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 68
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 148Seneca, Natural Questions
E. existimat ignibus, quos multis locis terra opertos tegit, aquam calescere, si subiecti sunt ei solo, per quod aquis transcursus est. facere solemus dracones et miliaria et complures formas, in quibus aere tenui fistulas struimus per declive circumdatas, ut saepe eundem ignem ambiens aqua per tantum fluat spatii quantum efficiendo calori sat est; frigida itaque intrat, effluit calida. idem sub terra E. existimat fieri.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 149Fires under the earth, and hot springs
Seneca, Natural Questions
Empedocles holds that water is heated by the fires which the earth covers and keeps hidden in many places, if they lie beneath the very ground through which the waters have their passage. We are in the habit of making coiled heaters and water-boilers and several kinds of apparatus, in which we construct pipes of thin bronze, laid round on a slope, so that the water, circling the same fire again and again, may flow through as much space as is enough to produce the heat; it therefore goes in cold and comes out hot. Empedocles holds that the same thing happens under the earth.
Report, explained by way of a Roman appliance.
Seneca is explaining an ancient theory by means of a Roman appliance, and the appliance is what makes the notice valuable: the point of the comparison is length of contact, not mere proximity. Water is not hot because fire is near it, but because it has run a long way beside fire.
26 ei Haase: et Φ: omitted in ΔT. — 28 circumlatas or circumductas Gercke.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 68
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.