Diotimos Library · Greek Antiquity Collection · Bilingual Edition
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
The Greek and Latin of Hermann Diels · New English translation and notes.
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English Page · Branch 29 of 126
The Life · A 1 §§ 73–74 (continued)
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 48Diogenes Laertius VIII 73–74
ὕστερον δὲ διά τινα πανήγυριν πορευόμενον ἐπ' ἁμάξης ὡς εἰς Μεσσήνην πεσεῖν καὶ τὸν μηρὸν κλάσαι· νοσήσαντα δ' ἐκ τούτου τελευτῆσαι ἐτῶν ἑπτὰ καὶ ἑβδομήκοντα. εἶναι δ' αὐτοῦ καὶ τάφον ἐν Μεγάροις. περὶ δὲ τῶν ἐτῶν Ἀριστοτέλης διαφέρεται· φησὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος ἑξήκοντα ἐτῶν αὐτὸν τελευτῆσαι. οἱ δὲ ἐννέα καὶ ἑκατόν. ἤκμαζε δὲ κατὰ τὴν τετάρτην καὶ ὀγδοηκοστὴν ὀλυμπιάδα. Δημήτριος δ' ὁ Τροιζήνιος ἐν τῶι Κατὰ σοφιστῶν βιβλίωι φησὶν αὐτὸν καθ' Ὅμηρον ἁψάμενον βρόχον αἰπὺν ἀφ' ὑψηλοῖο κρανείης αὐχέν' ἀποκρεμάσαι, ψυχὴν ⟨δ'⟩ Ἀϊδόσδε κατελθεῖν. ἐν τῶι προειρημένωι Τηλαύγους ἐπιστολίωι λέγεται αὐτὸν εἰς θάλατταν ὑπὸ γήρως ὀλισθόντα τελευτῆσαι. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν περὶ τοῦ θανάτου καὶ τοσαῦτα.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: The Life
p. 49Diogenes Laertius VIII 73–74
Later, travelling to some festival on a wagon, on his way to Messene, he fell and broke his thigh; and falling ill from this he died at the age of seventy-seven. There is also a tomb of his at Megara. — About his years Aristotle differs, for he says that he died at sixty; others say at a hundred and nine. He was at his height in the eighty-fourth Olympiad. Demetrius of Troezen says in his book Against the Sophists that he, in Homer's words, "fastened a sheer noose from a lofty cornel tree and hanged his neck, and his soul went down to Hades." And in the little letter of Telauges mentioned above it is said that he slipped into the sea through old age and so died. So much, and no more, about his death.
Biography; four incompatible deaths and three incompatible ages.
Five deaths are now on record — the voice and the light, the crater, the broken thigh, the noose, and the slip into the sea — together with ages of sixty, seventy-seven and a hundred and nine, and tombs at Megara and nowhere. Diogenes sets them down and does not choose. What the accounts have in common is more telling than what divides them: none of them is ordinary, and all of them were needed because the real answer, which Timaeus gives, is that nobody knew. The purple and the golden girdle, by contrast, are not in dispute at all, and are corroborated at A 2 and A 16.
Bearing on Volume I. The dress described here is the dress of the man speaking in B 112.
25 προσήιει in PΦ: προσείη in BF. — 31 Δημήτριος Stephanus: Δημόκριτος in BPF. — 34 ⟨δ'⟩ in P²; absent from BP¹F. — 36 ὀλισθήσαντα in FP².
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · The Life · A 1 §§ 73–74 (continued)
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Empedocles survives not only through his poems but through the ancient writers who described his life, doctrines, medicine, cosmology, and extraordinary reputation. Volume II gathers the testimonia: ninety-nine numbered reports drawn from fifty-two authors across nine centuries. The English introduction appears full width; each Greek or Latin testimony then faces its new English translation.
Historical Text and Translation
The Greek and Latin reading text follows Hermann Diels’s third edition of Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (1912), retaining the supplied edition’s Diels-Kranz numbering and editorial signs. These witnesses must be read as a chain of transmission: many preserve valuable evidence, while others summarize, dispute, reshape, or repeat earlier accounts.
About Diotimos Editions
Diotimos Editions prepared the new English translation, introduction, notes, and reception appendices for this volume. The translation keeps each witness distinct and preserves its technical vocabulary, argumentative posture, and relationship to the surviving poetry in Volume I.
Rights
The ancient source works and Hermann Diels’s 1912 Greek and Latin edition are in the public domain. The 2026 English translation, introduction, notes, and editorial matter are original to this edition and remain © 2026 Diotimos.