Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/276

254 254 HISTORY OF THE principally acquired by improvements which he made in the physical condition of large tracts of country. He destroyed the pestiferous ex- halations of the marshes about Selinus, by carrying two small streams through the swampy grounds, and thus draining off the water. This act is recorded on some beautiful coins of Selinus, which are still ex- tant.* In other places he blocked up some narrow valleys with large constructions, and thus screened a town from the noxious winds which blew into it ; by which he earned to himself the title of "wind averter" (KoAvtravejjLug) ,-f It is probable that Empedocles did not conceal his consciousness of possessing extraordinary intellectual powers, and of rising above the limited capacities of the mass of mankind ; so that we need not wonder at his having been considered by his countrymen in Sicily as a person endowed with supernatural and prophetic gifts. Among the sharpsighted and sceptical Ionians, who were always seeking to penetrate into the natural causes of appearances, such an opinion could scarcely have gained ground at this time. But the Dorians in Sicily were as yet accustomed to connect all new events with their ancient belief in the gods, and to conceive them in the spirit of their religious traditions. The poem of Empedocles upon nature also bears the mark of enthu- siasm, both in its epic language and the nature of its contents. At the beginning of it he said, that fate and the divine will had decreed that, if one of the gods should be betrayed into defiling his hands with blood, he should be condemned to wander about for thirty thousand years, far removed from the immortals. He then described himself to have been exiled from heaven, for having engaged in deadly conflict, and com- mitted murder. X As, therefore, since the heroic times of Greece, a fugitive murderer required an expiation and purification ; so a god ejected from heaven, and condemned to appear in the likeness of a man, required some purification that might enable him to resume his original high estate. This purification was supposed to be in part accomplished by the lofty contemplations of the poem, which was hence — either wholly or in part — called a song of expiation (KaOap/ioi). According to the idea of the transmigration of souls, Empedocles sup- posed that, since his exile from heaven, he had been a shrub, a fish, a bird, a boy, and a girl. For the present, " the powers which conduct souls" had borne him to the dark cavern of the earth ;§ and from hence the return to divine honours was open to him, as to seers and p. 265. -f Empedocles Agrigentinus, de vita et philosophia ejus exposuit, caiminum reli- quias collegit Sturz. Lipsise. 1805, T. 1. p. 49. J Fragment ap. Plutarch, de exillo. c. 17. (p- 607.) ap. Sturz. v. 3. sqq. § V. 362. and v. 9. in Sturz (from Diog. Laert. viii. 77. and Porphyr. de antro nymph, c. 8.) ought evidently to be connected in the manner indicated in the text.
 * Concerning these coins, see Annali dell' Instituto di corrisp. archeologica, 1835.