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 59 of 126
Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 42
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 108Aristotle, De caelo Γ 2
ἐκ διεστώτων δὲ καὶ κινουμένων οὐκ εὔλογον ποιεῖν τὴν γένεσιν. διὸ καὶ Ἐ. παραλείπει τὴν ἐπὶ τῆς Φιλότητος· οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἠδύνατο συστῆσαι τὸν οὐρανὸν ἐκ κεχωρισμένων μὲν κατασκευάζων, σύγκρισιν δὲ ποιῶν διὰ τὴν Φιλότητα· ἐκ διακεκριμένων γὰρ συνέστηκεν ὁ κόσμος τῶν στοιχείων. ὥστ' ἀναγκαῖον γίνεσθαι ἐξ ἑνὸς καὶ συγκεκριμένου.
Aristotle, De gen. et corr. B 7
ἅμα δὲ καὶ τὸν κόσμον ὁμοίως ἔχειν φησὶν ἐπί τε τοῦ Νείκους νῦν καὶ πρότερον ἐπὶ τῆς Φιλίας.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Principles, Cosmos and Cycle
p. 109Why Empedocles omits a cosmogony under Love.
Aristotle, De caelo Γ 2
It is unreasonable to make coming-to-be out of things separated and in motion. This is why Empedocles passes over the coming-to-be under Love: he could not have constructed the heaven by building it out of things separated, making the combination out of separation — for the cosmos has been composed out of elements that were separated, so that it must come to be out of what is one and combined.
Aristotle, De gen. et corr. B 7
At the same time he says that the cosmos is in a like condition now, under Strife, as it was formerly under Love.
Criticism, and — in the second notice — a report.
This is the passage on which the one-cosmogony and two-cosmogony readings both have to work. Aristotle states as a fact that Empedocles omits the world-formation under Love. Defenders of a symmetrical cycle must explain the omission away; defenders of a single cosmogony take it at face value. The second notice, that the cosmos is now in a like state under Strife as it once was under Love, cuts the other way. Both are printed here without adjudication.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 42
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.