Note 155 — BOOK VII BASILIDES, SATURNILUS, AND OTHERS

All this argument is a petitio principii of the most flagrant kind. There is nothing in the quotations here given from Empedocles to show that that philosopher made Love and Strife the two ἀρχαί of the universe, as Empedocles associates with them the four “elements” of Fire, Earth, Water and Air, and Ἀνάγκη or Fate seems, according to his teaching, to be superior to them all. The quotations prove, however, that Empedocles taught metempsychosis, unless Hippolytus is here confusing him with Pythagoras. Marcion did not, and the reason that he gave for abstinence from animal food is different from that attributed to Empedocles. The quotations themselves are much corrupted, and Hippolytus seems to have taken them from memory only, as he is careful to say that these are “something like this.” All of them appear in Karsten’s or Stein’s collections, which were made before the discovery of our text, and are, therefore, an argument against Salmon’s theory of forgery.