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 84 of 126
Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 71
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 158Hippocrates, On Ancient Medicine
λέγουσι δέ τινες ἰητροὶ καὶ σοφισταί, ὡς οὐκ εἴη δυνατὸν ἰητρικὴν εἰδέναι ὅστις μὴ οἶδεν ὅ τί ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος, ἀλλὰ τοῦτο δεῖ καταμαθεῖν τὸν μέλλοντα ὀρθῶς θεραπεύσειν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. τείνει δὲ αὐτοῖς ὁ λόγος ἐς φιλοσοφίην, καθάπερ Ἐ. ἢ ἄλλοι, οἳ περὶ φύσιος γεγράφασιν ⟨φασίν⟩, ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὅ τί ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος καὶ ὅπως ἐγένετο πρῶτον καὶ ὁπόθεν συνεπάγη· ἐγὼ δὲ τοῦτο μέν, ὅσα τινὶ εἴρηται ἢ σοφιστῆι ἢ ἰητρῶι ἢ γέγραπται περὶ φύσιος, ἧσσον νομίζω τῆι ἰητρικῆι τέχνηι προσήκειν ἢ τῆι γραφικῆι. νομίζω δὲ περὶ φύσιος γνῶναί τι σαφὲς οὐδαμόθεν ἄλλοθεν εἶναι ἢ ἐξ ἰητρικῆς.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 159Medicine and the study of nature
Hippocrates, On Ancient Medicine
Certain physicians and sophists say that no one can know medicine who does not know what man is, and that whoever intends to treat men rightly must first learn this. Their argument runs off into philosophy — as Empedocles, or others who have written about nature, say: what man is from the beginning, and how he first came to be, and out of what he was compounded. For my part, I hold that whatever has been said or written about nature, by sophist or physician, belongs less to the art of medicine than to the art of painting. And I hold that there is no source from which anything clear can be known about nature except medicine itself.
Reception: the earliest surviving criticism of Empedocles.
This is the oldest surviving criticism of Empedocles, written within living memory of him and possibly within his lifetime, and it is an attack on a method rather than on a doctrine. The author does not say that Empedocles is wrong about what man is; he says that the question is out of place — that a physician who begins from the origin of the cosmos has begun in the wrong century. The last sentence turns the claim around: not that medicine needs no natural philosophy, but that natural philosophy, if it is to be got at all, will be got from medicine.
Bearing on Volume I. Empedocles is named here as the type of a whole way of proceeding, which shows how early and how completely he stood for it.
33 ⟨φασίν⟩ supplied by Diels, who alternatively brackets οἵ. — 35 ἢ τῆι γραφικῆι deleted by Ehlert.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 71
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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.