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 44 of 126
The Life · A 22–A 23
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 78Aristotle, Poetics
οὐδὲν δὲ κοινόν ἐστιν Ὁμήρωι καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλεῖ πλὴν τὸ μέτρον· διὸ τὸν μὲν ποιητὴν δίκαιον καλεῖν, τὸν δὲ φυσιολόγον μᾶλλον ἢ ποιητήν.
Menander Rhetor
φυσικοὶ δ' ὁποίους οἱ περὶ Παρμενίδην καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέα ἐποίησαν, τίς ἡ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος φύσις, τίς ἡ τοῦ Διὸς παρατιθέμενοι. καὶ οἱ πολλοὶ τῶν Ὀρφέως τούτου τοῦ τρόπου.
Menander Rhetor
εἰσὶν δὲ τοιοῦτοι, ὅταν Ἀπόλλωνος ὕμνον λέγοντες ἥλιον αὐτὸν εἶναι φάσκωμεν καὶ περὶ τοῦ ἡλίου τῆς φύσεως διαλεγώμεθα καὶ περὶ Ἥρας ὅτι ἀὴρ καὶ Ζεὺς τὸ θερμόν. οἱ γὰρ τοιοῦτοι ὕμνοι φυσιολογικοί. καὶ χρῶνται δὲ τῶι τοιούτωι τρόπωι Παρμενίδης καὶ Ἐ. … Παρμενίδης μὲν γὰρ καὶ Ἐ. ἐξηγοῦνται, Πλάτων δὲ ἐν βραχυτάτοις ἀναμιμνήισκει.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: The Life
p. 79Is he a poet? Aristotle says no; the handbooks of hymn-writing say yes
Aristotle, Poetics
Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common except the metre; so it is right to call the one a poet, and the other a natural philosopher rather than a poet.
Menander Rhetor
Natural hymns are of the kind that Parmenides and Empedocles composed, setting out what the nature of Apollo is, and what the nature of Zeus. Most of the hymns of Orpheus are of this sort.
Menander Rhetor
They are of this kind: when, in singing a hymn to Apollo, we assert that he is the sun, and discourse about the nature of the sun; and about Hera, that she is air, and Zeus, that he is the hot. Hymns of this sort are natural-philosophical. Parmenides and Empedocles use this manner … for Parmenides and Empedocles expound it at length, while Plato recalls it in the fewest words.
Reception, on the question that would not go away.
Aristotle's sentence has decided the question for most of European criticism, and it is worth noticing how narrow it is: he says the two men share only the metre, and calls Empedocles a natural philosopher — not a bad poet. The rhetorician takes the opposite view, and from a more useful angle: what Empedocles wrote was a hymn of a recognised kind, in which a god is expounded as a natural force. On that description the B 6 lines are not a riddle needing a key but an ordinary procedure of the genre.
Bearing on Volume I. B 6, and the dispute over the divine names set out at A 33.
The hymn to Apollo is the one A 1 § 57 says was burnt. On Hera as air and Zeus as the hot, compare B 6, 2 and A 33.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · The Life · A 22–A 23
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.