and (I. xv. 189):—
Threefold was our partition: each obtain'd
His meed of honor due.
And in the division of the whole, Zeus obtained the element fire, Poseidon water, and Hades that of air. Him he also calls "aerial darkness," because the air has no proper light, but is lightened by the sun, moon, and other planets.
The fourth part was left common to all, for the primal essence of the three elements is always in motion. The earth alone remains unmoved, to which he added also Olympus; it may have been because it is a mountain, being a part of the earth. If it belongs to heaven, as being the most brilliant and purest part of it, this may be the fifth essence in the elements, as certain distinguished philosophers think. So he, with reason, has conjectured it was common, the lowest part belonging to the earth by its weight, and the top parts to Olympus by their lightness. The natures between the two are borne upward to the one and downward to the other.
Since the nature of the elements is a combination of contraries, of dryness and moisture, hot and cold, and since by their relation and combination all things are constructed and undergo partial changes,—the whole not admitting of dissolution,—Empedocles says all things exist in this manner: "Sometimes in love all things meeting together in one. Sometimes, again, each being carried away by animosity of hate." The concord and unity of the elements he calls love, their opposition, hate.
Before his time Homer foreshadowed love and hate in what he says in his poetry (I. xiv. 200):—
I go to visit old Oceanus
The sire of gods, and Tethys,
I go to visit them and reconcile a lengthen'd feud.
A similar meaning has the myth about, Aphrodite and Ares, the one having the same force as Empedocles's love, the other his hate. When they sometimes come together, and again separate, the sun reveals them, Hephaestus binds them, and Poseidon releases them. Whence it is evident that the warm and dry essence, and the contrary of these, the cold and wet, sometimes combine all things and again dissolve them.
Related to these is what is said by other poets that by the intercourse of Ares and Aphrodite arises Harmony; a combination of contraries grave and acute analogously accommodating themselves to one another. By which arrangement things which are endowed with a contrary nature are all mutually opposed. The poet seems to have signified this enigmatically in the conflict of the gods, in which he makes some help the Greeks and some the Trojans, showing allegorically the character of each. And he set over against Poseidon Phoebus, the cold and wet against the hot and dry: Athene to Ares, the rational to the irrational, that is, the good to the bad. Hera to Artemis, that is, the air to the moon, because the one is stable and the other unstable. Hermes to Latona, because speech investigates and remembers, but oblivion is contrary to these. Hephaestus to the River God, for the same reason that the sun is opposed to the sea. The spectator of the fight was the primary god, and he is made taking joy in it.
From the afore-mentioned matter Homer seems to show this: that the world is one and finite. For if it had been infinite, it would never have been divided in a number having a limit. By the name "all" he signifies the collective whole. For in many other cases he uses the plural for the singular. He signifies the same thing more clearly in saying (I. xiv. 200):—