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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Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 67
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 146Aristotle, On the Heavens
διὸ δὴ καὶ τὴν γῆν πάντες ὅσοι τὸν οὐρανὸν γεννῶσιν ἐπὶ τὸ μέσον συνελθεῖν φασιν. ὅτι δὲ μένει, ζητοῦσι τὴν αἰτίαν καὶ λέγουσιν οἱ μὲν τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον, ὅτι τὸ πλάτος καὶ τὸ μέγεθος αὐτῆς αἴτιον, οἱ δ' ὥσπερ Ἐ. τὴν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ φορὰν κύκλωι περιθέουσαν καὶ θᾶττον φερομένην τὴν τῆς γῆς φορὰν κωλύειν καθάπερ τὸ ἐν τοῖς κυάθοις ὕδωρ· καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο κύκλωι τοῦ κυάθου φερομένου πολλάκις κάτω τοῦ χαλκοῦ γινόμενον ὅμως οὐ φέρεται κάτω πεφυκὸς φέρεσθαι διὰ τὴν αὐτὴν αἰτίαν.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 147Why the earth stays where it is
Aristotle, On the Heavens
This is why all those who generate the heaven say that the earth came together at the centre. As to why it stays there, they look for the cause; some speak in this way, that its breadth and its size are the cause; others, like Empedocles, that the revolution of the heaven, running round in a circle and travelling faster, prevents the earth from travelling — as with the water in ladles. For this too, when the ladle is swung round in a circle, though it often comes to be below the bronze, is nevertheless not carried downward, though it is its nature to be carried downward — and for the same cause.
Report, with Empedocles’ own analogy preserved.
The analogy is Empedocles', not Aristotle's, and it is a good one: a bucket of water swung on a rope does not spill at the top. He has identified the phenomenon that will later be called centrifugal, and has used it to answer the hardest question in any cosmology that has the earth unsupported in space.
Bearing on Volume I. Aristotle preserves the argument in order to reject it; his own answer is natural place.
295a22 τὴν] ἢ τὴν in the manuscripts EF.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 67
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.