American Journal of Philology

This article offers a new reading of the Muse in Empedocles’ Physica. I aim to show that she is integrated into the poet’s physiological conception of the cosmos and that she also plays a central role in the furtherance of his eschatological purposes. Empedocles, it will be suggested, first put the Muse at the service of the philosophical logos, and in taking that step, he embraced and transcended the conventions of Muse-invocation not only in epic-didactic poetry but in the lyric and elegiac traditions as well. On this reading, the “Muse of the agathos logos” will emerge as a strikingly innovative creation, one that was to exercise a powerful and enduring influence on Greek and Roman conceptions of the goddess Muse in relation to the mind of the poet.