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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The Life · A 1 §§ 61–63
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 32Diogenes Laertius VIII 61
ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐπίγραμμα εἰς αὐτὸν ἐποίησεν· Παυσανίην … ἀδύτων. τὴν γοῦν ἄπνουν ὁ Ἡρακλείδης φησὶ τοιοῦτόν τι εἶναι, ὡς τριάκοντα ἡμέρας συντηρεῖν ἄπνουν καὶ ἄσφυκτον τὸ σῶμα· ὅθεν εἶπεν αὐτὸν καὶ ἰητρὸν καὶ μάντιν, λαμβάνων ἅμα καὶ ἀπὸ τούτων τῶν στίχων· ὦ φίλοι … βάξιν.
Diogenes Laertius VIII 63
μέγαν δὲ τὸν Ἀκράγαντα εἰπεῖν φησιν, ἐπεὶ μυριάδες αὐτὸν κατώικουν ὀγδοήκοντα· ὅθεν τὸν Ἐμπεδοκλέα εἰπεῖν τρυφώντων αὐτῶν· Ἀκραγαντῖνοι τρυφῶσι μὲν ὡς αὔριον ἀποθανούμενοι, οἰκίας δὲ κατασκευάζονται ὡς πάντα τὸν χρόνον βιωσόμενοι. αὐτοὺς δὲ τούτους τοὺς Καθαρμοὺς Ὀλυμπίασι ῥαψωιδῆσαι λέγεται Κλεομένη τὸν ῥαψωιδόν, ὡς καὶ Φαβωρῖνος ἐν Ἀπομνημονεύμασι. φησὶ δ' αὐτὸν καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης ἐλεύθερον γεγονέναι καὶ πάσης ἀρχῆς ἀλλότριον, εἴ γε τὴν βασιλείαν αὐτῶι διδομένην παρηιτήσατο, καθάπερ Ξάνθος ἐν τοῖς περὶ αὐτοῦ λέγει, τὴν λιτότητα δηλονότι πλέον ἀγαπήσας.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: The Life
p. 33Thirty days without breath; the luxury of Acragas; the refused crown
Diogenes Laertius VIII 61
He also composed an epigram upon him: "Pausanias … of the inner shrines." As for the breathless woman, Heraclides says the case was of this kind — that the body was kept thirty days without breath and without pulse. That is why he called Empedocles both physician and seer, taking the words at the same time from these verses of his: "O friends … report."
Diogenes Laertius VIII 63
He says that Acragas was called great because eighty thousand people lived in it; whence Empedocles said, when they were living luxuriously: "The people of Acragas indulge themselves as though they would die tomorrow, and build their houses as though they would live for ever." These same Purifications are said to have been recited at Olympia by Cleomenes the rhapsode, as Favorinus too says in his Memoirs. And Aristotle says that Empedocles was a free man and a stranger to all office, since he refused the kingship when it was offered him — as Xanthus says in his account of him — plainly because he preferred a plain life.
Biography, with Aristotle cited for the refusal of kingship.
The two halves of this section are worth holding together, because the tradition did not separate them. The same man kept a woman thirty days without breath or pulse — a case, treated by a physician, which is what B 100 and A 74 are about — and was called a seer for it. The saying about Acragas is the best ancient sentence about that city and is very likely his. And the refusal of the crown is Aristotle's, not a later embellishment: it belongs with B 112, where he enters the towns garlanded and is followed by thousands, and declines to be anything but what he is.
Bearing on Volume I. B 112 opens the Purifications with the entry into Acragas; B 156 is the epigram to Pausanias.
3 ἄσφυκτον Mercurialis: ἄσηπτον in the manuscripts, ἄσιτον in the Suda. — 4 ἰητρόν in BP¹: ἰατρόν in P²F; compare B 146, 1. — 6 the words ποταμὸν ἄλλα in the text are the remains of an ancient marginal scholion. — 9 Ὀλυμπίασι: the manuscripts vary between ἐν ὀλυμπιάδι and ἐν ὀλυμπίαι. The quotations are B 156 and B 112.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · The Life · A 1 §§ 61–63
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.