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 48 of 126
Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 26
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 86Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De compositione verborum 22
ταύτης τῆς ἁρμονίας [τῆς αὐστηρᾶς] πολλοὶ μὲν ἐγένοντο ζηλωταὶ κατά τε ποίησιν καὶ ἱστορίαν καὶ λόγους πολιτικούς, διαφέροντες δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἐν μὲν ἐπικῆι ποιήσει ὅ τε Κολοφώνιος Ἀντίμαχος καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁ φυσικός, ἐν δὲ μελοποιίαι Πίνδαρος, ἐν τραγωιδίαι δ' Αἰσχύλος.
Cicero, Ad Quintum fratrem II 9,3
Lucretii poemata ut scribis ita sunt: multis luminibus ingenii, multae etiam artis; sed (cum veneris) virum te putabo, si Sallustii Empedoclea legeris, hominem non putabo.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Principles, Cosmos and Cycle
p. 87Empedocles ranked among the masters of the "austere" mode of composition.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De compositione verborum 22
Of this mode of composition — the austere — there were many devotees, in poetry, in history and in civic oratory; but pre-eminent above the rest were, in epic verse, Antimachus of Colophon and Empedocles the natural philosopher; in lyric, Pindar; and in tragedy, Aeschylus.
Report (literary judgement, not doctrine).
Evidence for how Empedocles was read as a stylist. Dionysius classes him with Antimachus, not with Homer.
Cicero on Lucretius, and on the Latin Empedoclea of Sallustius.
Cicero, Ad Quintum fratrem II 9,3
Lucretius' poems are as you describe them: with many flashes of genius, and much artistry too. But — when you come — I shall count you a hero if you get through the Empedoclea of Sallustius, and scarcely count you human.
Report (reception).
Not about Empedocles' own text but about a Latin poem after him. The joke turns on virum/hominem and does not survive intact in English; the rendering keeps the two words distinct.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 26
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.