Abstract

In Empedocles’ painters simile of fr. 23 DK, the painters are modified by three dual participles, formerly taken by most scholars to be “false” duals (for plural) like the analogous dual participle in fr. 137 DK. Many recent scholars, however, have agreed that they are true duals indicating two painters, and have allegorized those two painters as representing Love and Strife in some manner, or a demiurgic Love’s two hands. Against that new consensus, this article collects evidence for false dual forms as a poetic license of the hexameter tradition from Homer onward. It is argued that Empedocles’ duals are a fruit of that same tradition; that the painters are not a twosome, but an indefinite plurality; and, finally, that they are not an allegorical representation of Love, although the duals of frr. 23 and 137 do seem to highlight a shared connection with fr. 128 DK and Empedocles’ golden age of Aphrodite.