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 118 of 126
Perception and Thought · A 90
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 226Aëtius
Ἐ. καὶ πρὸς τὸ διὰ τῶν ἀκτίνων καὶ πρὸς τὸ διὰ τῶν εἰδώλων ἐκδοχὰς παρέχεται. πλείους δὲ πρὸς ⟨τὸ⟩ δεύτερον· τὰς γὰρ ἀπορροίας ἀποδέχεται.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Perception and Thought
p. 227Rays or images?
Aëtius
Empedocles supplies grounds both for the view that we see by rays and for the view that we see by images; but more for the second, since he accepts effluences.
Doxographic report, and a rare admission that a source held both views.
The two theories divided ancient optics: either something goes out from the eye, or something comes in from the object. The doxographer's difficulty is that Empedocles is quoted for both — the lantern of B 84 sends fire out, the effluences of A 89 and A 92 come in. The honest reading is that he held both at once, and that the meeting of the two is what seeing was.
Bearing on Volume I. B 84 is the outgoing half; A 92 is the incoming half.
41 ⟨τό⟩ supplied by Diels.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Perception and Thought · A 90
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.