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 69 of 126
Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 56
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 128Aëtius II 20,13 (D. 350)
Ἐ. δύο ἡλίους· τὸν μὲν ἀρχέτυπον, πῦρ ὂν ἐν τῶι ἑτέρωι ἡμισφαιρίωι τοῦ κόσμου, πεπληρωκὸς τὸ ἡμισφαίριον, αἰεὶ κατ' ἀντικρὺ τῆι ἀνταυγείαι ἑαυτοῦ τεταγμένον· τὸν δὲ φαινόμενον, ἀνταύγειαν ἐν τῶι ἑτέρωι ἡμισφαιρίωι τῶι τοῦ ἀέρος τοῦ θερμομιγοῦς πεπληρωμένωι, ἀπὸ κυκλοτεροῦς τῆς γῆς κατ' ἀνάκλασιν γιγνομένην εἰς τὸν ἥλιον τὸν κρυσταλλοειδῆ, συμπεριελκομένην δὲ τῆι κινήσει τοῦ πυρίνου. ὡς δὲ βραχέως εἰρῆσθαι συντεμόντα, ἀνταύγειαν εἶναι τοῦ περὶ τὴν γῆν πυρὸς τὸν ἥλιον. [21,2] ἴσον τῆι γῆι τὸν κατὰ τὴν ἀνταύγειαν.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Principles, Cosmos and Cycle
p. 129The two suns.
Aëtius II 20,13 (D. 350)
Empedocles [posits] two suns. The one is archetypal: fire in the one hemisphere of the cosmos, filling that hemisphere, and always stationed directly opposite its own reflection. The other is the apparent sun — a reflection in the other hemisphere, the one filled with air mingled with heat, arising from the reflection of the rounded earth upon the crystalline sun, and carried round with the motion of the fiery one. To put it briefly: the sun is a reflection of the fire about the earth. [21,2] And it is equal to the earth, the one that is according to the reflection.
Report.
Diels' own apparatus at this page says flatly that the account of the sun is unclear. It is the strangest doctrine in the tranche and no fragment supports it, though B44 and B47 are consistent with a sun that shines by reflection. The edition prints it as it stands.
Diels marks συντεμόντα as an old gloss, and notes in his own apparatus that the report on the sun is unclear.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Principles, Cosmos and Cycle · A 56
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.