Lions and promoi: Final Phase of Exile for Empedocles’ daimones

In Empedocles, the seers, poets, doctors and promoi of fr. 146 DK , poised for return from exile to the company of the Blessed, no more represent an Empedoclean ideal than do the lions of fr. 127. Seers, poets and promoi are implicated in the anathema of bloodshed; in particular, the promoi (‘battle chiefs’) are ill-suited to a world of waxing Love. As with the other daimones , their exile will last through 30,000 seasons, a sentence that Empedocles’ purifications cannot shorten. The lives of the seers, poets, doctors and promoi are lived in a world of waxing Strife; their prestige is owed to their status in that world.