Empedocles’ Cosmic Cycle in the Later Platonist Tradition

Denis O’Brien has fought long and hard to defend the proposition that Empedocles intended his so-called ‘cosmic cycle’ to be taken literally, against those who have sought to suggest otherwise. ¹ It is thus somewhat perverse of me, perhaps, not to say reckless, to seek to reopen the question in a collection of essays assembled in his honour. To mitigate the outrageousness of this, however, I propose to shelter for most of the time behind the screen of the later Platonist tradition, before popping out at the end in my own person.