Diotimos Library · Greek Antiquity Collection · Bilingual Edition
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
The Greek and Latin of Hermann Diels · New English translation and notes.
Explore the LexiconSwipe or use the arrow keys.
Ancient Greek and Latin Page · Branch 93 of 126
Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 80
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 176Soranus, Gynaecology
ἔστι γὰρ ὅτε καὶ προπαραλαμβάνει τινὰς ἡμέρας ἢ ἐφυστερεῖ. τοῦτο δὲ ἐν ἑκάστηι κατὰ τὴν ἰδίαν ἀπαντᾶι προθεσμίαν καὶ οὐ⟨κ ἀεὶ⟩ κατὰ τὰς αὐτὰς ⟨περιόδους⟩, ὥσπερ ὁ Διοκλῆς φησι πάσαις, καὶ πάλιν Ἐ., ἐλαττουμένου τοῦ φωτὸς τῆς σελήνης. αἱ μὲν γὰρ πρὸ εἰκάδος αἱ δὲ ἐν εἰκάδι καθαίρονται, καὶ πάλιν αἱ μὲν αὐξανομένου τοῦ φωτὸς τῆς σελήνης αἱ δὲ μειουμένου.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 177Menstruation and the moon
Soranus, Gynaecology
For sometimes it comes some days early, or falls behind. This happens in each woman at her own appointed term, and not always at the same intervals — as Diocles says it does in all women, and Empedocles again, when the light of the moon is waning. For some are purged before the twentieth and some on the twentieth; and again, some while the moon's light is waxing and some while it is waning.
Report preserved inside its own refutation.
Soranus is correcting Empedocles here, not reporting him, and the correction is the modern position: the cycle is individual and is not governed by the moon. The notice therefore preserves the doctrine in the act of being refuted, which is how a good deal of early physiology survives.
15–16 the supplements ⟨κ ἀεὶ⟩ and ⟨περιόδους⟩ are Kalbfleisch's.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 80
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.