Resumen de Cleombrotus cites Empedocles in Plutarch's "De Defectu": a question of method in interpreting FR. 24 DK
Jean-Claude Picot, William Berg
The present article is meant to illustrate a method of analyzing an ambiguous citation with the help not only of its context, but also of literary parallels presumably known to the cited author. In an earlier article in this journal (Along a Mountain Path with Empedocles (31 B24D.-K), "Elenchos", XXXIII (2012)pp. 5-20), we concluded that Empedocles' fr. 24 rules out the method, employed by other poets, of "attaching speech-summits to speech-summits" - fitting climatic points one to another- and instead favors the method of following a single path of discourse to the argument's end. In a subsequent issue of "Elenchos", XXXIII(2012) pp. 301-34) Denis O'Brien disputed our conclusions, suggesting instead that Empedocles was merely advising himself to make his way through the "speech summits" without losing sight of the "single path" and its conclusion. The -chapters heads- of a single discourse. The present article argues that this view not only underrates the ironic force of the plural "koruphai" applied to "muthon"; it also disregards the real function of "prosapton", which elsewhere signifies a joining through physical contact rather than the figurative "passing by" that O'Brien suggests. Fr. 24 is not , as O'Brien supposes, Empedocles' advice to himself; it is a critique aimed at rival poets who heap arguments one upon another in an absurd and ridiculous fashion, as if heaping Pelion upon Ossa. Cleombrotus' citation of Empedocles, then, was an allusion not to the main points of his own discourse, but to the danger of being side-tracked into entirely new topics, a danger that Philip's digression had just posed. Finally, we may have confirmation of this negative view of the "summits" in Aristopahnes' allusion to Empedocles' "single path" at "Clouds" 76
