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 95 of 126
Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 81 (continued)
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 180Aëtius
πῶς ἄλλοις γίνονται ὅμοιοι οἱ γεννώμενοι καὶ οὐ τοῖς γονεῦσιν· Ἐ. τῆι κατὰ τὴν σύλληψιν φαντασίαι τῆς γυναικὸς μορφοῦσθαι τὰ βρέφη· πολλάκις γὰρ ἀνδριάντων καὶ εἰκόνων ἠράσθησαν γυναῖκες καὶ ὅμοια τούτοις ἀπέτεκον.
Censorinus, On the Birthday
ex dextris partibus profuso semine mares gigni, at e laevis feminas Anaxagoras Empedoclesque consentiunt. quorum opiniones, ut de hac specie congruae, ita de similitudine liberorum dispariles; super qua re Empedoclis, disputata ratione, talis profertur. si par calor in parentum seminibus fuit, patri similem marem procreari; si frigus, feminam matri similem. quodsi patris calidius erit et frigidius matris, puerum fore qui matris vultus repraesentet: at si calidius matris, patris autem fuerit frigidius, puellam futuram quae patris reddat similitudinem.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 181Aëtius
How do children come to resemble others and not their own parents? Empedocles: infants are shaped by the woman's imagination at the moment of conception. For women have often fallen in love with statues and with painted figures, and have borne children resembling them.
Censorinus, On the Birthday
Anaxagoras and Empedocles agree that when the seed is poured out from the right-hand parts males are begotten, and from the left-hand parts females. Their opinions, though they agree on that point, differ on the likeness of children; and on that matter Empedocles' view, when the reasoning is set out, is put thus. If the heat in the parents' seeds was equal, a male is begotten resembling the father; if the cold was equal, a female resembling the mother. But if the father's is the hotter and the mother's the colder, the child will be a boy who shows the mother's features; while if the mother's is the hotter and the father's the colder, it will be a girl who gives back the father's likeness.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 81 (continued)
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.