Diotimos Library · Greek Antiquity Collection · Bilingual Edition
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
On Nature · The Purifications · Ancient Greek with a new English translation.
Explore the LexiconSwipe or use the arrow keys.
Facing Pages · Branch 35 of 54
On Nature · Book II · Fragments 82–65
Ancient Greek
p. 67Arist. Meteor. Δ 9, 387b 4 sq.
ταὐτὰ τρίχες καὶ φύλλα καὶ οἰωνῶν πτερὰ πυκνάκαὶ λεπίδες γίγνονται ἐπὶ στιβαροῖσι μέλεσσιν.Plut., De fort. 98 D
αὐτὰρ ἐχίνοιςὀξυβελεῖς χαῖται νώτοις ἐπιπεφρίκασιν.Schol. ad Eur., Phoin. 18
‹εἰς› σχιστοὺς λειμῶνας ... Ἀφροδίτης.Plut., Quaest. nat. 917 C
τῶι δ' ἐπὶ καὶ Πόθος εἶσι δι' ὄψιος ἀμμιμνήισκων . . .Arist., Gen. anim. A 18, 722b 12
ἀλλὰ διέσπασται μελέων φύσις· ἡ μὲν ἐν ἀνδρός . . .Arist., Gen. anim. A 17, 723a 23 sq.
ἐν δ' ἐχύθη καθαροῖσι· τὰ μὲν τελέθουσι γυναῖκες,ψύχεος ἀντιάσαντα, ‹τὰ δ' ἔμπαλιν ἄρρενα θερμοῦ›.Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I: On Nature · Book II
p. 68Arist. Meteor. Δ 9, 387b 4 sq.
The same things are hair, and leaves, and the close plumage of birds,
and scales that grow upon stout limbs.
Plut., De fort. 98 D
But for hedgehogs,
sharp-pointed bristles bristle upon their backs.
Schol. ad Eur., Phoin. 18
‹into› the cloven meadows . . . of Aphrodite.
Plut., Quaest. nat. 917 C
And upon him comes Desire too, reminding him through sight . . .
Arist., Gen. anim. A 18, 722b 12
But the nature of the limbs is torn apart: one part in the man's . . .
Arist., Gen. anim. A 17, 723a 23 sq.
And it was poured into pure places; and some turn out women,
having met with cold, ‹and others, on the contrary, males, with heat.›
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I · On Nature · Book II · Fragments 82–65
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.