Empedocles’ Sphairos and Its Interpretations in Antiquity, II: Plato’s Timaeus and Statesman

This article presents further discussion of a problem addressed in a previous study, namely the nature of Empedocles’ Sphairos, which is taken to be a structured whole and not – as it is usually interpreted – an amorphous mixture. Instead of concentrating on the fragments of Empedocles himself, a previous article launched a thorough study of the further reception of the Sphairos by later ancient Greek writers (Aristotle and the Neoplatonists). This time we turn our attention to Plato, where we can find Empedoclean echoes in the Timaeus and Politicus. In both cases, the Sphairos is equated with the sensible world, which is, again, a structured whole. Common motifs include the world conceived as a kind of superorganism (living being), the idea of a cosmic cycle, and the concept of the blessed life of humankind in the Golden Age.