Dorothea Frede's contributions to the study of Greek ethics are rooted in both an intimate knowledge of Greek culture and civilization and a powerful understanding of the philosophical issues of the modern world. She does not lose sight of what makes the ancient Greeks remote and foreign, but equally she attends to those features of Greek ethics which connect it to our own philosophical concerns. Thus (as in so many other ways) she has been a model to emulate. The Greeks made major contributions to the question of personal identity as we still understand it, despite the considerable differences between their cultural context and ours. It is an honour to dedicate to Professor Frede this brief consideration of Empedocles' contribution to a still vital philosophical question.

In approaching this question, I have two closely connected aims. First, I want to show that Empedocles, in the fifth century bc, had a deep and serious interest in the question of personal identity, an issue shaped for us by the influence of Locke. Second, I want to argue, partly on the basis of this Empedoclean contribution to the issue, that we should accept the readings of the primary scribe of the newly recovered Strasbourg papyrus of Empedocles at the three critical points where this ancient text transmits the letter θ rather than the letter v which we would expect from the evidence of the indirect tradition.