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 122 of 126
Perception and Thought · A 95
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 234Aëtius
Παρμενίδης, Ἐ. ἐλλείψει τροφῆς τὴν ὄρεξιν. — Ἐ. τὰς ἡδονὰς γίνεσθαι τοῖς μὲν ὁμοίοις ⟨ἐκ⟩ τῶν ὁμοίων, κατὰ δὲ τὸ ἐλλεῖπον πρὸς τὴν ἀναπλήρωσιν, ὥστε τῶι ἐλλείποντι ἡ ὄρεξις τοῦ ὁμοίου. τὰς δ' ἀλγηδόνας τοῖς ἐναντίοις· ἠλλοτριῶσθαι γὰρ πρὸς ἄλληλα ὅσα διαφέρει κατά τε τὴν σύγκρισιν καὶ τὴν τῶν στοιχείων κρᾶσιν.
Aëtius
Ἐ. τὰς μὲν ὀρέξεις γίνεσθαι τοῖς ζώιοις κατὰ τὰς ἐλλείψεις τῶν ἀποτελούντων ἕκαστον στοιχείων, τὰς δὲ ἡδονὰς ἐξ οἰκείου κατὰ τὰς τῶν συγγενῶν καὶ ὁμοίων κράσεις, τὰς δὲ ὀχλήσεις καὶ τὰς ⟨ἀλγηδόνας ἐξ ἀνοικείου⟩.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Perception and Thought
p. 235Appetite is a lack; pleasure is a like meeting a like
Aëtius
Parmenides and Empedocles: appetite arises from a lack of nourishment. — Empedocles: pleasures arise for like things out of their likes, and in proportion to what is lacking toward its replenishment, so that the desire for the like belongs to whatever is in want. Pains arise from opposites, for all things that differ in composition and in the blending of the elements have been made alien to one another.
Aëtius
Empedocles: the appetites of animals arise according to the deficiencies of the elements that make each of them up; pleasures out of what is proper to them, according to the blendings of things akin and alike; and distresses and ⟨pains out of what is alien⟩.
Doxographic report, two notices from different books of the same compilation.
Appetite is here made a physical deficit and nothing else: an animal wants what it is short of, and the wanting is the shortage. It is the doctrine Theophrastus attacked at A 86 §§ 16 and 17, on the ground that we are often pained in the very act of perceiving, and that on this account things grown together should be the most pleased of all.
29 ⟨ἐκ⟩ Meineke; Karsten instead deletes τῶν ὁμοίων. — 31 ἠλλοτριῶσθαι and ἄλληλα are Meineke's and Karsten's corrections of the Stobaeus text. — 35 the words in angle brackets are supplied by Diels.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Perception and Thought · A 95
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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.