Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I

Arist., Resp. 13, 473b 9 sqq.

In this way all things breathe in and breathe out. In all of them,

pipes of flesh, scant of blood, are stretched along the outermost body,

and at their mouths the uttermost ends of the nostrils are pierced

right through with close-set furrows, so as to keep the blood in,

but to have an easy passage cut for the aither through the ducts. 5

Then, whenever the soft blood darts away from these,

the bubbling aither rushes down with a raging surge;

and when it leaps up, the breath goes out again — as when a girl

plays with a water-catcher of gleaming bronze:

when she sets the passage of the pipe against her shapely hand 10

and dips it into the soft body of silvery water,

no rain comes into the vessel, but the mass of air,

falling from within upon the close-set holes, keeps it out,

until she uncovers the compressed stream; but then,

as the breath gives way, the due measure of water enters. 15

And just so, when the water holds the depths of the bronze

and the passage and duct are stopped by human flesh,

the aither outside, straining inward, holds back the rain

about the gates of the harsh-sounding neck, mastering its surface,

until she lets go with her hand; and then, contrariwise to before, 20

as the breath falls in, the due measure of water runs out.

And just so the soft blood, surging through the limbs,

whenever it darts back again into the interior,

at once a stream of aither comes down, raging with its swell;