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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Ancient Greek and Latin Page · Branch 18 of 126
The Life · A 1 §§ 56–58
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 26Diogenes Laertius VIII 56
Ἕρμιππος δὲ οὐ Παρμενίδου, Ξενοφάνους δὲ γεγονέναι ζηλωτήν, ὧι καὶ συνδιατρῖψαι καὶ μιμήσασθαι τὴν ἐποποιίαν· ὕστερον δὲ τοῖς Πυθαγορικοῖς ἐντυχεῖν. Ἀλκιδάμας δ' ἐν τῶι Φυσικῶι φησι κατὰ τοὺς αὐτοὺς χρόνους Ζήνωνα καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέα ἀκοῦσαι Παρμενίδου, εἶθ' ὕστερον ἀποχωρῆσαι, καὶ τὸν μὲν Ζήνωνα κατ' ἰδίαν φιλοσοφῆσαι, τὸν δὲ Ἀναξαγόρου διακοῦσαι καὶ Πυθαγόρου· καὶ τοῦ μὲν τὴν σεμνότητα ζηλῶσαι τοῦ τε βίου καὶ τοῦ σχήματος, τοῦ δὲ τὴν φυσιολογίαν.
Diogenes Laertius VIII 57
Ἀριστοτέλης δὲ ἐν τῶι Σοφιστῆι φησι πρῶτον Ἐμπεδοκλέα ῥητορικὴν εὑρεῖν, Ζήνωνα δὲ διαλεκτικήν. ἐν δὲ τῶι Περὶ ποιητῶν φησιν ὅτι καὶ Ὁμηρικὸς ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ δεινὸς περὶ τὴν φράσιν γέγονεν, μεταφορητικός τε ὢν καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις τοῖς περὶ ποιητικὴν ἐπιτεύγμασι χρώμενος· καὶ διότι γράψαντος αὐτοῦ καὶ ἄλλα ποιήματα τήν τε Ξέρξου διάβασιν καὶ προοίμιον εἰς Ἀπόλλωνα, ταῦθ' ὕστερον κατέκαυσέν τις αὐτοῦ ἢ θυγάτηρ, ὥς φησιν Ἱερώνυμος, τὸ μὲν προοίμιον ἄκουσα, τὰ δὲ Περσικὰ βουληθεῖσα διὰ τὸ ἀτελείωτα εἶναι.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: The Life
p. 27Teachers, the burnt poems, the tragedies, and Gorgias
Diogenes Laertius VIII 56
Hermippus says he was an emulator not of Parmenides but of Xenophanes, with whom he spent time and whose epic manner he imitated, and that he fell in with the Pythagoreans later. Alcidamas says in his Physics that Zeno and Empedocles heard Parmenides at the same period and afterwards went their own ways: Zeno to philosophise on his own, Empedocles to study under Anaxagoras and Pythagoras — emulating in the one the gravity of his life and his bearing, and in the other his natural philosophy.
Diogenes Laertius VIII 57
Aristotle says in the Sophist that Empedocles was the first to discover rhetoric, and Zeno dialectic. And in the On Poets he says that Empedocles was Homeric and formidable in his diction, given to metaphor and employing all the other resources of the poetic art; and that, since he had written other poems besides — a Crossing of Xerxes and a prelude to Apollo — these were afterwards burnt by a sister of his, or a daughter, as Hieronymus says: the prelude by accident, the Persian poem on purpose, because it was unfinished.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · The Life · A 1 §§ 56–58
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.