Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 1 / In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods

by Plotinus

EMPEDOCLES, AS A POET, TELLS OF PYTHAGOREAN MYTHS.

Empedocles teaches that "it is a law for souls that have sinned to fall down here below;" and that "he himself, having withdrawn from the divinity, came down to the earth to become the slave of furious discord." It would seem that he limited himself to advancing the ideas that Pythagoras and his followers generally expressed by symbols, both on this and other subjects. Besides Empedocles is obscure because he uses the language of poetry.