Abstract

In Fr. B 100 DK Empedocles famously compares the principle of breathing with this of clepsydra. This simile provoked a scholarly controversy. The main question is what kind of breathing Empedocles describes – the breathing through the skin or the breathing through the mouth and nostrils? In this article I consider various solutions to the problem, suggested by different scholars, and incline to accept the idea that Empedocles describes a form of breathing through the skin with a qualification that the skin in question is the outer membrane of the respiratory apparatus rather than the outer covering of the living body, as it was previously thought. This article is the first part of the future analysis of Empedocles’ views on physical mechanisms of living beings and their sense perceptions.