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 120 of 126
Perception and Thought · A 92
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 230Plato, Meno
Βούλει οὖν σοι κατὰ Γοργίαν ἀποκρίνωμαι ἧι ἂν σὺ μάλιστα ἀκολουθήσαις; — Βούλομαι· πῶς γὰρ οὔ. — Οὐκοῦν λέγετε ἀπορροάς τινας τῶν ὄντων κατὰ Ἐμπεδοκλέα; — Σφόδρα γε. — Καὶ πόρους εἰς οὓς καὶ δι' ὧν αἱ ἀπόρροιαι πορεύονται; — Πάνυ γε. — Καὶ τῶν ἀπορροῶν τὰς μὲν ἁρμόττειν ἐνίοις τῶν πόρων, τὰς δὲ ἐλάττους ἢ μείζους εἶναι; — Ἔστι ταῦτα. — Οὐκοῦν καὶ ὄψιν καλεῖς τι; — Ἔγωγε. — Ἐκ τούτων δὴ σύνες ὅ τοι λέγω, ἔφη Πίνδαρος· ἔστιν γὰρ χρόα ἀπορροὴ σωμάτων ὄψει σύμμετρος καὶ αἰσθητός.
Aëtius
Ἐ. χρῶμα εἶναι ἀπεφαίνετο τὸ τοῖς πόροις τῆς ὄψεως ἐναρμόττον. τέτταρα δὲ τοῖς στοιχείοις ἰσάριθμα, λευκὸν μέλαν ἐρυθρὸν ὠχρόν.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Perception and Thought
p. 231Colour is an effluence commensurate with sight
Plato, Meno
"Shall I answer you in Gorgias' manner, in the way you would most easily follow?" — "Do; why not?" — "Then you people speak, with Empedocles, of certain effluences of the things that are?" — "Very much so." — "And of passages, into which and through which the effluences travel?" — "Certainly." — "And that some of the effluences fit some of the passages, while others are too small or too large?" — "That is so." — "And you call something sight?" — "I do." — "From these, then, 'understand what I am telling you,' as Pindar said: colour is an effluence of bodies, commensurate with sight and perceptible."
Aëtius
Empedocles declared that colour is what fits the passages of the sight; and that there are four colours, equal in number to the elements — white, black, red and yellow.
Reception, from a dialogue of Plato's, with a doxographic notice attached.
Socrates offers this as a specimen of the kind of definition he does not want — impressive, technical, and explaining nothing — and the joke is that Meno likes it. But the passage is precious for all that: it is a summary of Empedocles' optics given by someone who assumed his audience knew it, and it confirms both halves of the doctrine, effluence and commensurate pore. The four colours of the Aëtius notice square badly with A 69a and B 94, where only white and black are named, and with Theophrastus' objection at A 86 § 17 that grey fits nowhere.
Bearing on Volume I. Confirms A 87 and A 89; sits awkwardly beside A 69a and B 94.
16 σωμάτων Diels, following Alexander's On Sense: σχημάτων in BT, with χρημάτων noted in T.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Perception and Thought · A 92
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.