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 25 of 126
The Life · A 1 §§ 67–68 (continued)
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 40Diogenes Laertius VIII 68
εἶτα μετὰ τὴν εὐωχίαν οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι χωρισθέντες ἀνεπαύοντο, οἱ μὲν ὑπὸ τοῖς δένδροις ὡς ἀγροῦ παρακειμένου, οἱ δ' ὅπηι βούλοιντο, αὐτὸς δὲ ἔμεινεν ἐπὶ τοῦ τόπου ἐφ' οὗπερ κατεκέκλιτο. ὡς δὲ ἡμέρας γενηθείσης ἐξανέστησαν, οὐχ ηὑρέθη μόνος. ζητουμένου δὲ καὶ τῶν οἰκετῶν ἀνακρινομένων καὶ φασκόντων μὴ εἰδέναι, εἷς τις ἔφη μέσων νυκτῶν φωνῆς ὑπερμεγέθους ἀκοῦσαι προσκαλουμένης Ἐμπεδοκλέα, εἶτα ἐξαναστὰς ἑωρακέναι φῶς οὐράνιον καὶ λαμπάδων φέγγος, ἄλλο δὲ μηδέν· τῶν δὲ ἐπὶ τῶι γενομένωι ἐκπλαγέντων καταβὰς ὁ Παυσανίας ἔπεμψέ τινας ζητήσοντας. ὕστερον δὲ ἐκώλυεν πολυπραγμονεῖν, φάσκων εὐχῆς ἄξια συμβεβηκέναι καὶ θύειν αὐτῶι δεῖν καθαπερεὶ γεγονότι θεῶι.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: The Life
p. 41Diogenes Laertius VIII 68
Then, after the feasting, the rest withdrew and lay down to rest, some under the trees of the neighbouring field and others where they pleased, while he stayed in the place where he had been reclining. When day came and they got up, he alone was not found. They searched, and questioned the servants, who said they knew nothing; but one of them said that in the middle of the night he had heard an enormous voice calling Empedocles, and that he had got up and seen a light in the sky and a blaze of torches, and nothing more. The others were dumbfounded at what had happened, and Pausanias came down and sent men to search. Afterwards he stopped them from enquiring further, saying that what had happened was an answer to prayer, and that they must sacrifice to Empedocles as to one who had become a god.
Biography; the first and fullest of the death stories.
Timon's hexameters are the earliest surviving joke about Empedocles and the only hostile contemporary voice in this volume. The charge is not that he was wrong but that he was grandiose and clotted — and the objection in the last line is a real one, that four principles which cannot move themselves need two more to move them. The death story that follows is the earliest and the most careful: no crater, no leap, only a voice, a light, and a man not there in the morning. Note who ends the enquiry. Pausanias, the pupil to whom the poem is addressed, forbids the search and calls for sacrifice.
Bearing on Volume I. The conclusion B 112 invites is drawn here by the one person best placed to draw it.
5 ἄλλως δ' in P². — 7 τοσσάδ' ἔειλεν is Diels's reading: τοσσάδε εἶλεν in the manuscripts; the sense is roughly "he packed together as many words as he could," a hit at ludicrous compounds such as the one at B 61. — 8 ἀρχῶν ὅς in the manuscripts; the sense in any case is that his principles, the four elements, require further principles, Love and Strife. — 15 ηὑρέθη in P¹: εὑρέθη in the others.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · The Life · A 1 §§ 67–68 (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.