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 40 of 54
On Nature · Book II · Fragments 106–111
Ancient Greek
p. 77Arist., Met. Γ 5, 1009b 17 sq.
πρὸς παρεὸν γὰρ μῆτις ἀέξεται ἀνθρώποισιν.Arist., Met. Γ 5, 1009b 17 sq.
ὅσσον ‹δ'› ἀλλοῖοι μετέφυν, τόσον ἄρ σφισιν αἰείκαὶ τὸ φρονεῖν ἀλλοῖα παρίσταται...Hippolyt., Haer. VI 29, 26
εἰ γάρ κέν σφ' ἀδινῆισιν ὑπὸ πραπίδεσσιν ἐρείσαςεὐμενέως καθαρῆισιν ἐποπτεύσηις μελέτηισιν,ταῦτά τέ σοι μάλα πάντα δι' αἰῶνος παρέσονται,ἄλλα τε πόλλ' ἀπὸ τῶνδ' ἐκτήσεαι· αὐτὰ γὰρ αὔξειταῦτ' εἰς ἦθος ἕκαστον, ὅπηι φύσις ἐστὶν ἑκάστωι. 5εἰ δὲ σύ γ' ἀλλοίων ἐπορέξεαι, οἷα κατ' ἄνδραςμυρία δειλὰ πέλονται ἅ τ' ἀμβλύνουσι μερίμνας,ἦ σ' ἄφαρ ἐκλείψουσι περιπλομένοιο χρόνοιοσφῶν αὐτῶν ποθέοντα φίλην ἐπὶ γένναν ἱκέσθαι·πάντα γὰρ ἴσθι φρόνησιν ἔχειν καὶ νώματος αἶσαν. 10Diog. Laert. VIII 59
φάρμακα δ' ὅσσα γεγᾶσι κακῶν καὶ γήραος ἄλκαιπεύσηι, ἐπεὶ μούνωι σοὶ ἐγὼ κρανέω τάδε πάντα.παύσεις δ' ἀκαμάτων ἀνέμων μένος οἵ τ' ἐπὶ γαῖανEmpedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I: On Nature · Book II
p. 78Arist., Met. Γ 5, 1009b 17 sq.
For men's wisdom grows with what lies before them.
Arist., Met. Γ 5, 1009b 17 sq.
And in so far as they have grown different, so far does it always
does thinking different things present itself to them . . .
Hippolyt., Haer. VI 29, 26
For if you fix them firmly beneath your close-packed wits,
and look on them graciously with pure studies,
assuredly all these things will be with you through your lifetime,
and from them you will get many others; for these very things grow,
each into the character, according as each one's nature is. 5
But if you reach out after other things, such as among men
are the countless wretched things that blunt their thinking,
surely these will leave you at once as time comes round,
longing to come back to their own dear kind;
for know that all things have thought, and a portion of intelligence. 10
Diog. Laert. VIII 59
All the remedies that there are against ills, and defences against old age,
you shall learn, since for you alone will I accomplish all these things.
You shall stop the force of tireless winds, which sweep over the earth
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I · On Nature · Book II · Fragments 106–111
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.