This chapter begins by tracing the implications of Empedocles’ philosophy for poetry, arguing that he valorises the medium against criticisms expressed by earlier Presocratics. His cosmology provides systematic explanation for poetic beauty as deriving from Love. He uses the imagery of craftsmanship for the composition of his poetry, making it seem analogous to the products of Love, the divine craftswoman. This point is significant for the history of Greek poetics, since some scholars have argued that the artisanal conception of poetry emerges only at a later period. The chapter then focuses on Empedocles’ use of narrative, arguing that two particular plot-types structure the surviving fragments: the wandering exile who arrives in triumph at a new destination and the process of mystic initiation. Finally, it explores the significance and effects of Empedocles’ use of these narratives. He expands to cosmic proportions the familiar pattern of the blood-exile who achieves purification on arrival at a new location through the instigation of new institutions. The process of being ‘initiated’ into Empedocles’ philosophy involves an initially fearsome but ultimately exhilarating and sublime emotional trajectory which results in the student/initiate gaining a deeper insight into the workings of the universe.

The arguments put forth by Parmenides’ goddess have some marked implications for language: mortal terms are deceptive and what truly ‘is’ seems hard to capture in ordinary language. This chapter argues that Parmenides uses poetry in a variety of ways to bypass these difficulties. Verse could be a notoriously deceptive form of discourse in causing its recipients to forget their immediate surroundings and enter into an imagined and potentially illusory mimetic world. In the Doxa section of the poem, Parmenides highlights this quality of his verse to illustrate the wider deceptiveness of mortal sensory experience. On the other hand, the transportive qualities of verse render it a means by which to provide a taster of the ineffable and sublime emotional-cum-cognitive experience of contemplating that which truly is. Moreover, through alluding to meta-literary episodes such as Hesiod’s Theogony proem and the Sirens episode of the Odyssey, Parmenides engages in an ongoing discussion concerning the nature and function of song. His contribution can be regarded as an important moment in the emergence of the Classical conception of poetry: in presenting the Doxa as a poetic world deriving from mortal opinion, Parmenides comes close to Platonic conceptions of literary mimesis.

This chapter takes a holistic approach to Xenophanes’ fragments, investigating the responses and interpretations they invite by drawing upon their literary and performative contexts as well as the wider context of Xenophanes’ philosophy. The hexameter and elegiac fragments are analysed against their respective genres and, in particular, the different ways in which the two genres typically construct the authority of the narrator. Against the view that verse was inessential to Xenophanes’ message, it is argued that his metres and other formal features participate in particular generic traditions through which they convey a message in at least three respects. First, they imply certain claims, such as that the single god is worthy of hymnic veneration. Second, they contribute to emotive effects, for instance, in D61=B2, by conjuring a sense of injustice that athletic prowess is valued over wisdom. Third, they invite certain distinctive types of interpretation. Additionally, this chapter discusses the well-known criticisms of Homer and Hesiod, arguing that they are targeted primarily against the pernicious societal influence of the canonical poems rather than their factual inaccuracy.

This section substantiates the claim that Xenophanes, Parmenides and Empedocles played an instrumental role in the emergence of what may be termed the Classical conception of literature – that is, the view that a work of literature is a mortally crafted artefact that reflects a true state of affairs only symbolically or mimetically – by drawing attention to evidence for their influence on certain important developments in fifth- and fourth-century BCE poetics. These include (a) fifth-century practices of allegorical interpretation; (b) Gorgias’ statements that poetry is deceptive and is a kind of charm or drug; (c) Democritus’ physical explanations for poetic inspiration and composition; (d) Democritus and the sophists’ analytical approaches to language; and (e) the conceptions of mimesis presented by Plato.

The Introduction sets out the aims and methods of the book. It outlines how the literary-critical approach adopted differs from the predominately philosophical interests of existing scholarship on these texts. A key distinction is the focus on the emotional experiences of audiences rather than narrowly defined argumentative content. The treatment of Archaic verse as literature is defended against the charge of anachronism: some have argued that early Greek verse differs essentially from later literature in that it was valued primarily for its purported truthfulness, but the ‘truth’ of Archaic Greek poetry seems to go far beyond mere factual accuracy, encompassing symbolic and emotional truths that are also hallmarks of later conceptions of the literary. Furthermore, the modern perspectival theory of literary truth espoused by many theorists articulates a concept that is already implicit in the emphasis on the visual quality of verse found in Homer and ancient criticism. It will be argued that Xenophanes, Parmenides and Empedocles use verse in conformity with a poetics of truth in this expanded sense. Finally, this chapter explains how the book will use the surviving fragments of these authors as a source for ideas about the nature and function of poetry.

The central aim of this book has been to enrich our reading of these texts, and so its main value resides in the specific readings it has generated. Nevertheless, some more general points have emerged and are here summarised. These authors were not restrained by their medium but rather masters of it, so that their use of verse cannot be fully explained by recourse to the circumstances of production. Their texts are designed to elicit emotional and cognitive responses from the audience that are contingent on form and phrasing. In this sense, they qualify as poetry rather than mere verse. The conclusion traces some implications of this suggestion for the contested question of whether or not verse plays an essential philosophical role for the three authors in question. It then summarises the main points made earlier in the book concerning their role in the history of Greek poetics. Finally, it highlights certain poetic techniques they deploy that would become characteristic of the didactic genre.