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 Introduction · Branch 100 of 126
Perception and Thought · Diels-Kranz 31 A 86–A 98
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Perception and Thought
p. 190PERCEPTION AND THOUGHT
Theophrastus on the Senses; Pores, Effluences and the Soul
Diels-Kranz 31 A 86 – A 98
A single Diels number and a whole chapter: Theophrastus, Aristotle's successor at the Lyceum, on how Empedocles thought seeing, hearing, smelling and thinking work. Sections 3 to 6, which treat Parmenides, Plato and Alcmaeon, are not part of the number and are not printed.
It falls into two halves. Sections 7 to 11 set out the doctrine — the eye as a lantern with fire inside it and a screen of finer stuff around it, the ear as a bell, and thought as a property of blood, so that a man is slow or quick or eloquent according to how the elements lie in the blood of one particular limb.
From section 12 Theophrastus takes the account apart, and the refutation is the more informative half, because to refute a position he must first state it exactly. Several things we know about Empedocles survive only because they were worth objecting to.
After it come the twelve numbers that close the A-testimonia. They are the machinery the chapter argues about, stated in its own terms: the passages and solid parts of A 87, the mirror, the lodestone of A 89 — the earliest theory of magnetism there is, and the earliest four objections to one — colour as an effluence commensurate with sight, the bell in the ear, appetite as a physical deficit, and the identity of mind with soul, which is what makes the transmigration of the Purifications a physical doctrine rather than a pious hope.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Perception and Thought · Diels-Kranz 31 A 86–A 98
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.