In one of his fragments, Empedocles addresses his protégé Pausanias, predicting or promising that he will learn pharmaka, a word that is usually understood to mean herbal ‘drugs' or ‘remedies’ for disease, an interpretation that in turn seems to have been encouraged by a modern understanding that Empedocles was an empirically minded medical doctor. An alternate interpretation is suggested, however, by the recently published Getty Hexameters which use the word pharmaka several times to refer to hexametrical incantations that will protect a group of houses or a city from danger. These hexameters, moreover, are inscribed on a lead tablet of late-classical date that most probably came from the Sicilian city of Selinus, a date and a provenance that put its composition in close proximity to Empedocles himself.

中文翻译：

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Empedocles the Sorcerer 和他的六边形 Pharmaka

在他的一个片段中，恩培多克勒斯向他的门徒保萨尼亚斯讲话，预测或承诺他将学习帕姆卡，这个词通常被理解为草药“药物”或“治疗疾病”的意思，这种解释反过来似乎受到了现代理解的鼓励，即恩培多克勒斯是一位有经验的医生。然而，最近出版的 Getty Hexameters 提出了另一种解释，它使用了这个词帕姆卡多次指代保护一组房屋或城市免受危险的六角咒语。此外，这些六边形刻在一块很可能来自西西里城市 Selinus 的晚期古典日期铅片上，这个日期和出处使其构成与恩培多克勒本人非常接近。