[78] 30,000 ὧραι: which means probably “years” (hardly “seasons” as Dieterich, Nekyia, 119, takes it). The figure 30,000 has no special meaning (e.g. 300 periods of a life-time each): it is merely a concrete phrase for “innumerable” (and is frequent: Hirzel, Ber. sächs. Ges. d. Wiss. 1885, p. 64 ff.). This enormous period of time is the divine counter-part, as measured by divine standards of time, of the μέγας ἐνιαυτός, the ennaëteris during which the earthly murderer had to fly from the land of his violent deed. The fiction of Emp. clearly shows the influence of this expiation of murder by ἀπενιαυτισμός.
[79] fr. 121 (22 ff.).
[80] ἀργαλέας βιοίτοιο κελεύθους . . . fr. 115, 8 (8).
[81] Emp. does not even use the word ψυχή of these δαίμονες confined within corporeality. They are so named, however, regularly and without qualification by the later authors who quote verses from the Prooimion of the Φυσικά, Plutarch, Plotinos, Hippolytos, etc.
[82] Peculiar to Emp. is the attempt to give actual details of the crimes for which the spirits are condemned to ἐνσωμάτωσις; and also the extension of metempsychosis to plants (which is occasionally attributed, but by late authorities only, to the Pythagoreans as well).
[83] The entirely unpurified seem not to have been condemned to everlasting punishment in Hades, of which in general he shows no knowledge, by Emp. (as by the Pythagoreans sometimes). He merely, it seems, threatens them with ever-renewed rebirth upon earth and the impossibility of τὸ κύκλου λῆξαι (until the complete ascendency of φιλία). This appears to be the meaning of fr. 145 (455 f.) from the way in which Cl. Al., Protr. ii, 27, p. 23 P., cites the lines. [405]
[84] As we may paraphrase—though indeed here, too, only with reservations—the κακότης and κακότητες of Emp. fr. 145 (454 f.).
[85] frr. 136–7, 128, 9 f. (424, 440). Very remarkable in a thinker of such an early period is what is said (fr. 135) about the πάντων νόμιμον which forbids κτείνειν τὸ ἔμψυχον.—Apart from this we have other vestiges of kathartic rules: purification with water drawn from five springs: fr. 143 (see [Append. v]); abstention from the eating of beans (fr. 141) and of laurel leaves (fr. 140). The laurel is sacred as a magic plant, together with the σκίλλα (see [App. v]) and ῥάμνος (see above, chap. v, [n. 95]). Cf. Gp. 11, 2, etc. Its special sacredness gives the laurel its importance in the cult of Apollo. Emp. (like Pythagoras) seems to have paid special honour to Apollo: it appears from something that is said ap. D.L. viii, 57, that he wrote a προοίμιον εἰς Ἀπόλλωνα: the exalted conception of a divinity that is pure φρὴν ἱερή in abstraction from all sense-perception, elaborated by Emp. in frr. 133–4, was regarded by him as applying particularly περὶ Ἀπόλλωνος (Amm. in Arist., Interpr. 249, 1 ed. Brand. 135a, 23).
[86] In fanciful ways: fr. 127 (lion, laurel), 448 Mull.
[87] fr. 146 (457) πρόμοι being used probably with intention as a vague term: regal power would hardly have seemed to possess special merit to the democratically minded Emp. He hardly knew it in any form but the tyrannis and to this he showed himself an energetic opponent (even though the violent language of Timaeus, the enemy of tyrants, is not to be taken quite literally). He himself was offered royal power, but he refused it with contempt as one who was πάσης ἀρχῆς ἀλλότριος: Xanthos and Arist. ap. D.L. viii, 63; Vors. 196, 10. He might all the same (and rightly) regard himself in political matters, too, as one of the πρόμοι; it is plain that in the enumeration of those who were εἰς τέλος born as μάντεις τε καὶ ὑμνοπόλοι καὶ ἰητροί, καὶ πρόμοι ἀνθρώποισιν ἐπιχθονίοισι πέλονται, and were never to be born again, he includes himself especially, and, in fact, takes himself as the model of this last and highest stage upon earth. He himself was all these things simultaneously.