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 37 of 126
The Life · A 13–A 14
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 64Nicomachus, on the wonders of Pythagoras
ὧν μεταλαβόντας Ἐμπεδοκλέα τε τὸν Ἀκραγαντῖνον καὶ Ἐπιμενίδην τὸν Κρῆτα καὶ Ἄβαριν τὸν Ὑπερβόρειον πολλαχῆι καὶ αὐτοὺς τοιαῦτά τινα ἐπιτετελεκέναι. δῆλα δ' αὐτῶν τὰ ποιήματα ὑπάρχει, ἄλλως τε καὶ ἀλεξανέμας μὲν ὂν τὸ ἐπώνυμον Ἐμπεδοκλέους, καθαρτὴς δὲ τὸ Ἐπιμενίδου, αἰθροβάτης δὲ τὸ Ἀβάριδος.
Plutarch, On Being a Busybody
ὁ δὲ φυσικὸς Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὄρους τινὰ διασφάγα βαρὺν καὶ νοσώδη κατὰ τῶν πεδίων τὸν νότον ἐμπνέουσαν ἐμφράξας λοιμὸν ἔδοξεν ἐκκλεῖσαι τῆς χώρας.
Plutarch, Against Colotes
Ἐ. δὲ τούς τε πρώτους τῶν πολιτῶν ὑβρίζοντας καὶ διαφοροῦντας τὰ κοινὰ ἐξελέγξας ⟨τὴν πόλιν ἠλευθέρωσε⟩ τήν τε χώραν ἀπήλλαξεν ἀκαρπίας καὶ λοιμοῦ διασφάξας ὄρους ἀποτειχίσας δι' ὧν ὁ νότος εἰς τὸ πεδίον ὑπερέβαλλε.
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies
Ἐ. τε ὁ Ἀκραγαντῖνος κωλυσανέμας ἐπεκλήθη. λέγεται οὖν ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀκράγαντος ὄρους πνέοντός ποτε ἀνέμου βαρὺ καὶ νοσῶδες τοῖς ἐγχωρίοις, ἀλλὰ καὶ ταῖς γυναιξὶν αὐτῶν ἀγονίας αἰτίου γινομένου, παῦσαι τὸν ἄνεμον.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: The Life
p. 65The wind-stopper among the wonder-workers; and what he actually did
Nicomachus, on the wonders of Pythagoras
Empedocles of Acragas, Epimenides of Crete and Abaris the Hyperborean took a share of these powers, and themselves accomplished many such things in many places. Their poems make it plain — not least because the surname of Empedocles was Averter of Winds, that of Epimenides Purifier, and that of Abaris Walker on Air.
Plutarch, On Being a Busybody
Empedocles the natural philosopher blocked up a cleft in a mountain through which the south wind blew heavy and sickly down upon the plains, and was held to have shut the plague out of the country.
Plutarch, Against Colotes
Empedocles convicted the leading citizens of outrage and of embezzling public property, and ⟨set the city free⟩; and he rid the countryside of barrenness and of plague by walling off the clefts of a mountain through which the south wind came over into the plain.
Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies
Empedocles of Acragas was surnamed Wind-stopper. The story is that when a wind once blew from the mountain of Acragas, heavy and unwholesome for the inhabitants and a cause of barrenness in their women as well, he stopped the wind.
Legend and its likely original, side by side.
Four witnesses, and the sequence from the last to the first is the whole history of a legend in miniature. Plutarch, twice, describes an engineering work: a gap in a hillside walled off so that a sickly wind no longer reaches the plain, with the fall in disease that would follow. Clement has the deed but no longer the wall. Nicomachus has only the epithet, and files it beside a man who walked on air. The same story is at A 1 § 60, where the wall has become asses' hides. The plainest version is the earliest, and it is not a miracle.
Bearing on Volume I. B 111 promises power over winds; this is what that promise looked like on the ground.
2–3 the words in angle brackets are supplied by Diels. — 11 Kayser conjectures "blowing out of season." — 35 ἐμπνέουσαν: Reiske conjectures ἐκπνέουσαν.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · The Life · A 13–A 14
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.