 The persona loquens laments, “I wept and wailed when I saw an unaccustomed place” (B118 = D 14), and finds himself, “Far from what honor and from what abundance of bliss”… (B 119 = D 15). Transmigration as part of the ritual of purification mandates partaking in a world of suffering in which all life is fated to be born, become corrupt, and die. This reasserts the doctrine in On Nature that all things are mortal except for the four roots and Love and Strife, which combine and break down matter. Empedocles narrates his own dissolutions and recombination, 