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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Facing Pages · Branch 81 of 126
Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 69a
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 152Theophrastus, On the Senses
Ἐ. δὲ καὶ περὶ τῶν χρωμάτων, καὶ ὅτι τὸ μὲν λευκὸν τοῦ πυρός, τὸ δὲ μέλαν τοῦ ὕδατος.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 153White and black
Theophrastus, On the Senses
Empedocles also speaks about colours, and says that white belongs to fire and black to water.
Report, one sentence from the best-informed witness in the collection.
Theophrastus adds this almost as an afterthought, and it is the shortest possible statement of the principle: a colour is not a quality of a thing but the presence in it of a root. Two roots are named here; what the other two contributed we are not told.
Bearing on Volume I. Connects the physics of the four roots directly to the theory of perception that follows in A 86.
Compare fragment B 94.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 69a
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.