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 37
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 102Aristotle, Metaphysics A 4, 985a21
καὶ Ἐ. ἐπὶ πλέον μὲν χρῆται τούτου τοῖς αἰτίοις, οὐ μὴν οὔθ' ἱκανῶς οὔτ' ἐν τούτοις εὑρίσκει τὸ ὁμολογούμενον· πολλαχοῦ γοῦν αὐτῶι ἡ μὲν Φιλία διακρίνει, τὸ δὲ Νεῖκος συγκρίνει. ὅταν μὲν γὰρ εἰς τὰ στοιχεῖα διίστηται τὸ πᾶν ὑπὸ τοῦ Νείκους, τό τε πῦρ εἰς ἓν συγκρίνεται καὶ τῶν ἄλλων στοιχείων ἕκαστον· ὅταν δὲ πάλιν ὑπὸ τῆς Φιλίας συνίωσιν εἰς τὸ ἕν, ἀναγκαῖον ἐξ ἑκάστου τὰ μόρια διακρίνεσθαι πάλιν. Ἐ. μὲν οὖν παρὰ τοὺς πρότερον πρῶτος τὸ τὴν αἰτίαν διελεῖν εἰσήνεγκεν, οὐ μίαν ποιήσας τὴν τῆς κινήσεως ἀρχὴν ἀλλ' ἑτέρας τε καὶ ἐναντίας. ἔτι δὲ τὰ ὡς ἐν ὕλης εἴδει λεγόμενα στοιχεῖα τέτταρα πρῶτος εἶπεν. οὐ μὴν χρῆταί γε τέτταρσιν, ἀλλ' ὡς δυσὶν οὖσι μόνοις, πυρὶ μὲν καθ' αὑτό, τοῖς δ' ἀντικειμένοις ὡς μιᾶι φύσει, γῆι τε καὶ ἀέρι καὶ ὕδατι. λάβοι δ' ἄν τις αὐτὸ θεωρῶν ἐκ τῶν ἐπῶν.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Principles, Cosmos and Cycle
p. 103The charge of inconsistency in the use of Love and Strife; the four as matter.
Aristotle, Metaphysics A 4, 985a21
Empedocles uses the causes more than Anaxagoras does, yet neither sufficiently nor consistently. At all events, in many places with him Love divides and Strife combines. For whenever the All is separated into the elements by Strife, then fire is combined into one and each of the other elements likewise; but when they come together again into the one under Love, the parts must again be separated out of each. Empedocles, then, in contrast to his predecessors, was the first to introduce this cause divided, not making the source of motion one but different and contrary. Further, he was the first to speak of the four so-called elements as in the form of matter — though he does not use them as four but as two only: fire by itself, and the things opposed to it as a single nature, earth and air and water. This may be gathered by studying his verses.
Criticism throughout, with a report embedded in the first clause.
This is the most consequential passage in the volume for how Empedocles was afterwards read. Three things are Aristotle's and not Empedocles': ὕλη, "matter", is Aristotle's category; στοιχεῖα is his word; and the charge that "Love divides and Strife combines" depends on requiring an efficient cause to act univocally. On Empedocles' own account both powers do both, according to where the cycle stands — Love unites the roots and thereby separates each root from its like, and Strife conversely. Whether that is an inconsistency or the whole point of a cycle is precisely what is at issue, and Aristotle does not argue it; he assumes it. The reader should have the fragments B17, B21 and B26 open beside this.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 37
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.