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 61 of 126
Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 44
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 112Aëtius I 24,2 (D. 320)
Ἐ., Ἀναξαγόρας, Δημόκριτος, Ἐπίκουρος καὶ πάντες ὅσοι κατὰ συναθροισμὸν τῶν λεπτομερῶν σωμάτων κοσμοποιοῦσι, συγκρίσεις μὲν καὶ διακρίσεις εἰσάγουσι, γενέσεις δὲ καὶ φθορὰς οὐ κυρίως· οὐ γὰρ κατὰ τὸ ποιὸν ἐξ ἀλλοιώσεως, κατὰ δὲ τὸ ποσὸν ἐκ συναθροισμοῦ ταύτας γίνεσθαι.
Aëtius I 26,1
Ἐ. οὐσίαν ἀνάγκης αἰτίαν χρηστικὴν τῶν ἀρχῶν καὶ τῶν στοιχείων.
Plutarch, De animae procreatione
... ἀνάγκην, ἣν εἱμαρμένην οἱ πολλοὶ καλοῦσιν, Ἐ. δὲ Φιλίαν ὁμοῦ καὶ Νεῖκος.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Principles, Cosmos and Cycle
p. 113Coming-to-be and perishing are combination and separation, not qualitative change.
Aëtius I 24,2 (D. 320)
Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Epicurus, and all who make the cosmos by the aggregation of fine-particled bodies, introduce combinations and separations, but not comings-to-be and perishings properly so called; for these do not come about qualitatively, by alteration, but quantitatively, by aggregation.
Report.
ἀλλοίωσις, "alteration", is Peripatetic vocabulary used about him and not his own — the same flag as at A41. The doctrine itself is squarely Empedoclean and is stated in the verse at B8.
Necessity, and its identification with Love and Strife.
Aëtius I 26,1
Empedocles [makes] the essence of necessity the cause that uses the principles and the elements.
Plutarch, De animae procreatione
... necessity, which most people call fate, but Empedocles calls Love and Strife together.
Two reports, and they do not agree.
Aëtius makes Necessity a cause standing over the principles and using them; Plutarch makes it simply another name for the two powers. B115 has Ἀνάγκη issuing a decree sealed by oaths, which suits Aëtius' picture of something above the powers rather than identical with them. The disagreement is not resolved here.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 44
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.