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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Facing Pages · Branch 101 of 126
Perception and Thought · A 86 §§ 1–2
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 192On the Senses 1
Παρμενίδης μὲν καὶ Ἐ. καὶ Πλάτων τῶι ὁμοίωι, οἱ δὲ περὶ Ἀναξαγόραν καὶ Ἡράκλειτον τῶι ἐναντίωι …
On the Senses 2
περὶ ἑκάστης δὲ τῶν κατὰ μέρος οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι σχεδὸν ἀπολείπουσιν, Ἐ. δὲ πειρᾶται καὶ ταύτας ἀνάγειν εἰς τὴν ὁμοιότητα.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Perception and Thought
p. 193Theophrastus places Empedocles among those who explain perception by likeness
On the Senses 1
Parmenides and Empedocles and Plato [account for perception] by the like; the school of Anaxagoras and Heraclitus by the opposite …
On the Senses 2
About each of the senses taken singly the others give up almost entirely; Empedocles tries to bring these too under likeness.
The opening of the longest continuous testimony in the collection.
Theophrastus succeeded Aristotle as head of the Lyceum, and On the Senses is the first history of a philosophical problem ever written. What follows is not a doxographic notice but a sustained reading of Empedocles' own text by a man who had it in front of him, and it is the single most valuable document about him after the fragments themselves. Its second half is a refutation, and that is precisely why it is so informative: to refute a doctrine Theophrastus must first state it exactly.
Bearing on Volume I. Everything in this chapter bears on B 84, B 89, B 100, B 105 and B 107, and is the frame in which those fragments were read in antiquity.
Sections 3 to 6 treat Parmenides, Plato and Alcmaeon, and are omitted here.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Perception and Thought · A 86 §§ 1–2
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.