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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Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 65
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 142Aëtius
Ἐ. καὶ οἱ Στωικοὶ χειμῶνα μὲν γίνεσθαι τοῦ ἀέρος ἐπικρατοῦντος τῆι πυκνώσει εἰς τὸ ἀνωτέρω βιαζομένου, θερείαν δὲ τοῦ πυρός, ὅταν εἰς τὸ κατωτέρω βιάζηται.
Philo, On Providence
deinde ratiocinatus de mari ait: postquam concretum est id quod erat in extremitate orae maxime grandinis more, aqua limosa ⟨facta est⟩. quidquid enim in terra humidi est, in demissis depressisque eius locis a ventis certatim flantibus nexibus quam fortissimis undique comprimi solebat.
Aëtius
Ἐ. ἱδρῶτα τῆς γῆς ἐκκαιομένης ὑπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου διὰ τὴν ἐπὶ τὸ πλεῖον πίλησιν.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 143Winter and summer
Aëtius
Empedocles and the Stoics: winter comes about when the air prevails, forced upward by condensation; summer when the fire prevails, when it is forced downward.
Doxographic report, compressed to cover two schools at once.
The pairing with the Stoics is the doxographer's, not Empedocles', and it is the reason the notice is hard to read: the sentence has been compressed to fit two systems at once, and the subject of the verb has dropped out.
βιαζομένου] Diels: the subject is the sun, which was doubtless clear from the original context.
The sea: the sweat of the earth, and the fresh water in it
Philo, On Providence
Then, reasoning about the sea, he says: after what lay at the outermost edge had congealed, very much in the manner of hail, it became muddy water. For whatever moisture is in the earth used to be squeezed together from every side, in its low and sunken places, by winds blowing in rivalry, with the strongest of bindings.
Aëtius
Empedocles: [the sea is] the sweat of the earth as it is burnt through by the sun, owing to its ever greater compression.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 65
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.