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 40 of 126
The Life · A 17
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 70Pseudo-Aristotle, Problems
τῶν δὲ ὕστερον Ἐ. καὶ Πλάτων καὶ Σωκράτης καὶ ἕτεροι συχνοὶ τῶν γνωρίμων.
Aelian, Historical Miscellany
Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ ὁ Ἀκραγαντῖνος ἁλουργεῖ ἐχρήσατο καὶ ὑποδήμασι χαλκοῖς.
Philostratus, Life of Apollonius
Ἐ. μὲν γὰρ καὶ στρόφιον τῶν ἁλουργοτάτων περὶ αὐτὴν ἁρμόσας ἐσόβει περὶ τὰς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀγυιὰς ὕμνους ξυντιθείς, ὡς θεὸς ἐξ ἀνθρώπου ἔσοιτο.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: The Life
p. 71Among the melancholics
Pseudo-Aristotle, Problems
And of later men, Empedocles and Plato and Socrates, and a good many other well-known figures [were melancholics].
Pseudo-Aristotelian; one clause, and a large afterlife.
The famous thirtieth book of the Problems asks why all men outstanding in philosophy, poetry or the arts turn out to be melancholic, and this list is its roll of examples. It is the beginning of the idea that genius is a temperament, and through Ficino, who translated it, it becomes the Renaissance doctrine of the saturnine man of letters. Empedocles heads the list.
The Problems are a compilation of the Peripatetic school, not Aristotle's own work. Compare Lucian, The Runaways 2.
Purple and bronze, and a man walking the streets of Greece
Aelian, Historical Miscellany
Empedocles of Acragas wore purple, and shoes of bronze.
Philostratus, Life of Apollonius
Empedocles fitted a band of the deepest purple about his hair and swept through the streets of the Greek cities composing hymns, meaning to become a god instead of a man.
Two late notices confirming the dress described at A 1 § 73.
Four independent witnesses now give the same costume — purple, gold, bronze shoes, a Delphic wreath — and none of them is in a position to have taken it from another. Whatever else in this Life is legend, the dress is not: he really did go about looking like that, and the last clause of Philostratus states plainly what the citizens were meant to conclude.
Bearing on Volume I. B 112, where he enters the towns garlanded and is greeted as a god.
Compare A 1 § 73 and A 2.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · The Life · A 17
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.