• A law there is, an oracle of Doom, Of old enacted by the assembled gods, That if a Daemon—such as live for ages— Defile himself with foul and sinful murder, He must for seasons thrice ten thousand roam Far from the Blest; such is the path I tread, I too a wanderer and exile from heaven." - Meaning and context.">
tr. Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson.De Lacy, Philip H. and Benedict Einarson. Moralia: On Exile. Loeb Classical Library 405. Harvard University Press, 1959. p. 568-9. Cf. full quotation at Leonard p. 54-55
• fr. 115, as paraphrased in Plutarch's Moralia
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ἔστιν ἀνάγκης χρῆμα, θεῶν ψήφισμα παλαιόν, εὖτέ τις ἀμπλακίῃσι φόνῳ φίλα γυῖα μιήνῃ, δαίμονες οἵ τε μακραίωνος λελάχασι βίοιο, τρίς μιν μυρίας ὥρας ἀπὸ μακάρων ἀλάλησθαι, τὴν καὶ ἐγὼ νῦν εἶμι, φυγὰς θεόθεν καὶ ἀλήτης
• A law there is, an oracle of Doom, Of old enacted by the assembled gods, That if a Daemon—such as live for ages— Defile himself with foul and sinful murder, He must for seasons thrice ten thousand roam Far from the Blest; such is the path I tread, I too a wanderer and exile from heaven.

— Empedocles

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "ἔστιν ἀνάγκης χρῆμα, θεῶν ψήφισμα παλαιόν, εὖτέ τις ἀμπλακίῃσι φόνῳ φίλα γυῖα μιήνῃ, δαίμονες οἵ τε μακραίωνος λελάχασι βίοιο, τρίς μιν μυρίας ὥρας ἀπὸ μακάρων ἀλάλησθαι, τὴν καὶ ἐγὼ νῦν εἶμι, φυγὰς θεόθεν καὶ ἀλήτης
• A law there is, an oracle of Doom, Of old enacted by the assembled gods, That if a Daemon—such as live for ages— Defile himself with foul and sinful murder, He must for seasons thrice ten thousand roam Far from the Blest; such is the path I tread, I too a wanderer and exile from heaven." in the context of "tr. Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson.De Lacy, Philip H. and Benedict Einarson. Moralia: On Exile. Loeb Classical Library 405. Harvard University Press, 1959. p. 568-9. Cf. full quotation at Leonard p. 54-55
• fr. 115, as paraphrased in Plutarch's Moralia" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Empedocles" (Quotes, Purifications) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Empedocles

About Empedocles

Empedocles (c. 490 BC – c. 430 BC) was a poet, statesman, and pre-Socratic philosopher from the Greek colony of Agrigentum in Sicily. Two of his philosophical verse texts, On Nature and Purifications, survived antiquity in fragmentary form; these fragments comprise the only works considered to be of genuine Empedoclean authorship.Leonard, William E. (1908). The Fragments of Empedocles. The Open Court Publishing Company. p. 3.