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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Perception and Thought · A 87
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 218Aristotle, On Coming-to-be and Passing-away
τοῖς μὲν οὖν δοκεῖ πάσχειν ἕκαστον διά τινων πόρων εἰσιόντος τοῦ ποιοῦντος ἐσχάτου καὶ κυριωτάτου, καὶ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον καὶ ὁρᾶν καὶ ἀκούειν ἡμᾶς φασι καὶ τὰς ἄλλας αἰσθήσεις αἰσθάνεσθαι πάσας, ἔτι δὲ ὁρᾶσθαι διά τε ἀέρος καὶ ὕδατος καὶ τῶν διαφανῶν, διὰ τὸ πόρους ἔχειν ἀοράτους μὲν διὰ μικρότητα, πυκνοὺς δὲ καὶ κατὰ στοῖχον, καὶ μᾶλλον ἔχειν τὰ διαφανῆ μᾶλλον. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἐπί τινων οὕτω διώρισαν, ὥσπερ καὶ Ἐ., οὐ μόνον ἐπὶ τῶν ποιούντων καὶ πασχόντων, ἀλλὰ καὶ μείγνυσθαί φησιν, ὅσων οἱ πόροι σύμμετροι πρὸς ἀλλήλους εἰσίν.
Philoponus, On Coming-to-be and Passing-away
ἀναγκαῖον, φησί, τῶι Ἐμπεδοκλεῖ λέγειν εἶναί τινα στερεὰ καὶ ἀδιαίρετα διὰ τὸ μὴ εἶναι πάντηι τοῦ σώματος πόρους συνεχεῖς. τοῦτο γὰρ ἀδύνατον· πόρος γὰρ ἂν εἴη τὸ πᾶν σῶμα καὶ κενόν. ὥστε εἰ τοῦτο ἄτοπον, ἀνάγκη τὰ μὲν ἁπτόμενα μόρια τοῦ σώματος στερεὰ εἶναι ἀδιαίρετα, τὰ δὲ μεταξὺ αὐτῶν κενά, οὓς Ἐ. πόρους ἐκάλεσεν.
Philoponus, On Coming-to-be and Passing-away
ἴσμεν δὲ ὅτι οἱ τοὺς πόρους ὑποτιθέμενοι οὐ κενοὺς ὑπετίθεντο τούτους, ἀλλὰ πεπληρωμένους λεπτομερεστέρου τινὸς σώματος οἷον ἀέρος. ταύτηι γὰρ διέφερον τῶν τὸ κενὸν ὑποτιθεμένων. — διαφέρουσι δὲ τοῦ κενοῦ οἱ πόροι, διότι οἱ τοὺς πόρους εἰσάγοντες κενὸν εἶναι οὐκ ἔλεγον.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Perception and Thought
p. 219Pores and solid parts, and whether a pore is a void
Aristotle, On Coming-to-be and Passing-away
Some hold that each thing is acted upon when the ultimate and most authoritative agent enters through certain passages; and they say that this is how we see and hear and have all the other perceptions; and further that things are seen through air and water and the transparent bodies, because these have passages invisible on account of their smallness, but close-packed and set in rows — and the more transparent a body is, the more of them it has. Some laid this down for certain cases only, as Empedocles did, not for agents and patients alone: he says that things mix as well, whenever their passages are commensurate with one another.
Philoponus, On Coming-to-be and Passing-away
Empedocles, he says, is bound to admit that there are certain solid and indivisible bodies, since the passages of a body cannot run continuously throughout it. That is impossible: the whole body would then be passage, and void. So if that is absurd, the parts of the body that touch one another must be solid and indivisible, and the spaces between them empty — which is what Empedocles called passages.
Philoponus, On Coming-to-be and Passing-away
But we know that those who posited passages did not posit them as empty, but as filled with some body of finer parts, such as air. It was in just this that they differed from those who posited the void. — Passages differ from void in this, that those who introduce passages did not say that void exists.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Perception and Thought · A 87
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.