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 92 of 126
Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 78 (continued)
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 174Plutarch, Natural Questions
ἔνιοι δέ φασιν ὥσπερ γάλακτος ὀρρὸν τοῦ αἵματος ταραχθέντος ἐκκρούεσθαι τὸ δάκρυον, ὡς Ἐ.
Soranus, Gynaecology
συγκέκριται δ' ἐκ τεττάρων τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἀγγείων, δύο φλεβωδῶν καὶ δύο ἀρτηριωδῶν, δι' ὧν εἰς θρέψιν ὕλη αἱματικὴ καὶ πνευματικὴ παρακομίζεται τοῖς ἐμβρύοις. ἐμφύεσθαι δὲ ταῦτα Ἐμπεδοκλῆς μὲν εἰς τὸ ἧπαρ οἴεται, Φαῖδρος δὲ εἰς τὴν καρδίαν.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 175Plutarch, Natural Questions
Some say that the tear is knocked out of the blood when the blood is disturbed, as whey is out of milk — Empedocles among them.
Report, with Aristotle conceding the point in two works.
This is the most important doctrinal testimony in the volume, and the reason is in Aristotle's first sentence rather than in Aëtius' figures. Bone is not fire, nor earth, nor all four; bone is a proportion. What makes a thing the thing it is, on this view, is a number — and Aristotle, who disagrees with nearly everything else here, concedes that on this point Empedocles was "led by the truth itself." The second Aristotle passage then turns the doctrine against itself: if soul is the ratio of a mixture, and flesh and bone have different ratios, a body must have as many souls as it has kinds of tissue.
Bearing on Volume I. The ratio for bone is given in verse at B 96; this notice and that fragment are the same doctrine in the two registers.
22 ἴσων Wyttenbach: ἔσω in the manuscripts. — 23 καὶ γῆς ὕδατι from Galen and B: γῆς τά in ABC; διπλασίονι Bernadakis. — 25 δυεῖν Wyttenbach: δοκεῖ in the manuscripts; the whole clause reconstructed by Diels after fragment B 96. — 26 ⟨δέ⟩ and the closing words supplied by Diels from Galen, the manuscripts being corrupt and mutilated. — 32 ⟨τό⟩ supplied by Diels.
The vessels of the navel
Soranus, Gynaecology
[The navel] is compounded of four vessels in number, two of the venous kind and two of the arterial, through which material of blood and of breath is conveyed to embryos for their nourishment. Empedocles thinks that these are implanted into the liver, Phaedrus that they go to the heart.
Report from a practising physician.
Soranus is a working obstetrician of the second century and the best medical witness in the collection: he cites Empedocles not as a curiosity but as a position still worth listing beside a contemporary's. That the umbilical vessels run to the liver is what he is credited with, and it is nearly right.
10 ἀρτηριωδῶν H. Schoene: ἀρτηριῶν in the manuscripts. — 12 Phaedrus is otherwise unknown.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 78 (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.