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 34
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 100Galen, In Hippocratis De natura hominis XV 32 K
Ἐ. ἐξ ἀμεταβλήτων τῶν τεττάρων στοιχείων ἡγεῖτο γίγνεσθαι τὴν τῶν συνθέτων σωμάτων φύσιν, οὕτως ἀναμεμειγμένων ἀλλήλοις τῶν πρώτων, ὡς εἴ τις λειώσας ἀκριβῶς καὶ χνοώδη ποιήσας ἰὸν καὶ χαλκῖτιν καὶ καδμίαν καὶ μίσυ μείξειεν, ὡς μηδὲν ἐξ αὐτῶν δύνασθαι μεταχειρίσασθαι χωρὶς ἑτέρου.
Aëtius II 7,6
Ἐ. ἔλεγε μὴ διὰ παντὸς ἑστῶτας εἶναι μηδ' ὡρισμένους τοὺς τόπους τῶν στοιχείων, ἀλλὰ πάντα τοὺς ἀλλήλων μεταλαμβάνειν.
Achilles, Isagoge 4
ὁ δὲ Ἐ. οὐ δίδωσι τοῖς στοιχείοις ὡρισμένους τόπους, ἀλλ' ἀντιπαραχωρεῖν ἀλλήλοις φησίν, ὥστε τὴν γῆν μετέωρον φέρεσθαι καὶ τὸ πῦρ ταπεινότερον.
Aristotle, De generatione et corruptione B 3, 330b19
ἔνιοι δ' εὐθὺς τέτταρα λέγουσιν οἷον Ἐ.· συνάγει δὲ καὶ οὗτος εἰς τὰ δύο· τῶι γὰρ πυρὶ τἆλλα πάντα ἀντιτίθησιν.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Principles, Cosmos and Cycle
p. 101Mixture: the elements are unchanging, and compounds arise from them by blending.
Galen, In Hippocratis De natura hominis XV 32 K
Empedocles held that the nature of composite bodies comes to be out of the four unchangeable elements, mingled together in the way that someone might grind and pulverise rust and copper-flower and cadmia and misy and mix them, so that not one of them could be taken apart from the others.
Report, with Galen's own illustration.
The metallurgical simile is Galen's, not Empedocles'; the poems use painters mixing pigments (B23) for the same point. Worth setting the two side by side — the difference is between a mixture you could in principle unmix and one you could not.
The elements have no fixed places.
Aëtius II 7,6
He said that the places of the elements are not permanently fixed nor determined, but that all of them take each other's places.
Achilles, Isagoge 4
Empedocles does not assign the elements determinate places, but says they give way to one another, so that earth is carried aloft and fire lower down.
Report.
The Aëtius notice sits under a chapter heading about the order of the cosmos, which makes it look misfiled in a run about the elements; the content is about the elements, and Diels places it correctly.
The four reduced to two.
Aristotle, De generatione et corruptione B 3, 330b19
Some say straightway that there are four, as Empedocles does; yet he too draws them together into two, for he sets all the rest over against fire.
Criticism.
Aristotle's reduction, not Empedocles'. He repeats it at A37 below.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 34
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.