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 54 of 126
Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 33 (continued)
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 98Hippolytus, Refutatio VII 29
Ζεύς ἐστι τὸ πῦρ, Ἥρη δὲ φερέσβιος ἡ γῆ φέρουσα τοὺς πρὸς τὸν βίον καρπούς, Ἀιδωνεὺς δὲ ὁ ἀήρ, ὅτι πάντα δι' αὐτοῦ βλέποντες μόνον αὐτὸν οὐ καθορῶμεν, Νῆστις δὲ τὸ ὕδωρ· μόνον γὰρ τοῦτο ὄχημα τροφῆς [αἴτιον] γινόμενον πᾶσι τοῖς τρεφομένοις, αὐτὸ καθ' αὑτὸ τρέφειν οὐ δυνάμενον τὰ τρεφόμενα. εἰ γὰρ ἔτρεφε, φησίν, οὐκ ἄν ποτε λιμῶι κατελήφθη τὰ ζῶια, ὕδατος ἐν τῶι κόσμωι πλεονάζοντος ἀεί. διὰ τοῦτο Νῆστιν καλεῖ τὸ ὕδωρ, ὅτι τροφῆς αἴτιον γινόμενον τρέφειν οὐκ εὐτονεῖ τὰ τρεφόμενα.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Principles, Cosmos and Cycle
p. 99Hippolytus, Refutatio VII 29
Zeus is fire; Hera the bringer of life is earth, which bears the fruits that sustain life; Aidoneus is air, because although we see all things through it, it alone we do not see; and Nestis is water — for this alone, being the vehicle of nourishment for all things that are nourished, is not able of itself to nourish them. For if it did nourish, he says, living things would never be gripped by famine, since water is always abundant in the world. This is why he calls water Nestis: because, though it is the cause of nourishment, it has not the strength to nourish what is nourished.
Report, with the reporter's own reasoning attached.
A third tradition, and it agrees with the Homeric Allegories against Aëtius: Hera earth, Aidoneus air. Hippolytus alone gives arguments — invisibility for Aidoneus as air, and a nice etymological point for Nestis, whose name he connects with fasting (νῆστις, fasting): water carries nourishment but does not itself feed, so the water-goddess is the one who goes hungry. Whether that etymology is Empedocles' or Hippolytus' cannot be told from the notice. Diogenes Laertius, summarising the doctrine at A 1 § 76, makes the same assignment as these two, so that Aëtius — whose key the modern handbooks follow — stands alone against three.
Bearing on Volume I. the introduction to Volume I records the rival identifications as a modern scholarly dispute. It is older than that. The disagreement is already fixed in the doxography, and Volume I's note should be amended to say so and to point here.
Diels brackets αἴτιον as a gloss; Kranz deletes it.
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Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 33 (continued)
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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.