12 Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s Empedocles: he Time of Kings Babette Babich Politics and Nietzsche’s sketches for the death of empedocles Beyond the identiication with Hölderlin oten (and rightly) imputed to him, 1 Nietzsche drated several attempts at a drama titled ater Hölderlin’s Death of Empedocles. 2 A classical philologist specializing in the works of Diogenes Laertius— the author of he Lives and Doctrines of Famous Philosophers—Nietzsche duly composed his drats of the Death of Empedocles in a classical mode. Empedocles himself “imitates” his philosophical predecessors with “jealous” ambition 3 , and we recall Nietzsche ’ s characterization of “the ennobling of jealousy” 4 — the agon in Greek antiquity — as one of the stumbling blocks for contemporary scholars, as this also remains true to this day. Empedocles is also represented as the philosopher who dies a free death: self- elected, 5 a death which also corresponds to his accession to divinity. Empedocles’ refusal of kingship is part of this and Empedocles claims from the start when he speaks to shining Akragas “But unto ye I walk as god immortal now, no more as a man. On all sides honored ittingly and well, crowned both with illets and with lowering wreaths.” 6 By contrast with mortal life understood not merely as Nietzsche understands Anaximander’s “ethical” relection upon encroachment, one upon another, Empedocles’ Puriications highlights the cycle of love yielding to strife, telling his own role as advocate precisely as outcast: “ Of these I too am now one, an exile from the gods and a wanderer, having put my trust in raving strife.” 7 Lucian, the contemporary of Diogenes Laertius who also wrote of Empedocles in his Icaromennipus, wrote a number of parodic dialogues, or Menippean satires, dealing with death (and life) including his Κ ατά πλους ἢ Τύ ραννος 8 or Downward Journey also translated as Journey to Hell. And just to the extent that Nietzsche derives his Zarathustran Übermensch from Lucian’s: ’ υπερά νθρωπος in this same dialogue, an attention to Lucian ’ s Downward Journey may aid our understanding and make this still Nietzsche.indb 157 Nietzsche.indb 157 6/22/2013 1:38:34 PM 6/22/2013 1:38:34 PM