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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Ancient Greek Page · Branch 27 of 54
On Nature · Book I · Fragments 40–43
Ancient Greek
p. 51Plut., De fac. 920 C
ἥλιος ὀξυβελὴς ἠδ' ἱλάειρα σελήνη.Plut., De Pyth. or. 400 B
ἀνταυγεῖ πρὸς Ὄλυμπον ἀταρβήτοισι προσώποις.Macrob., Sat. I 17,46
ἀλλ' ὁ μὲν ἁλισθεὶς μέγαν οὐρανὸν ἀμφιπολεύει.Plut., Quaest. plat. 1006 F
νύκτα δὲ γαῖα τίθησιν ὑφισταμένοιο φάεσσι.Plut., Quaest. conv. 720 E
νυκτὸς ἐρημαίης ἀλαώπιδος . . .Anecd. Gr., Bekker I, p. 337,16
ἀθρεῖ μὲν γὰρ ἄνακτος ἐναντίον ἁγέα κύκλον.Plut., De fac. 929 E
ὣς αὐγὴ τύψασα σεληναίης κύκλον εὐρύν . . .Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I: On Nature · Book I
p. 52Plut., De fac. 920 C
the sharp-darting sun and the gentle moon.
Plut., De Pyth. or. 400 B
It flashes back toward Olympus with undaunted face.
Macrob., Sat. I 17,46
But he, gathered into one, circles about the great heaven.
Plut., Quaest. plat. 1006 F
And earth makes night, by standing in the way of the light.
Plut., Quaest. conv. 720 E
of lonely, blind-eyed night . . .
Anecd. Gr., Bekker I, p. 337,16
For she gazes upon the holy circle of her lord, opposite.
Plut., De fac. 929 E
So the ray, having struck the broad circle of the moon . . .
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I · On Nature · Book I · Fragments 40–43
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.