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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English Introduction · Branch 70 of 126
Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · Diels-Kranz 31 A 57–A 85
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 130THE DOCTRINE, CONTINUED
Light, Sea, Plants and the Making of Bodies
Diels-Kranz 31 A 57 – A 85
Light and its speed; the tilt of the heavens; the moon; weather; the sea; plants; the four generations of living things; and the physiology of flesh, bone, breath, birth, sleep and death.
Two numbers here are worth coming to forewarned. A 57 is the earliest statement anywhere that light takes time to travel, and Aristotle records it only in order to reject it — on the ground, still a good one in his day, that nobody has ever caught light in transit. A 78 is the centre of the volume: bone, Aristotle concedes, is not fire nor earth nor all four of the elements but the ratio of their mixture, and on that one point he grants that Empedocles was led by the truth itself.
Twenty of these thirty numbers carry more than one witness, and A 81 carries nine, of very unequal worth. Where the witnesses on a number are not of the same standing, the note below the translation says so.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · Diels-Kranz 31 A 57–A 85
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.