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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Facing Pages · Branch 43 of 54
On Nature · Book III · Fragments 133–134
Ancient Greek
p. 83Clem. Alex., Strom. V 81,2 (Diels-Kranz 31, B 133)
οὐκ ἔστιν πελάσασθαι ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ἐφικτόνἡμετέροις ἢ χερσὶ λαβεῖν, ἧιπέρ τε μεγίστηπειθοῦς ἀνθρώποισιν ἁμαξιτὸς εἰς φρένα πίπτει.Tzetzes, Chil. XIII 78 sq. (Diels-Kranz 31, B 134)
οὐδὲ γὰρ ἀνδρομέηι κεφαλῆι κατὰ γυῖα κέκασται,οὐ μὲν ἀπαὶ νώτοιο δύο κλάδοι ἀίσσονται,οὐ πόδες, οὐ θοὰ γοῦνα, οὐ μήδεα λαχνήεντα,ἀλλὰ φρὴν ἱερὴ καὶ ἀθέσφατος ἔπλετο μοῦνον,φροντίσι κόσμον ἅπαντα καταΐσσουσα θοῆισιν. 5Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I: On Nature · Book III
p. 84Clem. Alex., Strom. V 81,2 (Diels-Kranz 31, B 133)
It is not possible to bring him near, within reach of our eyes,
nor to take hold of him with hands — by which the greatest
highway of persuasion falls into the minds of men.
Tzetzes, Chil. XIII 78 sq. (Diels-Kranz 31, B 134)
For he is not furnished with a human head upon limbs,
nor do two branches dart out from his back,
no feet, no swift knees, no shaggy parts,
but he is a sacred and unutterable mind, and that alone,
darting through the whole ordered world with swift thoughts. 5
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I · On Nature · Book III · Fragments 133–134
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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.