Diotimos Library · Greek Antiquity Collection · Bilingual Edition
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
On Nature · The Purifications · Ancient Greek with a new English translation.
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English Page · Branch 34 of 54
On Nature · Book II · Fragments 71–74
Ancient Greek
p. 65Simplic. in Cael., p. 529, 28 sq.
τόσσ', ὅσα νῦν γεγάασι συναρμοσθέντ' Ἀφροδίτηι . . .Simplic. in Cael., p. 530, 4 sq.
ὡς δὲ τότε χθόνα Κύπρις, ἐπεί τ' ἐδίηνεν ἐν ὄμβρωι,ἴδεα ποιπνύουσα θοῶι πυρὶ δῶκε κρατῦναι . . .Simplic. in Cael., p. 530, 7 sq.
τῶν δ' ὅσ' ἔσω μὲν πυκνά, τὰ δ' ἔκτοθι μανὰ πέπηγε,Κύπριδος ἐν παλάμηισι πλάδης τοιῆσδε τυχόντα.Arist., Part. anim. A 1, 640a 20 sq.
ῥάχιν.Arist., Gen. anim. A 23, 731a 1 sq.
οὕτω δ' ὠιοτοκεῖ μακρὰ δένδρεα πρῶτον ἐλαίας.Plut., Quaest. conv. 685 F
φῦλον ἄμουσον ἄγουσα πολυσπερέων καμασήνων.Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I: On Nature · Book II
p. 66Simplic. in Cael., p. 529, 28 sq.
so many as have now come to be, fitted together by Aphrodite . . .
Simplic. in Cael., p. 530, 4 sq.
And as then Cypris, when she had moistened earth in rain,
busily working at the forms, gave them to swift fire to harden . . .
Simplic. in Cael., p. 530, 7 sq.
Of these, all that are dense within but loosely compacted without,
having met with such dampness in the palms of Cypris.
Arist., Part. anim. A 1, 640a 20 sq.
the backbone.
Arist., Gen. anim. A 23, 731a 1 sq.
So the tall trees first bear eggs — the olives.
Plut., Quaest. conv. 685 F
leading the songless tribe of wide-scattered fishes.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I · On Nature · Book II · Fragments 71–74
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Empedocles of Acragas wrote philosophy as poetry: a cosmic account of the four roots, Love, and Strife alongside a religious vision of exile, purification, and return. This Volume I reader preserves the supplied edition’s complete English introduction before changing to Ancient Greek and line-for-line English facing pages for the surviving fragments of On Nature and The Purifications.
Historical Text and Translation
The Ancient Greek reading text follows Hermann Diels’s Poetarum philosophorum fragmenta (1901) and Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (1903). The supplied edition retains Diels’s iota adscripts, editorial brackets, fragment numbering, and the ancient author and location that preserve each quotation. It excludes the Strasbourg and Cairo papyri, later papyrological reconstructions, and the Diels-Kranz A-fragments for the reasons stated in its Introduction.
About Diotimos Editions
Diotimos Editions prepared this new translation directly from the Greek printed opposite it. The translation is line-for-line: each English line answers the Greek line that faces it, while English syntax is allowed to continue across verse boundaries when clarity requires it.
Rights
Empedocles’s ancient Greek work and Hermann Diels’s 1901/1903 Greek editions are in the public domain. The 2026 English translation, introduction, and editorial matter are original to this edition and remain © 2026 Diotimos.