, which he bartered from Hermes):
A young man had already drawn his sword on his host Anchitus, because he had
publicly condemned and put to death his father, and in his state of confusion and
anger charged at him with the sword raised to strike Anchitus . . . Empedocles
retuned his lyre and by playing a soothing and sedating tune he immediately struck
up what Homer calls pain-dissolving, anger-soothing music, which makes one
forget everything bad; thus he rescued his host Anchitus from death and the
young man from murder. The young man is said to have become from that day on
the most famous of Empedocles followers.29
Besides Empedocles (again nicknamed the wind stopper, alexanemos), Iamblichus (and Porphyry) identifies two other miracle workers in Pythagorass train:
Epimenides (nicknamed the expiator), and Abaris (nicknamed the air walker).
Epimenides is a quasi-historical figure, but Abaris, who possesses a dart or arrow
given to him by or found in a temple of Apollo, is overly mythical. The dart or arrow
is often associated with those Apollo used to slay the Cyclopes in vengeance for their
having manufactured the thunderbolts with which Zeus slew Apollos son, the healer
Asclepius, following his impiety in raising the dead. Apollos arrow provided its
possessor, among other things, with the ability to travel on the winds, cure plagues,
and give oracles. According to Iamblichus, upon meeting Pythagoras, Abaris
returned the arrow to him.
Their association did not end there. In an elaborate tale concerning Pythagorass
irresistible frankness (parresias anupostatou), Iamblichus substitutes Abaris and
Pythagoras for Stesichorus, when they debate the tyrant Phalaris.30 Pythagoras
answered [Phalaris] in a truly inspired manner, with complete truth and
persuasiveness, so as to bring those listening over to his side.31 For this oratorical
display, Abaris regarded Pythagoras not as a sorcerer (ethaumazen), but rather as like
a god (an theon). Phalaris responded with impious, blasphemous actions. Pythagoras
then explained divine communication, the nature of the soul, and bodily diseases, all
while Phalaris threatened to put them to death. On the very day Phalaris ordered
them executed, he himself was slain. Thus Pythagoras liberated the people, fulfilling
an oracle of Apollo that the overthrow of Phalaris rule would occur when his
subjects became more powerful, more in agreement, and united with one another.
And such they became when Pythagoras was present.32 This story conforms to the
general pattern detailed above.
Purifying Rhetoric
239
The life of Pythagoras, akin to Empedocles, is replete with legendary and mythical
material, and the two conflate easily in folkloric narratives. Pythagoras was long
associated with Apollo*in some accounts, he is regarded as the god incarnate,
particularly as Apollo Paeon (the healer).33 According to Iamblichuss biography,
Pythagoras inspired love of liberty against tyranny in Sicily (including among the
citizens of Himera and Acragas), was the inventor of friendship, won several
cases in court or otherwise demonstrated oratorical prowess, and lived*and
remembered*past lives. Pythagoras was especially pious and known to cure by
music, a point Iamblichus reports that Empedocles praised. Pythagoras reportedly
declared that music contributes to health as a form of purification*medical
treatment through music, both physical and psychological.34
It also brings to the fore a complex nexus of associations between healing,
specialized and artistic language use, and piety. In this tale, Phalaris is impious, and
punished for it, while Pythagoras and Abaris remain pious. This point may help
contextualize the line in Diogenes that Gorgias was present while Empedocles
practiced wizardry (goeteuonti). Both M. R. Wright and Ava Chitwood read this as
not complimentary, noting the negative connotations of the word for wizard
(goes).35 Peter Kingsley reads this account positively, however, adducing that even if
Gorgias had been referring primarily to his teachers uncanny rhetorical powers and
mastery of the spoken word . . . this reference of his is inseparable from Empedocles
own claims to magical powers and would no doubt have gained extra force for just
that reason.36
Whether this passage is evidence for Empedocles status as a magus is beyond the
scope of this essay. It may say more about Gorgias, whose Encomium of Helen directly
addresses witchcraft, than Empedocles.37 Yet in his own work, Empedocles
admonishes against traditional views of the gods, attributes divine status to all living
beings, upholds Aphrodite over Zeus, and describes sacrifice*the most important
aspect of ancient religion*as abomination. His boast to teach ways to restore the
dead balances on a dangerously precarious line, as myths of Asclepius reveal. But
Empedocles escapes associations with impiety, and even if the wizardry comment is
negative, such connotation is very rare for him, who, like Pythagoras, is usually
depicted as piously performing deeds of purification. To explain, I must summarize
the remaining aspects of the Asclepius myth.
It begins when Apollo consorted with Koronis and conceived Asclepius. Koronis,
however, had an affair with a mortal man. The raven (korax), then a white bird,
snitched on her, looking for gain; in vengeful anger, Apollo stained the korax black
and slew Koronis, but rescued the infant from her womb on the funeral pyre. Apollo
brought Asclepius to Chiron the centaur, who taught him the healing arts, and
Athena gave Asclepius a pharmakon, the blood of the Gorgon, bearing the power to
heal and to kill depending on its use. When Apollo slew the Cyclopses in the wake of
Asclepiuss death, Zeus intended to imprison him in Tartarus, a realm of horrific
punishment. Persuaded otherwise, Zeus sentenced Apollo to exile and servitude to a
mortal man. Apollo became a herdsman for Admetus, king of Pherae, and rewarded
Admetuss tremendous magnanimity with many acts of purification and by helping
him cheat death; Apollo inebriated the Fates and secured a promise from them to let
another die in Admetuss place. Only his wife, Alcestis, was willing to do so. Later,
when Admetus demonstrated his generosity and hospitality to Heracles, the hero
went into the realm of the dead and rescued Alcestis.
What might all of this have to do with Empedocles and with rhetoric? Folkloric
narratives are not codes to crack; they bear singular meanings no more than modern
films or novels. But myths also work by rhizomatic association, not logical
progression; hence, we may look for patterns of connections. For example, this
myth demonstrates similarities to Empedocles fragments: healing practices, revealed
secrets of life and death, judgment and punishment of divinity to the mortal world
for acts of violence. It also relates to the hospitality of political rulers in legends about
Sicily; Admetus is the counterpoint to Phalaris and other tyrants who host divine
beings known for healing and skill with words. And unlike the korax who seeks
personal gain, Apollos artistry cleanses the community and aids the generous. Apollo
also opposes what he takes to be the cruel sovereignty of Zeus, eventually yields to his
judgment, and thereafter finds a way to manipulate the rules, echoing the theme of
resistance to tyranny.
This is not to imply that Empedocles had Apollo in mind for his philosophical
compositions; quite the contrary, philological evidence points otherwise. But it does
support the possibility that the character of Empedocles, wrought from a candidacy
established in his works, elided well with Apollonian themes as his life passed into
legend and myth. While both run the risk of destabilizing the world order, ultimately
they uphold piety and promote purification, a means of removing a state of
pollution in which an individual, family, or city would find itself as the result of
committing a certain kind of forbidden action (manslaughter, for example), or failing
to perform a required one (such as sacrifices).38 Purification is important not only
for the individual actors, but for the entire community. Simon Trepanier deftly
observes a similar theme in Empedocles response to Parmenides. In Parmenides
poem, he writes,
Parmenides is the mortal recipient of a goddesss teachings. Empedocles, however,
as himself a god is the authority for his teachings, while Pausanias and the friends
from Acragas are the mortal recipients of his divine revelation. But that is not
all . . . While Parmenides rode a chariot beyond Night and Day, far from the beaten
track of men . . . Empedocles the god travels from outside, back into the
community. While Parmenides the mortal had to reach the ends of the world to
find true persuasion, Empedocles persuasion leaps into the breasts of mortal
men . . . [W]here Parmenides seems to imply that truth and the divine must be
sought beyond humanity, Empedocles stresses the reintegration of truth and the
divine to the human community and to man himself.39
This Apollonian myth thus points to rhetoric itself, especially as the power of
marked speech or as the moral force constituting boundaries of the natural and social
order*conventions and ambiguities of meaning, piety and impiety, purification and
pollution, being and non-being, life and death*in short, of judgment, human and
divine. Associations with performers in the courts are also salient, for Apollo is, of
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course, the advocate who defends Orestes from matricide in the Eumenides, thereby
curing him (and the city) of pollution and establishing justice.40 In all of these
narratives, we find legends and myths demonstrating resistance to cruel tyranny,
especially as it pollutes society, but whose cure always runs the risk of even greater
pollution if not performed properly. If we wish to understand the origins of
rhetoric in ancient Greece or draw inspiration from its culture for our theorizing, we
do well to pay heed to its folklore.
Plato certainly did so; the final statement of Gorgias is a stellar example of his
reconfigurations. Callicles and Socrates have long debated the nature of justice, and
Callicles raises the point that Socrates may be put to death for what he says against
those in power. Socrates agrees, but reasons that such a trial would be akin to a
physician (iatros) tried by children on a charge brought by a cook who wishes to
profit from their gorging. Such a physician, attests Socrates, could either say nothing
or speak the truth*that he cares about the childrens health*but neither would
escape conviction. Callicles wonders if such a man is a resource to the community.
Socrates confirms he is, declaring that a pious man would not choose to escape death
by employing flattering rhetoric (kolakikes rhetorikes); indeed, he continues, only the
wicked fear death.
To illustrate, Socrates tells a story he takes as truth (logos), but which he thinks
Callicles will take as fable (muthos). In the reign of Kronos, it was determined that
souls of the dead would be judged; those found just would go to the Isle of the
Blessed (makaron), those unjust to Tartarus. When Zeus became ruler, Pluton
(Hades) and the inhabitants of the isle lamented that cases were being judged
erroneously. Zeus saw the problem: living men were judging living men. To rectify
this, Zeus decreed that humans would no longer have foreknowledge of their death,
that they would be stripped naked before judgment (so as not to hide a wicked soul in
a fair body), and that the judges would themselves be naked, assigning three of his
sons to the task. Socrates interprets this story to mean that death is nothing other
than the separation of two things, the soul and the body, from each other.41 The
judges will decide if the soul has atoned properly in life and if it stands curable or
incurable, thereupon assigning it to the Isle of the Blessed or to Tartarus. Those found
frequently in the latter are tyrants, kings, potentates, and public administrators*for,
as Socrates explains, the majority of potentates . . . become bad, using their
exceptional freedom for injustice.42 Conversely, Socrates submits that his soul is in
the best of health; Gorgias closes with an invitation for all to embrace such robust life.
The parallels with Empedocles fragments and folklore, as well as Apollos myths, are
consistent and compelling.
Empedocles Surviving Work
It is remarkably difficult to summarize Empedocles thought.43 It survives only in
fragments, themselves situated in texts spanning centuries, and is often quoted for
purposes alien to Empedocles. Modern scholars are not unified interpreting his work.
Until recently, for example, most believed he composed two poems, On Nature and
Purifications; evidence now suggests a single poem, but this remains contentious.
Length constraints prevent elaboration of every proposition found in Empedocles.
A general overview, however, is warranted, for as Brad Inwood comments,
Empedocles felt the need to integrate his understanding of the natural world with
a message about the way life was to be lived.44 Redress and purification of violence is
a sine qua non of his philosophy.
Empedocles states that humanity*indeed, all living beings*are divinities exiled
from the realm of the blessed ones (makaron) for shedding blood and swearing
falsely. These divinities are not immortal gods in the Olympian sense but long-lived
daimones, a term for intermediary creatures between mortals and immortals. So
exiled, the daimon wanders for thrice ten thousand seasons away from the blessed
ones, growing to be all sorts of forms of mortal things through time, interchanging
the hard paths of life*in short, metempsychosis.45 The best incarnations, those
closest to the gods and immortals, are of lions and laurel trees, and among humanity,
of prophets, bards, physicians, and leaders of men. All of this is in accord with
universal law (panton nomimon).
Empedocles himself avows, I too am now one of these, an exile from the gods and
a wanderer, trusting in mad strife, but one who remembers former incarnations as a
boy, girl, bush, bird, and fish.46 The realm from which the daimones originated is
ruled by Kupris (a name for Aphrodite) rather than by Ares, Zeus, Kronos, or
Poseidon*that is, a goddess of love rather than gods of warfare. No animal sacrifices
take place there, for all creatures share loving friendship (philophrosune). Empedocles
further describes the wetting of altars with the blood of bulls as the greatest
abomination among men and ascribes his own exile to terrible deeds done with his
claws for the sake of food.47
Lifes purpose, then, is to purify oneself and by such expiation be relieved from the
wretchedness of this world, perhaps even to escape it. This involves a number of
practices to fast from wickedness.48 Prime among prohibitions is avoidance of
bloodshed, including sacrifice and consumption of animals, which Empedocles
describes as parents and children killing and eating one another. Will you not desist
from harsh-sounding bloodshed? he asks. Do you not see that you are devouring
each other in the heedlessness of your understanding?49 Expiation also involves
learning the truth about the nature of the gods and the cosmos, a task not easily
accomplished, for most people having seen [only] a small portion of life in their
experience . . . soar and fly off like smoke, swift to their dooms, each one convinced
of only that very thing which he has chanced to meet, as they are driven in all
directions. But Beach boasts of having seen the whole.50
Empedocles reveals the truth. The cosmos consists of six eternal characters: four
roots and two forces of change. The four roots are earth, water, aither, and fire*
Empedocles offers the first record of this in western history. In another fragment, he
assigns names of gods to the roots: Zeus, Hera, Aidoneus (another name for Hades),
and Nestis. The correspondence between gods and roots has been a point of
controversy since antiquity, complicated by occasional usage of Hephaistos as a
replacement. The two sources of change are Love (Philia) and Strife (Neikos), but the
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former is also called Aphrodite and her various appellations. Considerable debate has
arisen concerning their nature, but most contemporary scholars agree they are moral
as well as mechanical forces of change. Love is the source of attraction; Strife, of
separation. All other things in the cosmos are mixtures of the roots by Love and
Strife, from blood (an equal mixture of all four roots) to celestial bodies.
The cosmos itself oscillates between periods when Love holds total domination and
all things are brought together in a sphere to when Strife dominates and all things
are separated in a whirl. There are lengthy periods between: one that moves from the
sphere to the whirl in a succession of increasing strife, and one that reverses
the process. Our world is in the period escalating toward Strifes domination.
Throughout both, mixtures combine in different ways to form living beings in stages;
it is in this manner that Empedocles comments on astronomy, the generation of
creatures, embryology, and physiology, especially respiration, involving an exchange
in bodily tubes between blood and air, and for which Empedocles utilizes the
metaphor of a clepsydra. A similar theory of pores explains perception and cognition,
for thought comes from blood. The physical body matters to Empedocles, even with
his emphasis on metempsychosis.
His theory of perception leads Empedocles to conclude that human understanding
is limited by what is present for interaction, and so humans always find their
thinking too providing different things.51 Fools (nepioi, a term also denoting
children) are humans who are unwise and believe that what previously was not
comes to be or that anything dies and is utterly destroyed.52 This assertion concerns
Empedocles subtle response to Parmenides, who proposed two utterly distinct realms
of existence (Being and Non-Being), but it also charges perspectivism as the common
human condition. Limited thusly, humans employ names (onomazetai) such as
growth or descriptions of birth and death to principles they do not understand (for
there is no growth, only mixture, just as there is only attraction and separation).
Empedocles accordingly admonishes against discourse poured out in a vain stream
from the tongues in the mouths of many, who have seen little of the whole.53
Nowhere in the surviving fragments does Empedocles systematically comment on
the nature of rhetoric, nor address languages power, nor offer a theory of discourse
or communication. His account of limited human perception does, however, offer
some insight into a rhetorical perspective. Noting, for example, that humans speak
improperly in describing birth and death, he nevertheless admits, I myself also
assent to their convention (nomo d epiphemi kai autos), although the meaning here
is problematic.54 Plutarch, in Against Colotes, explains that by this, Empedocles
recognizes the importance of conventional meanings of words, and hence while he
taught that such a perspective was incorrect, he did not remove the use of
accustomed terms for them.55
Other fragments hint at similar awareness of conventional terms necessary for
persuasion. While Empedocles assumes the truth of his words and warns against
deception, he also recognizes the difficulty of his task, for it is very hard indeed for
men, and resented, the flow of persuasion [pistios orme*orme also denotes a military
march] into their thought organ, and bad men [kakoi] are strongly inclined to
disbelieve the strong [krateousin, meaning here a prevailing truth].56 Moreover, [i]t
is not achievable that we should approach with our eyes or grasp with our hands, by
which the greatest road of persuasion [megiste peithous amaxitos] extends to mens
thought organ.57
These three fragments derive from the second-century-CE Christian theologian
Clement of Alexandrias Stromateis, which sought to suture pagan philosophy and
Christian revelation. Empedocles quotation concerning the flow of persuasion is
set within his chapter On Faith, which reasons that humans must learn the way of
truth through faith. As examples, Clement cites Numa, the Roman king reported to
be a Pythagorean, and Abraham. He then praises and quotes Empedocles. He follows
with citations from 1 Corinthians professing faith in God rather than men, Heraclitus
against lies, and Plato on the purification of the earth by fire and water. Likewise, the
quotation concerning the road of persuasion appears in a chapter titled God
Cannot Be Embraced in Words or by the Mind; therein, Clement discusses how God
exists outside the range of the senses, thereby requiring belief.
Clement cites the quotation regarding bad men in his chapter The Objects of
Faith and Hope Perceived by the Mind Alone. He argues that wisdom might need to
be hidden from the foolish or presented in their own terms, for people only learn like
through like. Of several supporting biblical citations, most telling is Clements
connection between Empedocles and 1 Corinthians 9:22, in which Paul declares he is
a Jew among Jews, a law-abider among law-abiders, an outlaw among outlaws, and a
weak man among the weak, all to win them over to the gospel. Clement interprets
Empedocles as making a case for rhetorical sophistication, if not outright sophistry.
Whether his interpretation is sound*certainly it is motivated by a particular
perspective*is not at issue. What is important is that the three most reasonable
candidates to engage Empedocles notions of rhetoric, along with Plutarchs
commentary on a fourth, predicate that persuasion is difficult and thereby warrant
tactical use of conventional language to speak as does ones audience.
Plutarch and Clement are considerably later interpreters of Empedocles. It is
necessary to consider, therefore, earlier depictions of his contributions to rhetoric or
to sophistry. Platos general response is complicated and, as Trepanier states, includes
both respectful borrowing and parodying in such works as Symposium, Politicus,
Meno, Theaetetus, Phaedo, and Phaedrus.58 In Sophist, for example, the Visitor
comments on philosophers who tell us a myth, as if we were children, insisting the
cosmos comprises many things or one thing. He then remarks that certain Ionian and
Sicilian muses (muosai) combined both ideas and say that that which is is both
many and one, and is bound by both hatred [echthra] and friendship [philia].59
While not condemning Empedocles, Plato locates him within a tradition of fluid
allegiance to the many and the one.
Isocrates and Aristotle are far more critical of Empedocles, but there are scant
references to his rhetorical or presumably sophistic practices in their works. Isocrates
in Antidosis warns young men not to be stranded in the discourses of the older
sophists, who propose different interpretations of the number of elements
constituting the cosmos; Empedocles and Gorgias serve as primary examples.60
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Isocrates does recommend some time on matters of such philosophy, but not at the
expense of the studies he outlines, comparing what others say as resembl[ing]
wonder-workings [thaumatopiiais], which provide no benefit but attract crowds of
the ignorant. His dismissal, then, is one of practicality and moral integrity as would
serve citizens of the polis, for those who wish to do something useful must rid all
their activities of pointless discourse and irrelevant action.61 While this may be
understood as Isocrates competition with other philosophers of his time, it should
not be overlooked by those who seek to appropriate either for contemporary
inspiration. It demonstrates, I think, what is at stake in the current attraction to
Isocrates by rhetorical theorists and critics, namely an attentiveness to pragmatic and
civic concerns such as the forging of an active citizenry and an education predicated
on such morality. But it also dismisses a host of activities as irrelevant to the political
domain, activities that themselves should not be overlooked simply because he
regards them as marginal to the political institutions of Athenian (and a unified
Greek) society.
Aristotle frequently quotes Empedocles*only Plato is referenced more*but most
citations involve critical discussions of Empedocles cosmology.62 Aristotle does take
brief aim at his language practices in Rhetoric and Poetics. In the former, Empedocles
serves as Aristotles example of the use of obscurity (i.e., amphibolies) when
[people] have nothing to say but are pretending to say something, such as
philosophers who employ poetry.63 He compares this rhetorical technique to oracles,
which also may be interpreted in multiple ways. In Poetics, Aristotle describes the
convention of calling anyone who composes in verse a poet, but further quips that the
only thing Homer and Empedocles share is meter64; elsewhere, he cites Empedocles
examples of metaphor. His criticism of the title of poet lingers. The scholion to the
grammarian Dionysius Thrax, for example, follows Aristotle in proclaiming that not
everyone who uses meter is a poet. His two examples are Empedocles, as composer of
natural philosophy, and Apollo, as giver of oracles.65
Although the work (Sophist) in which Aristotle reportedly named Empedocles the
discoverer of rhetoric is lost, other comments might shed light on his ascription. In
Sophistic Refutations, Aristotle explains what discovery of a practice entails.66 The
first step of nearly all discoveries, he construes, is a small advance, but one much
more useful than all later additions. His example is rhetoric, in which he expounds
the celebrities of his day are largely superfluous, enjoying a tradition handed down
and appended from Tisias, who followed the discoverers. He also takes issue with the
ways professors of rhetoric such as Gorgias teach not an art, but products, giving their
students speeches to memorize and imitate. Aristotle further mentions Empedocles in
the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics.67 In both, he recounts Empedocles assertion
of the principle of like to like in the context of friendship (philia) and dismisses him
on grounds of treating philia as a matter of natural science rather than of human
character and emotion.68 In the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle also mentions Empedocles
arguing the principle through the example of a dogs preference to sit on floor tiles
that matches its fur color, thereby advancing a basic notion of mimicry.
In summary, Empedocles surviving fragments offer only passing references to the

processes of suasion or language practices, and any attempt to read them as
incontrovertible evidence that Empedocles invented, taught, or theorized rhetoric is
an overreach. But Empedocles own work is adaptable to contemporary rhetorical
studies. His theory of moral forces of attraction and separation, emphasis on like to
like, and hierarchy of knowledge admitting perspectivism in discourse, while not
traditional rhetorical studies, demonstrates early seeding. And if taken together,
Isocrates, Aristotle, Plutarch, and Clement advance an interpretation of his work
resonating with the Sophists in reliance on convention to persuade a particular
audience as an extension of like to like. Similar ratifications could be made for
Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Xenophanes, however, so as Robert Wardy
admonishes, any attribution of rhetoric to pre-Socratic philosophers must be made
with extreme reserve.69 Still, this point strengthens the claim that contemporary
rhetorical scholars should reexamine the pre-Socratics and other figures (marginalized or mainstream) in antiquity for inspiration.
An Empedoclean Legacy in Rhetorical Studies
What might an Empedocles-inspired rhetorical studies look like, and how might it
serve as a corrective to an Isocratean emphasis that generally limits rhetorical action
to the education, formation, and interaction of citizens? How might the narratives
and surviving work of Empedocles inform and point to new avenues for the various
postmodern and neo-Sophistic rhetorical movements still developing in the early
twenty-first century? As we consider these pressing questions, it is helpful to examine
how the contributions of Empedocles have been conceptualized to date.
Arguably, Clara Smertenko offered the first serious consideration of his work, in
which she argued that the attribution of rhetorics discovery to him refers to a
practice of speechmaking that influenced later thinkers.70 This very general
assessment continued throughout the twentieth century, including the histories of
rhetorics origin written separately by George Kennedy and Edward Schiappa, each of
which only briefly mention Empedocles.71 Richard Enos likewise observes a tradition
linking Empedocles to the Sophists through stylistic and arrangement practices, but
offered several provocative extensions regarding Empedocles as a promoter of critical
and self-conscious awareness about human abilities. Enos depicts Empedocles as
inventing a rhetoric grounded in dissoi logoi, an alternative to Aristotlean techne,
although his supporting evidence is scant. He further suggests*prematurely, I
think*that Empedocles gave advice on rhetoric, but his discussion represents a
unique attempt to incorporate Empedocles into the canon.72
C. Jan Swearingen only glimpses on Empedocles in her study of rhetoric and irony,
but this observation is notable. Examining the Preplatonics, she registers
Empedocles particular contribution to both poetic idiom and a formative relativism.
In a later study of Diotima, Swearingen seeks to establish grounds for the substantial
ties between love and discourse, desire and rhetoric by turning to traces of
Pythagorean teachings and parallel themes in Empedocles.73 She juxtaposes
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fragments of the latter with quotations from Platos Phaedrus and Symposium,
particularly as they reveal Love as a daimon moving between human and divine.
This is a very productive contribution, as it accomplishes several maneuvers
necessary to draw from the ancients. First, Swearingen offers a case for reading
beyond the traditional rhetorical canon. Second, she examines ancient texts in a
comparative rather than competitive manner, exploring relations between the
ancients, even as she recognizes their antagonisms toward each other. Finally, by
placing the stress on love (understood in the ancient Greek sense as the power of
attraction and arousal of bodily and emotional desires), she readies the stage for a
discussion of rhetorics potential to reduce violence by promoting identifications
between living beings. In this, Swearingen offers a connection to bridge Empedocles
and Burke.
Although I would argue that Burkes general intellectual temperament could be
properly understood as Empedoclean, I wish here to examine a particular series of
contributions that he offered spanning the decade of the 1950s, during which he
engages questions of tragedy, catharsis, entelechy, myth, and even mysticism.
Admittedly, Burke does not often allude to Empedocles in the corpus of his work,
and usually does so within the context of Matthew Arnolds poem dedicated to his
death on Etna. Still, Burkes interest is noteworthy in that his reference to Empedocles
as a poetic symbol was published in a 1948 article, The Imagery of Killing, a
rumination on both tragic exterminations and identification (such as the suicidal
motive of Empedocles) that later formed the opening chapter of A Rhetoric of
Motives.
The Imagery of Killing considers the notion of identification between an author
and a character appearing in an artistic work. Such analysis fits well within Burkes
project on motives, in that he examines how even tragic identifications with those
who commit suicide, murder, or war may bear a cathartic and transcendent potential.
Burke reiterates that such use of literature is akin to magic, and he envisions within
such actions a desire to transform principles or traits of oneself found problematic or
evil. For Burke, however, such desire may be vented in horrific ways when taken
outside of the domain of art, as with the Nazi purging of Jews as scapegoats. And in
the conclusion to this article, Burke presents several remarkable suggestions regarding
the abuses of artistic imagery.
First, Burke criticizes attempts to categorize humans by personality types. He
counters that it would be more productive to hire poets to present all the ways the
world might end rather than employ them to convince citizens to yearn for
commodities. The aim of this playful suggestion is to prevent the citizenry from
having too local a view of themselves and to adopt a more global perspective for
collective action in facing the conceivable ends of the world.74 Second, he takes
umbrage with violent films and their potential impact on the socialization of children
into adolescence and adulthood. For Burke, these films present brutality as virtuous
and betray the ancient cathartic arts, especially when they rely on a documentary
rather than fictive style. Finally, he concludes that future work must concern rhetoric,
not only because it is the means through which humans articulate strife, but also
because it presents the possibility of advancing various expressions of love (strife

and love being his terms).
These interests continued throughout the decade. For example, in a study of
Othello published one year after A Rhetoric of Motives, Burke began to consider the
significance of the pharmakon and its related form, kartharma (the unclean
phenomena disposed of during a ritual cleansing or sacrifice). Similarly, in Three
Definitions, published in 1951, he commenced an examination of sparagmos (ritual
dismemberment) as it relates to the principle of division. And in Form and
Persecution in the Oresteia, published in 1952, he indexes an important difference
between an Isocratean and Empedoclean spirit.75 For Burke, the promise of the
Orestes trilogy is that it represents violence in order to purge rather than encourage a
desire for it. He argues that tensions are inescapable in society, and therefore the
poetic arts must continually adapt to those tensions rather than ignore them.
Moreover, although the dramas engage civic tensions, they do so from the vantage
point of more broad social relations (such as friendship and kinship) as represented
through the myths. Disorders within the actual polis are worked out as they reflect
cosmic relations, and hence while tragedy is a useful cure to treat civic and political
tensions, it is not limited to those spheres.
Finally, Burke notes that such tension is inherent to language, but just as language
may be used to stoke these problems, it may also be used to address them. In his
consideration of Apollos role in the trial of Orestes, for example, Burke espies the
power of a rhetorician (and of rhetoric in tandem with poetics) as a means to
constitute justice rather than to resort to old notions of violence. The purpose of
myths, then, is not just to correct civic tensions, but to address universal human
concerns as a means to heal divisions produced by language use itself. This is one
reason why Burke objects to art that hides its fictive nature in documentary form; in
attempting to become too local, it loses its ability to call human motives into
question or to make a case for human or even cosmic connections.
Three years after Burke published his comments on the Oresteia, he turned his
attention to a Linguistic Approach to Problems of Education. Therein, he agrees
with a comment from a reviewer that his agenda is to translate war into a linguistic
(and artistic) struggle in order to keep it from becoming a material one. To pursue
this task, he advocates an admonitory education (rather than a promissory one
that emphasizes only the acquisition of employment). Here, I think, is Burke at his
most Empedoclean:
Education, as so conceived, would be primarily admonitory. It would seek to
become a sophisticated and methodized set of parables, or fables. Noting how
mans distinctive trait, his way with symbols, is the source of both his typical
accomplishments and his typical disabilities, education as so conceived would be
first and foremost of a divided mind, and would seek to make itself at home in
such divisiveness.76
He continues in a tone that, mutatis mutandis, suggests the need to correct Isocrates
parochialism:
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This pragmatic emphasis [of promissory education] may not always be individualistically motivated. With the project of The Republic for the training of guardians,
for instance, the emphasis was rather in the direction of Platos yearning that
education might serve for the triumph of all Greek states, united in a common
cause against the barbarians. And nationalistic emphases in general would belong
here; for although there is conceivable an ideal world of nationalisms that would be
related to one another as peacefully as the varied portraits in an art gallery, we need
no very difficult fables to admonish us about the ever-ready dialectical resource
whereby national differences may become national conflicts.
Only a truly universal attitude toward educational purposes can modify this
intrinsically competitive emphasis. Such an attitude would be grounded in the
thought that all mankind has a major stake in the attempt to discipline any
tendencies making for the kind of war now always threatening.77
I cannot here detail all of Burkes suggestions for how this form of education*a
kind of smiling hypochondriasis, as he calls it*should unfold, nor can I detail its
echo with his program from decades before, but I do wish to emphasize that Burke
makes clear that any education that would help a citizenry become free necessitates
training in discounting rhetorical persuasiveness, demonstrating ways of democratically engaging others rather than advancing combat, and promoting international
cooperation by sharpening the sense that all men, as symbol-users, are of the same
substance, in contrast with nave views that in effect think of aliens as of a different
substance.78
When Burke suggests that an admonitory education might rely on fables, we
should question specifically what sort of folkloric resources could come to this aid.
Burke partially answers this concern in his return to Apollo and the Combat Myth.
He accomplishes this first in a review of the mythologist Joseph Fontenroses study
Python, followed by his Myth, Poetry, and Philosophy, both published in the
Journal of American Folklore in 1960. In these essays, Burke suggests the need to use
Fontenroses study in supererogatory ways, specifically as it reveals the ubiquity of
tensions inherent in language that foster comparable tensions inherent in human
society. Burke is interested, then, in asking the question Why the Combat Myth?
and in pursuing it across humanity. He suggests that its appeal is not strictly for
entertainment but is also moral, influencing the habits of its audiences, especially in
perfecting the principles of victimage and opposition.
For Burke, the worthy cause of criticism with respect to the combat myth would
begin in the recognition that [t]he problem of man as the symbol-using animal is
not a subject to be treated as settled.79 Ancient myths point, therefore, to issues still
prevalent in the contemporary human condition, and a critic will undertake a project
of unmasking them and addressing them whenever they occur:
If peace is ever to be attained in this world, it will be attained through an
educational system that can systematically study the principles underlying precisely
the ways whereby man, the symbol-using animal, makes his peculiar contributions
to the combat myth, in all its variations.80
Hence, while so few of these articles written by Burke attend to Empedocles directly,
they do revolve around the problem of violence and our redress of the cultivation of
warlike attitudes in the hopes of reducing them. For Burke, tensions will always arise
in human society, and these tensions may quickly become material violence,
especially under tyrannical (or undemocratic) conditions. The arts may provide a
catharsis for these tensions, but only if they are understood as a form of magic rather
than documentary science; this is so because the arts themselves grow out of the
tensions inherent in language use, and hence are a rhetoric that, like the pharmakon,
may be used as medicine or as poison. Furthermore, while these arts may satisfy
concerns at the civic level, they need not be limited to that domain, and rather ask
questions in more universal spirit, seeing tensions as human or even cosmic rather
than too local. Criticism and education, when functioning best, will attend to the task
of demonstrating this power of the arts, especially as a means to resist new formations
of the combat myth and to promote democratic engagements.
Burkes implicit incorporation of the themes that permeate both the folklore and
the surviving works of Empedocles presses us to conceive of an overtly inspired
Empedoclean rhetorical studies, especially as it might alter the recent appropriation
of Isocrates. Empedocles reminds us of the perennial issues, of course: the
relationship between rhetoric and poetics; between body and soul, and the
embodiment of emotion; and between rhetoric and political action. To this
conversation, Empedocles also calls attention to the relationship between rhetoric
and attraction (especially of like to like) and friendship. His attribution as discoverer
of rhetoric also reminds us that we must read beyond texts overtly identified as
rhetorical theory to understand ancient Greek contributions to our current and
future paradigm, three possibilities of which I wish to extend.
First, Empedocles reminds us that our task*perhaps our primary task*as
rhetorical theorists and critics is the redress of violence and tyrannical systems of
inequality (themselves an expression of violence), especially with an eye that resists
nationalism. The emphasis on humanity*of which citizenship is only one aspect*
alone separates an Empedoclean spirit from an Isocratean one, insofar as Isocrates
advocated a Greek identity that permitted violence against the outsider. Empedocles
offers a decidedly more ecumenical view, and a global understanding of the human
condition rather than one tied to ethnic or national identity. For Isocrates, the task is
to make citizens and a cultural group; he resolves the tension of human society in the
constitution of political beings, but such constitution alone is not the only solution to
living with others. For Empedocles, the task is to make human beings, if you will, and
to recognize and restore the divinity of those beings through the purification of their
tendencies toward violence. It is for this reason that an Empedocles-inspired
perspective would warrant both a critical perspective (of self and society) and an
emphasis on productive forms of loving, such as friendship. Friends, then, rather
than citizens, would be the formative constitution of political identity, and in so
offering this, Empedocles challenges the very obsession with citizenship (as a state of
being identified with the nation-state and its rights) inherent in liberalism.
Second, Empedocles advances the notion that rhetorical critics adopt the role of
social physicians. Michael Calvin McGee first pointed to this direction when he
drew attention to the differences between the work of a surgeon and a diagnostician
Purifying Rhetoric
251
in order to advocate an Isocratean spirit in opposition to a Platonic sensibility.81

There is, however, a limit to and possibly facile corruption of this surgical metaphor,
namely that it requires something (or some bodies) to be cut out of the social order
lest it fester. Empedocles offers a more holistic conceptualization that stands against
any implication of a healthy society predicated on the removal of certain people; an
Empedoclean attitude promotes the kind of hypochondria that Burke himself
advocated, for which a democratic advocate would be more concerned to protect the
health of a polity (and of an individual) from the advance of tyrannical systems such
as fascism rather than from presumably dangerous bodies. Conceived thusly, the
Empedoclean physician complements and tempers an Isocratean surgeon (and
recognizes surgery as a last resort), and further restores to rhetorical studies its
constitutive role in a broadly humanistic education rather than limit its influence to a
civic education.
To pursue this metaphor, we should more directly engage the ancient Greek
emphasis on the pharmakon, and rhetorics dual role in pollution and purification,
whether social or environmental. It is interesting*and, I think, not merely
coincidence*that Empedocles and Corax, two inventors of rhetoric, represent
different aspects of the pharmakon, the former purifying and the latter polluting. If
contemporary rhetorical theorists and critics wish to draw on the ancient Greeks or
those physicians of culture such as Nietzsche and Burke who themselves drew
poignantly from the ancients, we need to consider how any specific rhetorical
constitution may or may not serve as a medicine or as a poison, and how that
rhetorical action helps or harms in a given situation.82 Rather than adopt Isocratean
virtues outright, I suggest that we attend to discouraging the arts that poison and
promoting those that cure, recognizing that any critical rhetoric performed with such
an agenda would necessitate discussion of how it conceives poisons and medicines. In
brief, an Empedoclean attitude directs rhetoricians to the task of healing.
In extension, I would argue that Empedocles*whether in the fragments, or
folklore, or modern reception*further reminds contemporary rhetoricians to purify
themselves of scientism and monotheism, the two competing legacies of the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. By predicating this, I do not mean an
actual abandonment of ones religious belief or an embrace of polytheism. Instead, I
mean to stress the importance of not believing that our way of thinking is the only
way to think about the cosmos; we must interrogate the presumptions of our culture
predicated on science and monotheism, especially as they leave traces on our views of
other cultures (such as the ancient Greeks) and our theorizing for the future.
Empedocles points a way for contemporary rhetoricians to enter a dialogue with
nonwestern rhetorical traditions and theories.83 Moreover, in his work, science and
religion are not necessarily in competition; hence, Empedocles may help us rethink
the rhetorical dilemma we have talked ourselves into in contemporary industrial
society. Minimally, Empedocles reminds us to ask whether we consider rhetorical
theory a science, or art, or both, or neither.
This raises another point, which I will, in respectful jest, refer to as the need
for periodic ritual cleansing in rhetorical theory. It should come as no surprise that I
propose we break the spell of Athens (in which the emphasis on Isocrates
participates), such that what counts as rhetorical theory is defined by a rather small
scope of orators and philosophers who graced that city. As I have argued herein, it is
insufficient to define ancient rhetoric simply by examining handbooks, speeches, and
commentaries; one profits by considering the relationship of works on rhetoric to
other discourses, especially folklore. Said otherwise, perhaps contemporary rhetorical
theorists will choose to remain safe within the polis and ignore those figures who call
them outside to more dangerous realms, where the volcanic fires smolder. But even
Socrates ventured beyond the walls once, to discuss the nature of rhetoric and listen
to the cicadas.
Third, Empedocles encourages us not to be shy in advocating an art of living,
broadly conceptualized, and to debate what such an art would entail. Contemporary
rhetorical studies matters because it is the heir of an ancient affirmative art, one that
need not give way to an anxiety wrought by the suspicion of those who attempted to
assume regulation over the art of living from rhetoric. This should be apparent, but as
rhetorical studies ventures into closer alliances with critical cultural studies and
performance studies, it should do so not simply for the sake of increasing scholarship
but for advancing an admonitory education, the rooting of which requires an emphasis
on the arts, on love rather than strife, and on never-ending attention to new social
tensions; in making this move, rhetoricians may need to rekindle their alliances with
artists, not just with politicians. Furthermore, the realization that life and coexistence
are aesthetic projects warrants a return to rhetorics abilities as a healing art.
Conclusion: The Art of Purification
In this essay, I have explored the attribution of rhetorics discovery to Empedocles by
examining his surviving fragments and his historical and legendary biography, all of
which primes him for a reception in contemporary rhetorical studies. I have argued
that although the fragments themselves demonstrate comments on persuasion too
limited to be regarded as rhetorical theory, his overall program of purification and
address of love and strife connects him in copasetic ways, as does his surrounding
cycle of legends and myths about resistance to and punishment of unjust tyranny and
violence. I further demonstrated how those ideas might connect to our contemporary
projects, and how attention to them might restore some of the emphases that
Kenneth Burke himself had planned for rhetorical critics. This study warrants
reconsideration, therefore, of ideas about rhetorics origins either taken as fact or
ignored by many contemporary rhetorical theorists.
Empedocles discovered rhetoric no more than did Corax, nor did Sicilian
democracy prompt the systematization of rhetoric; these narratives are ways to tell
stories about the struggle for power in Sicily, but not a historical record of those
struggles. More importantly, they are also ways to tell stories about rhetoric and its
association with pollution and purification lying at the heart of civilization. Stories
explaining rhetorics origins, then, are not just about land disputes and poetic tricks.
They are a circulation of narratives addressing themes of rhetorics fearful power as
Purifying Rhetoric
253
medicine and poison; as that which distinguishes human, animal, and divine; and as
constituent of judgments that establish the worlds order. If contemporary rhetorical
theorists are not tuned to legend and myth, they might miss what the Greeks are
saying about the magnitude of rhetoric as deinos legein.
In advocating an Empedoclean spirit to correct the recent emphasis and
appropriation of Isocrates, I would underscore that Empedocles, not Isocrates,
advanced a theory of separation and attraction, recognized the dignity of living things,
located humanity within nature, wrote poetry, and advocated a cure for violence. This
legacy should be ignored no longer. A return to Empedocles would not necessitate a
wholesale rejection of Isocrates nor the Isocratean development of citizens, but would
contextualize it as only one part of a more expansive project in admonitory education.
Empedocles stands as a poignant corrective to Isocrates, then, especially as he calls
rhetorical scholars to the task of resisting, reducing, and redressing violence in this
world. And put simply, Empedocles reminds us that often it is not enough to speak
for the polis; to be a good physician, one must speak for all humanity.
Notes
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
Kenneth Burke, Responsibilities of National Greatness, The Nation, July 17, 1967, 47.
Burke, Responsibilities of National Greatness, 50.
Arguably, the earliest call for this return to Isocrates is Michael Calvin McGee, The Moral
Problem of Argumentum per Argumentum, in Argument and Social Practice: Proceedings of
the Fourth SCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation, ed. J. Robert Cox, Malcolm O. Sillars, and
Gregg B. Walker (Annandale, VA: SCA, 1985), 115. See also Michael Calvin McGee,
Isocrates: A Parent of Rhetoric and Culture Studies, unpublished manuscript, 1986.
Available online at http://mcgeefragments.net/OLD/isocrate.htm.
Takis Poulakos, Speaking for the Polis: Isocrates Rhetorical Education (Columbia: University
of South Carolina Press, 1997), 1.
See, for example Ekaterina V. Haskins, Logos and Power in Isocrates and Aristotle (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 2004); Isocrates and Civic Education, ed. Takis Poulakos
and David Depew (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004); Kenneth R. Chase, Constructing Ethics through Rhetoric: Isocrates and Piety, Quarterly Journal of Speech 95 (2009): 239
62. As critical rhetoric draws inspiration from Burke, see also Norman Clark, The Critical
Servant: An Isocratean Contribution to Critical Rhetoric, Quarterly Journal of Speech 82
(1996): 11124.
Chase, Constructing Ethics through Rhetoric, 25455. He cites Victor J. Vitanza, Negation,
Subjectivity, and the History of Rhetoric (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997).
Brad Inwood, The Poem of Empedocles (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 6. W. K.
C. Guthrie estimates Empedocles life at 49232 BCE; M. R. Wright suggests 49434 BCE. W.
K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1965), 128; M. R. Wright, Empedocles: The Extant Fragments (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1981), 6.
Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984), 66.
Kenneth Burke, Essays toward a Symbolic of Motives, 19501955, ed. William H. Rueckert
(West Lafayette: Parlor Press, 2007), 111.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, in The Poem of Empedocles, trans. Brad Inwood
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 8.57. All translations of Diogenes are by
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25]
[26]
[27]
Inwood. As aforementioned, Aristotles work is now lost, and support appears only in
Quintilian (3.1.8), Diogenes rough contemporary Sextuss Adversus Mathematicos (7.6), and
the much later Suda.
Diogenes Laertius 8.72.
Plutarch, Reply to Colotes, in The Poem of Empedocles, trans. Brad Inwood (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2001), 1126b.
Diogenes Laertius 8.6366.
Diogenes Laertius 8.63. Ava Chitwood notes that similar anecdotes are told about Solon and
Heraclitus. Ava Chitwood, Death by Philosophy: The Biographical Tradition in the Life and
Death of the Archaic Philosophers Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Democritus (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2004), 28.
This symbolism suggests a pivotal moment in which the Greeks pushed out Near Eastern
(Phoenician and Persian) influence.
The alliance was likely dissolved for Therons support of another brother, Polyzelus. On
Acragass democracy, see Eric W. Robinson, The First Democracies: Early Popular Government
outside Athens (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1997).
Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. George A. Kennedy (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2007), 1393b.
Teisias is an alternative name given for Tisias. It is important to recall that the Suda is
late and may record here a tradition that is equally late in development but whose value as
folkloric tradition remains.
Stephen Olbrys Gencarella, The Myth of Rhetoric: Korax and the Art of Pollution, Rhetoric
Society Quarterly 37 (2007): 25173.
Cf. Chitwood, Death by Philosophy, 10, on the theme of the philosopher and tyrant. Platos
Phaedrus interweaves all three men, directly citing Stesichorus and Tisias, and presenting
several Empedoclean themes.
Quintilian, in The Poem of Empedocles, trans. Brad Inwood (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2001), 3.1.8. Olympiodorus the Younger (Plat. Gorg. proem. 9) and the Suda also mark
this connection, which may ultimately derive from Platos Meno (76c), wherein Socrates
associates Gorgias and Empedocles (and his interlocutor) through shared belief in the theory
of sense perception through the pores.
Diogenes Laertius 8.5859. See George Kerferd, Gorgias and Empedocles, Siculorum
Gymnasium 38 (1985): 595605.
On rhetoric and magic, see William A. Covino, Magic, Rhetoric, and Literacy: An Eccentric
History of the Composing Imagination (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994);
and Jacqueline De Romilly, Magic and Rhetoric in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1976); on medicine, see Ludwig Edelstein, Ancient Medicine: Selected Papers
of Ludwig Edelstein, ed. Owsei Temkin and C. Lilian Temkin, trans. C. Lilian Temkin
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); and G. E. R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason,
and Experience: Studies in the Origin and Development of Greek Science (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1979). See also Wright, Empedocles, 1314, on responses to
Empedocles in Ancient Medicine and Sacred Disease.
Diogenes Laertius 8.57. The attribution of a Hymn to Apollo by Empedocles, burned by a
relative, bears all the marks of folklore. Cf. Friedrich Solmsen, Empedocles Hymn to
Apollo, Phronesis 25 (1980): 21927.
Galen meth. med. 1.1; Pliny HN 29.1.45.
Diogenes 8.608.61, 8.70.
The line in Empedocles fragment 15*a defence against evils and old age, you shall
learn*perhaps echoes the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, and Empedocles does indicate laurel
leaves (the tree sacred to Apollo) in two fragments, but it is tendentious to suggest intimate
attention to Apollo in the primary work. Furthermore, Greek divinities are multivalent;
Apollo is both a healer and plague-bringer.
Purifying Rhetoric
[28]
[29]
[30]
[31]
[32]
[33]
[34]
[35]
[36]
[37]
[38]
[39]
[40]
[41]
[42]
[43]
[44]
[45]
[46]
[47]
[48]
[49]
[50]
[51]
[52]
[53]
[54]
[55]
[56]
[57]
[58]
[59]
[60]
[61]
255
Inwood, Poem of Empedocles, 68.

Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, in The Poem of Empedocles, trans. Brad Inwood (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2001), 11314.
Iamblichus, De Vita Pythagorica, in Iamblichus: On the Pythagorean Way of Life, trans. John
Dillard and Jackson Hershell (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 21421.
Iamblichus De Vita Pythagorica 216.
Wright, Empedocles, 10; Chitwood, Death by Philosophy, 40.
Peter Kingsley, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 220.
See also Callicles speech in Gorgias (484a), in which he details the way men are taken in
infancy like lions, but enchanted (goeteuontes) to believe in equality, which is against nature.
Richard McKirahan, Philosophy before Socrates: An Introduction with Texts and Commentary
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), 257.
Simon Trepanier, Empedocles: An Interpretation (New York: Routledge, 2004), 49.
See Keith Sidwell, Pollution and Purification in Aeschylus Eumenides, Classical Quarterly
46 (1996): 4457; and Margaret Visser, Vengeance and Pollution in Classical Athens,
Journal of the History of Ideas 45 (1984): 193206.
Plato, Gorgias, trans. James H. Nichols Jr. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 524b.
Plato Gorgias 526b.
For the sake of consistency, all translations of Empedocles and of Diogenes Laertius are by
Inwood; the numbering system for Empedocles fragments is also Inwoods. Generally, I
follow scholars in using the more common Latin rather than Greek names throughout (such
as Empedocles instead of Empedokles, Apollo instead of Apollon, Corax instead of
Korax), except where the translator employs the Greek (such as Kupris instead of
Cypris).
Inwood, Poem of Empedocles, 23. Guthrie and Wright see two poems of problematic
compatibility; McKirahan and Inwood, a single poem.
Empedocles, fragment 11.
Empedocles, fragments 93 and 94.
Inwood, Poem of Empedocles, 95. Cf. Trepanier, Empedocles, 6768.
Empedocles, fragments 2 and 3.
Empedocles, fragment 109. Ancient terminology for cognitive functions and organs is
notoriously complicated. Here, Empedocles employs phren, but elsewhere noos and even
metis.
Trepanier, Empedocles, 18.
Plato, Sophist, trans. Nicholas P. White (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993),
242c43a. Plato also makes direct reference to those who call these forces Aphrodite and
Strife.
Isocrates, Antidosis, trans. David Mirhady and Yun Lee Too (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 2000), 268.
Isocrates Antidosis 269.
[62]
[63]
[64]
[65]
[66]
[67]
[68]
[69]
[70]
[71]
[72]
[73]
[74]
[75]
[76]
[77]
[78]
[79]
[80]
[81]
[82]
[83]
Trepanier, Empedocles, 18.

Aristotle Rhetoric 3.5.4.
Aristotle Poetics 1447b.
See scholia to Dionysius Thrax in The Poem of Empedocles, trans Brad Inwood (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2001), 168.813.
Aristotle Sophistic Refutations 183ad.
Aristotle Eudemian 1235a; Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1155ab.
Cf. A. W. Price, Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1989).
Robert Wardy, The Birth of Rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato, and Their Successors (New York:
Routledge, 1996), 7.
Clara Elizabeth Millerd Smertenko, On the Interpretation of Empedocles (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1908), 23.
See George A. Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1994), 18, 47; and Edward Schiappa, Protagoras and Logos: A Study in Greek
Philosophy (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 31, 49, 5254, 82, 9394,
128, 14243, 159, 22324.
Richard Leo Enos, Greek Rhetoric before Aristotle (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press,
1993), 62. See also Thomas Conleys review, Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (1994): 3778,
and Richard Leo Enos, Aristotle, Empedocles, and the Notion of Rhetoric, in In Search of
Justice: The Indiana Tradition in Speech Communication, ed. Richard J. Jensen and John C.
Hammerback (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987), 522.
C. Jan Swearingen, A Lovers Discourse: Diotima, Logos, and Desire, in Reclaiming
Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition, ed. Andrea Lunsford (Pittsburgh, PA:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995), 35. See also C. Jan Swearingen, Rhetoric and Irony:
Western Literacy and Western Lies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Kenneth Burke, The Imagery of Killing, Hudson Review 1 (1948): 165.
Kenneth Burke, Form and Persecution in the Oresteia, Sewanee Review 60 (1952): 37796.
See also The Orestes Trilogy, in Essays toward a Symbolic of Motives, 19501955, 10347.
Kenneth Burke, Linguistic Approach to Problems of Education, in Modern Philosophies and
Education: The Fifty-Fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, ed.
Nelson B. Henry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), 271.
Burke, Linguistic Approach to Problems, 27172.
Burke, Linguistic Approach to Problems, 273, 286.
Kenneth Burke, Myth, Poetry, and Philosophy, Journal of American Folklore 73 (1960): 304.
See also Kenneth Burke, Review of Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins, in
Journal of American Folklore 73 (1960): 27071.
Burke, Myth, Poetry, and Philosophy, 306.
Carol Corbin, ed., Rhetoric in Postmodern America: Conversations with Michael Calvin McGee
(New York: Guilford Press, 1998), 45.
The idea of a physician of culture is found in Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of
the Greeks, trans. Marianne Cowan (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1962), 27. On
Nietzsche and Empedocles, see David Farrell Krell, Postponements: Women, Sensuality, and
Death in Nietzsche (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); cf. David Farrell Krell, Lunar
Voices: Of Tragedy, Poetry, Fiction, and Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
See, for example, George A. Kennedy, Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural
Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Carol S. Lipson and Roberta A.
Binkley, ed., Rhetoric before and Beyond the Greeks (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2004); Gananath Obeyesekere, Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); and
Robert A. Yelle, Explaining Mantras: Ritual, Rhetoric, and the Dream of a Natural Language in
Hindu Tantra (New York: Routledge, 2003).

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Quarterly Journal of Speech

Purifying Rhetoric: Empedocles and the

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Quarterly Journal of Speech

Purifying Rhetoric: Empedocles and

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Stephen Olbrys Gencarella

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occupy ourselves predominantly with citizenship, or with more ecumenical notions

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divinity through certain acts of purification. As I intend to show, beyond a strictly

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Empedocles in History and Legend

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and that Xanthus claimed Empedocles declined an offer of kingship because he

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To be precise, Stesichorus objects to Phalaris before his tyranny, whereas Empedocles

Table 1 Motifs of the Sicilian Man-of-Words Legend.

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(b) invents a discursive practice

(e) challenges a tyrant

To the contemporary eye, the citation of wizardry and potions as evidence of

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In summary, Empedocles surviving fragments offer only passing references to the

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because it presents the possibility of advancing various expressions of love (strife

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in order to advocate an Isocratean spirit in opposition to a Platonic sensibility.81

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Inwood, Poem of Empedocles, 68.

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Trepanier, Empedocles, 18.

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