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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Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 31
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 94Hippolytus, Refutatio I 3 (D. 558)
(1)Ἐ. δὲ μετὰ τούτους γενόμενος καὶ περὶ δαιμόνων φύσεως εἶπε πολλά, ὡς ἀναστρέφονται διοικοῦντες τὰ κατὰ τὴν γῆν, ὄντες πλεῖστοι. οὗτος τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἀρχὴν Νεῖκος καὶ Φιλίαν ἔφη καὶ τὸ τῆς μονάδος νοερὸν πῦρ τὸν θεὸν καὶ συνεστάναι ἐκ πυρὸς τὰ πάντα καὶ εἰς πῦρ ἀναλυθήσεσθαι. ὧι σχεδὸν καὶ οἱ Στωικοὶ συντίθενται δόγματι ἐκπύρωσιν προσδοκῶντες. (2) μάλιστα δὲ πάντων συγκατατίθεται τῆι μετενσωματώσει οὕτως εἰπών· "ἤτοι ... ἰχθύς" [B 117]. (3) οὗτος πάσας εἰς πάντα τὰ ζῶια μεταλλάττειν εἶπε τὰς ψυχάς. καὶ γὰρ ὁ τούτων διδάσκαλος Πυθαγόρας ἔφη ἑαυτὸν Εὔφορβον γεγονέναι τὸν ἐπὶ Ἴλιον στρατεύσαντα φάσκων ἐπιγινώσκειν τὴν ἀσπίδα.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Principles, Cosmos and Cycle
p. 95The daimones; Strife and Love as principle; transmigration.
Hippolytus, Refutatio I 3 (D. 558)
(1)Empedocles, coming after these, said much also about the nature of daimones — how, being very many, they go about governing the things upon the earth. He said that the principle of the universe is Strife and Love, and that the intelligible fire of the monad is god, and that all things are composed out of fire and will be resolved into fire; which opinion the Stoics too very nearly accept. (2) He assents above all to the doctrine of passing into new bodies, saying: "For I have already been ..." [B117]. (3) He said that all souls pass over into all living creatures. For Pythagoras, his teacher, said that he had himself been Euphorbus, who went on the campaign against Ilion, and claimed to recognise his shield.
Report, with interpretation folded in.
Hippolytus reads the whole system through the daimones, which is why this notice opens with them rather than with the roots — and that reading is itself an argument against a clean division between a physical poem and a religious one. — "the intelligible fire of the monad" is not Empedoclean language; the monad is Pythagorean-Platonist vocabulary, and Hippolytus' own comparison to the Stoics shows him assimilating. — ψυχή is Hippolytus' word; Empedocles does not use it of the transmigrating self.
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Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 31
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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.