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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The Life · A 21
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 76Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
et qui quattuor ex rebus posse omnia rentur / ex igni terra atque anima procrescere et imbri, / quorum Acragantinus cum primis Empedocles est, / insula quem triquetris terrarum gessit in oris, / quam fluitans circum magnis anfractibus aequor / Ionium glaucis aspargit virus ab undis / angustoque freto rapidum mare dividit undans / Italiae terrarum oras a finibus eius.
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
hic est vasta Charybdis, et hic Aetnaea minantur / murmura flammarum rursum se colligere iras, / faucibus eruptos iterum vis ut vomat ignis / ad caelumque ferat flammai fulgura rursum. / quae cum magna modis multis miranda videtur / gentibus humanis regio visendaque fertur, / rebus opima bonis, multa munita virum vi, / nil tamen hoc habuisse viro praeclarius in se / nec sanctum magis et mirum carumque videtur.
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
carmina quin etiam divini pectoris eius / vociferantur et exponunt praeclara reperta, / ut vix humana videatur stirpe creatus.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: The Life
p. 77Lucretius on Sicily and on Empedocles
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
And those who hold that all things can grow out of four — out of fire and earth and breath and rain — of whom Acragantine Empedocles stands among the first: an island bore him, on the three-cornered coasts of the lands, an island round which the Ionian water, flowing in its great windings, scatters the salt spray from its grey-green waves, and from whose borders the racing sea, surging through a narrow strait, divides the shores of the Italian land.
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
Here is vast Charybdis, and here the mutterings of Etna threaten to gather up the fires' wrath once more, so that its violence may again vomit out the flames torn from its throat and carry the lightnings of its fire back up to heaven. And though this country seems in many ways a great marvel to the peoples of the earth, and is said to be worth the journey — rich in good things, and fortified with a great strength of men — yet it appears to have had in it nothing more glorious than this man, nothing more holy, more wonderful, or more dear.
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
More than that: the songs of his divine breast cry aloud and set forth his glorious discoveries, so that he scarcely seems to have been begotten of human stock.
Reception, and the greatest tribute one poet of nature paid another.
Lucretius is about to spend sixty lines demolishing the four elements, and this is his preface to the demolition. The praise is not a courtesy: he means that the island's volcanoes and whirlpools, the things travellers cross the sea to look at, are less remarkable than the man, and he ends by denying that Empedocles was quite human. No Greek source says anything so warm. It is also the passage that transmitted Empedocles to Latin Europe — for a thousand years, more people met him here than anywhere else.
Bearing on Volume I. The four roots of B 6 and B 17, as they looked to a poet writing two centuries later in another language.
720 undans Lachmann: undis in the manuscripts. — 724 vomat Lambinus: omniat in the manuscripts.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · The Life · A 21
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.