Note 85 — Chapter XI · THE PHILOSOPHERS

frr. 136–7, 128, 9 f. (424, 440). Very remarkable in a thinker of such an early period is what is said (fr. 135) about the πάντων νόμιμον which forbids κτείνειν τὸ ἔμψυχον.—Apart from this we have other vestiges of kathartic rules: purification with water drawn from five springs: fr. 143 (see Append. v); abstention from the eating of beans (fr. 141) and of laurel leaves (fr. 140). The laurel is sacred as a magic plant, together with the σκίλλα (see App. v) and ῥάμνος (see above, chap. v, n. 95). Cf. Gp. 11, 2, etc. Its special sacredness gives the laurel its importance in the cult of Apollo. Emp. (like Pythagoras) seems to have paid special honour to Apollo: it appears from something that is said ap. D.L. viii, 57, that he wrote a προοίμιον εἰς Ἀπόλλωνα: the exalted conception of a divinity that is pure φρὴν ἱερή in abstraction from all sense-perception, elaborated by Emp. in frr. 133–4, was regarded by him as applying particularly περὶ Ἀπόλλωνος (Amm. in Arist., Interpr. 249, 1 ed. Brand. 135a, 23).