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 23 of 126
The Life · A 1 §§ 64–66 (continued)
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 36Diogenes Laertius VIII 66
ὕστερον δ' ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ τὸ τῶν χιλίων ἄθροισμα κατέλυσε συνεστὼς ἐπὶ ἔτη τρία, ὥστε οὐ μόνον ἦν τῶν πλουσίων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν τὰ δημοτικὰ φρονούντων. ὅ γέ τοι Τίμαιος ἐν τῆι ιαʹ καὶ ιβʹ, πολλάκις γὰρ αὐτοῦ μνημονεύει, φησὶν ἐναντίαν ἐσχηκέναι γνώμην αὐτὸν ⟨ἔν⟩ τε τῆι πολιτείαι ⟨καὶ ἐν τῆι ποιήσει⟩· ὅπου μὲν γὰρ μέτριον καὶ ἐπιεικῆ φαίνεσθαι, ὅπου δὲ ἀλαζόνα καὶ φίλαυτον· φησὶ γοῦν· χαίρετ' … πωλεῦμαι καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: The Life
p. 37Diogenes Laertius VIII 66
Later Empedocles broke up the assembly of the Thousand, which had been in being for three years — so that he belonged not only to the rich but to those who were minded with the people. Timaeus at any rate, in his eleventh and twelfth books, for he mentions him often, says that Empedocles held opposite views in his politics and in his poetry: in the one he appears moderate and decent, in the other boastful and in love with himself. At any rate he says: "Farewell … I go about" and what follows.
Biography, from Timaeus, who knew the Sicilian politics at first hand.
Timaeus is the strongest witness in the Life, a Sicilian historian writing within a century and a half, and his charge is precise: the man of the poems and the man of the assembly do not match. The politics is all levelling — a tyranny stopped at a dinner party, a rich physician refused a family monument on grounds of equality, an oligarchy of the Thousand dissolved. The poetry announces a god walking among mortals. Timaeus thought this a contradiction. It is at least as likely that a man who believed he had escaped the cycle of birth would take no interest in rank, and that the two are one position seen from two sides.
Bearing on Volume I. B 112, 4–5, the passage Timaeus takes as boastfulness, is the one place where the two halves of the corpus can be read against each other.
22 αὐτῶι Aldobrandinus: αὐτή, αὕτη and αὐτῆ in the manuscripts. — 29 χιλιάδων in F, διέλυσε in B. — 30 the numerals are Beloch's: the manuscripts read "first and second." — 32–33 the supplements are Diels's. The quotations are B 157 and B 112, 4–5.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · The Life · A 1 §§ 64–66 (continued)
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.