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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Ancient Greek and Latin Page · Branch 77 of 126
Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 66 (continued)
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 144Aelian, On the Nature of Animals
λέγει δὲ Ἀριστοτέλης, καὶ Δημόκριτος πρὸ ἐκείνου, Θεόφραστός τε ἐκ τρίτων καὶ αὐτός φησι μὴ τῶι ἁλμυρῶι ὕδατι τρέφεσθαι τοὺς ἰχθῦς, ἀλλὰ τῶι παρακειμένωι τῆι θαλάττηι γλυκεῖ ὕδατι. καὶ ἐπεὶ δοκεῖ πως ἄπιστον, δι' αὐτῶν τῶν ἔργων βεβαιῶσαι βουληθεὶς τὸ λεχθὲν ὁ τοῦ Νικομάχου λέγει εἶναί τι πότιμον ὕδωρ ἐν πάσηι θαλάττηι, καὶ ἐλέγχεσθαι τούτωι· εἴ τις ἀγγεῖον ἐκ κηροῦ ποιήσας κοῖλον καὶ λεπτὸν καθείη κενὸν ἐς τὴν θάλατταν, ἐξάψας ποθὲν ὥστε ἀνιμήσασθαι δύνασθαι, νυκτὸς δὲ διελθούσης καὶ ἡμέρας ἀρύεται πεπλησμένον, γλυκέος τε καὶ ποτίμου ὕδατος μεστὸν αὐτό· καὶ Ἐ. δὲ ὁ Ἀκραγαντῖνος λέγει τι εἶναι γλυκὺ ἐν τῆι θαλάττηι ὕδωρ οὐ πᾶσι δῆλον, τρόφιμον δὲ τῶν ἰχθύων. καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν τοῦδε τοῦ ἐν τῆι ἅλμηι γλυκαινομένου λέγει φυσικήν, ἣν ἐκεῖθεν εἴσεσθε.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 145Aelian, On the Nature of Animals
Aristotle says — and Democritus before him, and Theophrastus third — and he himself says that fish are nourished not by the salt water but by the fresh water that lies alongside within the sea. And since this seems somehow past belief, the son of Nicomachus, wishing to confirm what he had said by the facts themselves, says that there is drinkable water in every sea, and that it may be tested thus: if a man makes a hollow, thin vessel out of wax and lets it down empty into the sea, tying it to something so that he can haul it back, then, after a night and a day have passed, he draws it up filled — full of sweet and drinkable water. And Empedocles of Acragas too says that there is a sweet water in the sea, not evident to everyone, but nourishing to the fish. And he gives a natural cause for this sweetening within the brine, which you may learn from his own work.
Report from three witnesses at very different removes.
Three witnesses of quite different kinds sit here together. Philo survives only through an Armenian version rendered into Latin, and is at two removes from anything Empedocles wrote; Aëtius gives a phrase, "the sweat of the earth," that has the ring of the verse; Aelian is reporting an experiment that is not Empedocles' at all, but Aristotle's, and mentions Empedocles because he had reached the same conclusion by another road. The value of the Aelian notice is its last clause: Empedocles gave a physical cause, and Aelian assumes his readers can go and find it.
Bearing on Volume I. The sea is not a given but a residue — something the earth gave off under pressure.
Philo 3 aqua] Heidel conjectures terra; perhaps read aqua limosa ⟨facta est terra⟩.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 66 (continued)
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.