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 94 of 126
Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 81
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 178Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals
οἱ δ' ἐν τῆι μήτραι, καθάπερ Ἐ.· τὰ μὲν γὰρ εἰς θερμὴν ἐλθόντα τὴν ὑστέραν ἄρρενα γίνεσθαί φησι, τὰ δ' εἰς ψυχρὰν θήλεα, τῆς δὲ θερμότητος καὶ τῆς ψυχρότητος τὴν τῶν καταμηνίων αἰτίαν εἶναι ῥύσιν ἢ ψυχροτέραν οὖσαν ἢ θερμοτέραν καὶ ἢ παλαιοτέραν ἢ προσφατωτέραν … τοῦτο γὰρ ὡς ἀληθῶς Ἐ. ῥαιθυμότερον ὑπείληφεν οἰόμενος ψυχρότητι καὶ θερμότητι διαφέρειν μόνον ἀλλήλων, ὁρῶν ὅλα τὰ μόρια μεγάλην ἔχοντα διαφορὰν τήν τε τῶν αἰδοίων καὶ τὴν τῆς ὑστέρας.
Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals
ἀναγκαῖον ἀπαντᾶν καὶ πρὸς τὸν Ἐμπεδοκλέους λόγον, ὃς διορίζει τὸ θῆλυ πρὸς τὸ ἄρρεν θερμότητι καὶ ψυχρότητι τῆς ὑστέρας.
Aëtius
Ἐ. ἄρρενα καὶ θήλεα γίνεσθαι παρὰ θερμότητα καὶ ψυχρότητα· ὅθεν ἱστορεῖται τοὺς μὲν πρώτους ἄρρενας πρὸς ἀνατολῆι καὶ μεσημβρίαι γεγενῆσθαι μᾶλλον ἐκ τῆς γῆς, τὰς δὲ θηλείας πρὸς ταῖς ἄρκτοις.
Aëtius
Ἐ. τέρατα γίνεσθαι παρὰ πλεονασμὸν σπέρματος ἢ παρ' ἔλλειψιν ἢ παρὰ τὴν τῆς κινήσεως ταραχὴν ἢ παρὰ τὴν εἰς πλείω διαίρεσιν ἢ παρὰ τὸ ἀπονεύειν. οὕτω προειληφὼς φαίνεται σχεδόν τι πάσας τὰς αἰτιολογίας.
Aëtius
Ἐ. δίδυμα καὶ τρίδυμα γίνεσθαι κατὰ πλεονασμὸν καὶ περισχισμὸν τοῦ σπέρματος.
Aëtius
πόθεν γίνονται τῶν γονέων αἱ ὁμοιώσεις καὶ τῶν προγόνων· Ἐ. ὁμοιότητας γίνεσθαι κατ' ἐπικράτειαν τῶν σπερματικῶν γόνων, ἀνομοιότητας δὲ τῆς ἐν τῶι σπέρματι θερμασίας ἐξατμισθείσης.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 179The generation of male and female, monsters, twins, and likeness
Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals
Others place it in the womb, as Empedocles does. He says that what enters a hot womb becomes male, what enters a cold one female; and that the cause of the heat or the coldness is the flow of the menses, which is either colder or hotter, and either older or fresher … For in truth Empedocles has taken this too carelessly, supposing that the sexes differ from one another by cold and heat alone, when he can see that whole parts differ greatly — the genitals and the womb.
Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals
It is necessary to meet Empedocles' account as well, which distinguishes female from male by the heat and the coldness of the womb.
Aëtius
Empedocles: male and female come about through heat and coldness; whence it is recorded that the first males were generated out of the earth rather toward the east and the south, and the females toward the north.
Aëtius
Empedocles: monstrous births come about through excess of seed, or through deficiency, or through a disturbance of the motion, or through division into too many parts, or through a turning aside. So he appears to have anticipated very nearly all the accounts of the causes.
Aëtius
Empedocles: twins and triplets come about through excess and splitting of the seed.
Aëtius
Whence come likenesses to the parents and to ancestors? Empedocles: likenesses come about by the predominance of the generative seeds, and unlikenesses when the heat in the seed has been evaporated away.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 81
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.