ON THE BLOODY VIOLENCE OF DEALING DEATH

When anyone sins and pollutes his own limbs with bloodshed, who by his error makes false the oath he swore spirits whose portion is long life for thrice ten thousand years he wanders apart from the blessed, being born throughout that time in all manner of form so for mortal things, exchanging one hard path of life for another. The force of the air pursues him into the sea the sea spews him out onto the floor of the earth, the earth casts him into the rays oft he blazing sun.

Empedodes’ vision of evolution and change also assumed that ours is the age of extinction that is to say the time of strife or hatred precisely because of the killing that we cannot seem to stem and our aversion or abuse of the bonds or constraints of love.