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 34 of 126
The Life · A 6
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 58Aristotle, Metaphysics
Ἀναξαγόρας δὲ ὁ Κλαζομένιος τῆι μὲν ἡλικίαι πρότερος ὢν τούτου, τοῖς δ' ἔργοις ὕστερος ἀπείρους εἶναί φησι τὰς ἀρχάς.
Simplicius, On the Physics
Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁ Ἀκραγαντῖνος οὐ πολὺ κατόπιν τοῦ Ἀναξαγόρου γεγονώς, Παρμενίδου δὲ ζηλωτὴς καὶ πλησιαστὴς καὶ ἔτι μᾶλλον τῶν Πυθαγορείων.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: The Life
p. 59Older in years, later in his work
Aristotle, Metaphysics
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, who was older than Empedocles in years but later in his work, says that the principles are unlimited in number.
Aristotle on the relative dating of Anaxagoras.
Six words that have been argued over for two thousand years. Anaxagoras was the older man; his philosophy, Aristotle says, is the later thing. Whether that means he started late or that his system is an advance on Empedocles', Aristotle does not say — and the ambiguity is the reason the priority of the two men is still unsettled.
Bonitz observed that Aristotle's phrase leaves it open whether "later in his work" refers to when Anaxagoras began to philosophise, or to the maturity of his doctrines.
A pupil of Parmenides, and more still of the Pythagoreans
Simplicius, On the Physics
Empedocles of Acragas, who came not long after Anaxagoras, an emulator and an associate of Parmenides, and still more of the Pythagoreans.
From Theophrastus, through Simplicius.
This is Theophrastus' own placing of him, and it is the one most modern accounts follow: Parmenides for the argument, the Pythagoreans for the way of life. The last four words, which tip the balance toward Pythagoras, may be a later hand.
Diels doubts that the clause about the Pythagoreans comes from Theophrastus; compare Diogenes Laertius VIII 54.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · The Life · A 6
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.