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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English Introduction · Branch 47 of 126
Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · Diels-Kranz 31 A 26–A 56
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Principles, Cosmos and Cycle
p. 84THE DOCTRINE
Principles, Cosmos and Cycle
Diels-Kranz 31 A 26 – A 56
The four roots and the two powers that move them; the identification of the four divine names of B 6; mixture; the Sphairos; the cosmic cycle; and the formation and shape of the world.
Three disputes run through this part and are not settled in it. The divine names of B 6 are given different keys by different witnesses, and they disagree exactly where it matters: Aëtius makes Hera the air and Aidoneus the earth, while the Homeric Allegories, Hippolytus, and Diogenes Laertius at A 1 § 76 all reverse the pair. The modern handbooks follow Aëtius; the ancient tally runs three to one the other way.
The cycle is stated symmetrically by Simplicius, who names a cosmos of Love and a cosmos of Strife and quotes the poem for it — and denied by Aristotle, who says Empedocles passed over the world-formation under Love because it could not be made to work. Both stand below.
And mixture: Aristotle says that on this physics nothing is ever truly blended, only stacked like a wall of bricks, and the doxographers go further, crediting Empedocles with particles smaller than the roots. The verse, where bone is a fixed ratio, reads otherwise.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · Diels-Kranz 31 A 26–A 56
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.