SOURCE: Kingsley, Peter. “Empedocles's Sun.” Classical Quarterly 44, no. 2 (1994): 316-24.

In the following essay, Kingsley explains Empedocles's views regarding astronomical matters and discusses why they were misunderstood by Theophrastus.

Few things can be more confusing, or confused, than the ancient reports about Empedocles' astronomy. Attempts in the modern literature at resolving the difficulties invariably either add to the confusion, or end by urging the need to ‘acknowledge the insufficiency of our data and suspend judgment’.¹ In fact, as we will see, it is possible not only to reconstruct Empedocles' own ideas but also to retrace the history of their subsequent misunderstanding.

The first text we need to look at comes from Aëtius. …

Empedocles says there are two suns. First there is the archetypal (archetypos) sun. This is fire in one hemisphere of the cosmos; it fills the hemisphere and is always positioned opposite its own reflection (antaugeia). Second...