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 63 of 126
Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 48
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 116Plato, Laws X 889b
πῦρ καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ γῆν καὶ ἀέρα φύσει πάντα εἶναι καὶ τύχηι φασί, τέχνηι δὲ οὐδὲν τούτων, καὶ τὰ μετὰ ταῦτα αὖ σώματα, γῆς τε καὶ ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης ἄστρων τε πέρι, διὰ τούτων γεγονέναι παντελῶς ὄντων ἀψύχων. τύχηι δὲ φερόμενα τῆι τῆς δυνάμεως ἕκαστα ἑκάστων ἧι ξυμπέπτωκεν ἁρμόττοντα οἰκείως πως, θερμὰ ψυχροῖς ἢ ξηρὰ πρὸς ὑγρὰ καὶ μαλακὰ πρὸς σκληρά, καὶ πάντα ὁπόσα τῆι τῶν ἐναντίων κράσει κατὰ τύχην ἐξ ἀνάγκης συνεκεράσθη, ταύτηι καὶ κατὰ ταῦτα οὕτω γεγεννηκέναι τόν τε οὐρανὸν ὅλον καὶ πάντα ὁπόσα κατ' οὐρανόν, καὶ ζῶια αὖ καὶ φυτὰ ξύμπαντα, ὡρῶν πασῶν ἐκ τούτων γενομένων, οὐ διὰ νοῦν, φασίν, οὐδὲ διά τινα θεὸν οὐδὲ διὰ τέχνην, ἀλλὰ ὃ λέγομεν, φύσει καὶ τύχηι.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Principles, Cosmos and Cycle
p. 117The world by nature and chance, without mind, god or art.
Plato, Laws X 889b
Fire and water and earth and air, they say, all exist by nature and by chance, and none of them by art; and the bodies that came after these — earth, sun, moon and stars — came to be through these, which are wholly without soul. Each was carried about by chance according to the power each had, and as they fell together and were fitted somehow suitably — hot to cold, or dry to moist, or soft to hard, and all that was of necessity mixed by the blending of opposites according to chance — in this way and by these means they generated the whole heaven and all that is in it, and all animals and plants in turn, once all the seasons had come to be from these; not by mind, they say, nor by any god nor by art, but, as we put it, by nature and by chance.
Report of a position, with the name suppressed.
Diels prints this as a testimony to the followers of Empedocles, not to Empedocles, and Plato names nobody. It is the fullest ancient statement of the chance-cosmogony the system was taken to imply, and it is hostile: Plato is building a case against atheism. Whether Empedocles himself made chance do this much work is exactly what B103 and B104 leave open. The reader should not take this as Empedocles speaking.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 48
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.