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Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
The Greek and Latin of Hermann Diels · New English translation and notes.
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Ancient Greek and Latin Page · Branch 67 of 126
Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 52
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 124Aëtius II 4,8
Ἐ. τὸν κόσμον φθείρεσθαι κατὰ τὴν ἀντεπικράτειαν τοῦ Νείκους καὶ τῆς Φιλίας.
Simplicius, De caelo 293,18 and 305,21
οἱ δὲ ἐναλλὰξ γίνεσθαι καὶ φθείρεσθαι τὸν αὐτὸν καὶ πάλιν γενόμενον πάλιν φθείρεσθαι λέγουσι, καὶ ἀίδιον εἶναι τὴν τοιαύτην διαδοχήν, ὥσπερ Ἐ. τὴν Φιλίαν λέγων καὶ τὸ Νεῖκος παρὰ μέρος ἐπικρατοῦντα τὴν μὲν συνάγειν τὰ πάντα εἰς ἓν καὶ φθείρειν τὸν τοῦ Νείκους κόσμον καὶ ποιεῖν ἐξ αὐτοῦ τὸν Σφαῖρον, τὸ δὲ Νεῖκος διακρίνειν πάλιν τὰ στοιχεῖα καὶ ποιεῖν τὸν τοιοῦτον κόσμον. Πλάτων καὶ Ἐ. καὶ Ἀναξαγόρας καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι φυσικοὶ τὴν τῶν συνθέτων ἀπὸ τῶν ἁπλῶν γένεσιν κατὰ τὸν ἐξ ὑποθέσεως τοῦτον τρόπον φαίνονται παραδιδόντες ... ὡσεὶ καὶ προϋπῆρχον τῶι χρόνωι τὰ ἐξ ὧν γίνεται τὰ γινόμενα.
Aristotle, Metaphysics B 4
οὐ γὰρ τὰ μὲν φθαρτά, τὰ δ' ἄφθαρτα ποιεῖ τῶν ὄντων, ἀλλ' ἅπαντα φθαρτὰ πλὴν τῶν στοιχείων.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Principles, Cosmos and Cycle
p. 125The destruction of the cosmos, and the alternation of the two cosmic states.
Aëtius II 4,8
Empedocles [says] the cosmos is destroyed by the counter-prevailing of Strife and of Love.
Simplicius, De caelo 293,18 and 305,21
Others say that it comes to be and perishes by turns, and that having come to be it perishes again, and that this succession is everlasting — as Empedocles does, who says that Love and Strife prevail in turn, Love drawing all things together into one and destroying the cosmos of Strife and making the Sphairos out of it, while Strife separates the elements again and makes a cosmos of this present kind. Plato and Empedocles and Anaxagoras and the other natural philosophers seem to hand down the coming-to-be of composite things out of simple ones in this manner by hypothesis — that is, for the sake of teaching — as though the things out of which the things that come to be come to be had pre-existed in time.
Aristotle, Metaphysics B 4
For he does not make some things perishable and others imperishable, but all things perishable except the elements.
Reports, with Simplicius 305,21 an interpretation.
The most important notice in the tranche for the shape of the cycle. Simplicius states the alternation plainly, names two cosmoi — a cosmos of Strife and a cosmos of Love — and quotes B17.7-13 to support it. That is the symmetrical reading, stated by the witness who had most of the poem in front of him. Against it stands Aristotle at A42, that Empedocles omits the world-formation under Love. Both are in this volume and the edition does not choose between them. — Simplicius at 305,21 is doing something different and should not be read as a report: he is suggesting that the successive stages were never meant temporally at all, but are an expository device. That is a Neoplatonist's way of rescuing the text, and it is the ancestor of every non-literal reading of the cycle since.
Simplicius at 293,18 quotes B 17,7–13 immediately after. At 305,21 Diels glosses διδασκαλίας χάριν — "for the sake of teaching".
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 52
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.