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 36 of 54
On Nature · Book II · Fragments 67–81
Ancient Greek
p. 69Galen. in Epid. VI 48, Kühn XVII, 1, p. 1002
ἐν γὰρ θερμοτέρωι τοκὰς ἄρρενος ἔπλετο γαστήρ·καὶ μέλανες διὰ τοῦτο καὶ ἀνδρωδέστεροι ἄνδρεςκαὶ λαχνήεντες μᾶλλον.Ruf. Ephes., De nom. part., p. 166, 11 sq. Daremberg
ἀμνίον.Plut., Quaest. conv. 683 E
πολυαίματον ἧπαρ.Prokl. in Remp. II, p. 34, 26
δίγονοι.Arist., Gen. anim. Δ 8, 777a 7 sq.
μηνὸς ἐν ὀγδοάτου δεκάτηι πύον ἔπλετο λευκόν.Plut., Quaest. nat. 912 C
οἶνος ἀπὸ φλοιοῦ πέλεται σαπὲν ἐν ξύλωι ὕδωρ.Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I: On Nature · Book II
p. 70Galen. in Epid. VI 48, Kühn XVII, 1, p. 1002
For the belly that bears the male came to be in the warmer part;
and for this reason men are dark and more manly
and shaggier.
Ruf. Ephes., De nom. part., p. 166, 11 sq. Daremberg
the birth-caul.
Plut., Quaest. conv. 683 E
the blood-rich liver.
Prokl. in Remp. II, p. 34, 26
twice-bearing.
Arist., Gen. anim. Δ 8, 777a 7 sq.
On the tenth of the eighth month the white discharge came to be.
Plut., Quaest. nat. 912 C
Wine is water from the bark, rotted in the wood.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I · On Nature · Book II · Fragments 67–81
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.