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 69
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 150Pseudo-Aristotle, Problems
διὰ τί ὑπὸ τῶν θερμῶν ὑδάτων μᾶλλον ἢ ὑπὸ τῶν ψυχρῶν πήγνυνται λίθοι; πότερον ὅτι τῆι τοῦ ὑγροῦ ἐκλείψει γίνεται λίθος, μᾶλλον δὲ ὑπὸ τοῦ θερμοῦ ἢ τοῦ ψυχροῦ ἐκλείπει τὸ ὑγρόν· καὶ ἀπολιθοῦται δὴ διὰ τὸ θερμόν, καθάπερ καὶ Ἐ. φησι τάς τε πέτρας καὶ τοὺς λίθους καὶ τὰ θερμὰ τῶν ὑδάτων γίνεσθαι.
Psellus, On Stones
τούτων δὲ τῶν παρὰ τοῖς λίθοις δυνάμεων ⟨τὰς⟩ αἰτίας πολλοὶ ἐθάρρησαν ἀποδοῦναι, τῶν μὲν ἀρχαιοτέρων σοφῶν Ἀναξαγόρας καὶ Ἐ. καὶ Δημόκριτος, τῶν δὲ οὐ πολὺ πρὸ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐκ τῆς Ἀφροδισίας Ἀλέξανδρος.
Plutarch, On the Principle of Cold
ταυτὶ δὲ τὰ ἐμφανῆ κρημνοὺς καὶ σκοπέλους καὶ πέτρας Ἐ. μὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς οἴεται τοῦ ἐν βάθει τῆς γῆς ἑστάναι καὶ ἀνέχεσθαι διερειδόμενα φλεγμαίνοντος.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 151How stone is made
Pseudo-Aristotle, Problems
Why are stones formed by hot waters rather than by cold? Is it because stone comes to be by the departure of what is moist, and the moist departs more under heat than under cold? So a thing is turned to stone through heat — just as Empedocles too says that rocks and stones and the hot springs come to be.
Psellus, On Stones
Many have ventured to assign the causes of these powers that reside in stones: among the older sages Anaxagoras and Empedocles and Democritus, and among those not long before our own time Alexander of Aphrodisias.
Plutarch, On the Principle of Cold
These visible things — cliffs and crags and rocks — Empedocles thinks stand firm and are held up, braced from beneath, by the fire that blazes in the depth of the earth.
Report from the Peripatetic school, with two later echoes.
The attribution to "Aristotle" is nominal: the Problems are a later compilation of the school, and the notice carries the school's authority rather than his. Psellus, writing in the eleventh century and placing Alexander of Aphrodisias "not long before our own time," shows how far the chain of transmission had by then been foreshortened.
Bearing on Volume I. Rock is water that has lost its moisture to fire — the whole of geology on one principle.
36 ⟨τὰς⟩ supplied by Diels.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 69
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.