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 89 of 126
Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 76
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 168Plato, Phaedo
ἐγὼ γάρ, ἔφη, ὦ Κέβης, νέος ὢν θαυμαστῶς ὡς ἐπεθύμησα ταύτης τῆς σοφίας, ἣν δὴ καλοῦσι περὶ φύσεως ἱστορίαν. ὑπερήφανος γάρ μοι ἐδόκει εἶναι εἰδέναι τὰς αἰτίας ἑκάστου, διὰ τί γίγνεται ἕκαστον καὶ διὰ τί ἀπόλλυται καὶ διὰ τί ἐστιν. καὶ πολλάκις ἐμαυτὸν ἄνω κάτω μετέβαλλον σκοπῶν πρῶτον τὰ τοιάδε· ἆρ' ἐπειδὰν τὸ θερμὸν καὶ ψυχρὸν σηπεδόνα τινὰ λάβηι, ὥς τινες ἔλεγον, τότε δὴ τὰ ζῶια συντρέφεται; καὶ πότερον τὸ αἷμά ἐστιν ὧι φρονοῦμεν ἢ ὁ ἀὴρ ἢ τὸ πῦρ; ἢ τούτων μὲν οὐδέν, ὁ δ' ἐγκέφαλός ἐστιν;
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 169Socrates recalls the questions of natural philosophy
Plato, Phaedo
"When I was young, Cebes," he said, "I had a wonderful desire for that wisdom they call inquiry into nature. It seemed to me a splendid thing to know the causes of each thing — why each comes to be, and why it perishes, and why it is. And often I would turn myself upside down considering, first, questions like these. Is it when the hot and the cold take on a kind of putrefaction, as some used to say, that living things are nourished into being? And is it with blood that we think, or with air, or with fire? Or none of these, but the brain?"
Reception: Plato, without naming him.
Socrates names no one, but the ancient readers supplied the names, and Diels prints their identifications: the putrefaction is Empedocles' (compare A 77 and B 68), the blood is Empedocles' (B 105), the air is Anaximenes' and Diogenes', the fire Heraclitus', the brain Alcmaeon's. The passage is here because it is a portrait of a whole intellectual generation from the inside, and of what it felt like to give it up. Plato's Socrates does not refute these men; he says he could not make the questions come out.
Bearing on Volume I. The most widely read paragraph in Greek about the natural philosophy this volume documents.
11 ψυχρόν] Sprengel conjectures ὑγρόν, but compare Doxographi 564, 3. — σηπεδόνα] compare fragment B 68.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 76
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.