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 49 of 54
The Purifications · Fragments 132–137
Ancient Greek
p. 95Clem. Alex., Strom. V 140,5
ὄλβιος, ὃς θείων πραπίδων ἐκτήσατο πλοῦτον,δειλὸς δ', ὧι σκοτόεσσα θεῶν πέρι δόξα μέμηλεν.Sext. Empir., Adv. math. IX 129
οὐ παύσεσθε φόνοιο δυσηχέος; οὐκ ἐσορᾶτεἀλλήλους δάπτοντες ἀκηδείηισι νόοιο;Arist., Poet. 21, 1457b 14
. . . χαλκῶι ἀπὸ ψυχὴν ἀρύσας . . .Theon Smyrn., p. 15,11 Hiller
κρηνάων ἄπο πέντε ταμόντ' ‹ἐν› ἀτειρέι χαλκῶι . . .Sext. Empir., Adv. math. IX 129
μορφὴν δ' ἀλλάξαντα πατὴρ φίλον υἱὸν ἀείραςσφάζει ἐπευχόμενος μέγα νήπιος· οἱ δ' ἐπορεῦνταιλισσόμενοι θύοντας, ὁ δ' αὖ νήκουστος ὁμοκλέωνσφάξας ἐν μεγάροισι κακὴν ἀλεγύνατο δαῖτα.ὡς δ' αὔτως πατέρ' υἱὸς ἑλὼν καὶ μητέρα παῖδες 5θυμὸν ἀπορραίσαντε φίλας κατὰ σάρκας ἔδουσιν.Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I: The Purifications
p. 96Clem. Alex., Strom. V 140,5
Blessed is he who has acquired the wealth of divine understanding,
but wretched he whose concern is a dark opinion about the gods.
Sext. Empir., Adv. math. IX 129
Will you not cease from harsh-sounding slaughter? Do you not see
that you are devouring one another in the heedlessness of your minds?
Arist., Poet. 21, 1457b 14
. . . having drawn off the life with bronze . . .
Theon Smyrn., p. 15,11 Hiller
having drawn from five springs ‹into› unwearying bronze . . .
Sext. Empir., Adv. math. IX 129
The father lifts up his own son, who has changed his form,
and slaughters him with a prayer — great fool. And they are at a loss,
beseeching those who are sacrificing. But he, deaf to their cries,
having slaughtered him, makes ready in his halls an evil feast.
And just so a son seizes his father, and children their mother, 5
and tearing out the life, they devour the flesh of their own.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I · The Purifications · Fragments 132–137
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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.