ined 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 h