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 96 of 126
Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 81 (continued)
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 182Censorinus, On the Birthday
sequitur de geminis, qui ut aliquando nascantur modo seminis fieri Hippon ratus ⟨est⟩: id enim cum amplius est quam uni satis fuit, bifariam deduci. id ipsum ferme E. videtur sensisse: nam causas quidem cur divideretur non posuit; partiri tantum modo ait et si utrumque sedes aeque calidas occupaverit, utrumque marem nasci, si frigidas aeque, utramque feminam, si vero alterum calidiorem, alterum frigidiorem, dispari sexu partum futurum.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 183Censorinus, On the Birthday
Next, concerning twins. Hippon held that they are sometimes born by reason of the quantity of the seed: for when it is more than was enough for one, it is drawn off two ways. Empedocles seems to have thought almost the same; for he did not set down the causes why it should divide, but only says that it divides — and that if both portions take up places equally hot, both are born male; if equally cold, both female; but if one is hotter and the other colder, the birth will be of different sexes.
Report from nine notices of unequal worth.
Nine separate notices stand behind this one number, and they do not all deserve the same credit. Aristotle is arguing with a text in front of him and quotes a real doctrine, then reproaches Empedocles for holding it carelessly. The Aëtius notices are handbook summaries, and the fourth of them contains the doxographer's own verdict rather than Empedocles' words — that he anticipated nearly every later explanation of monstrous birth, which is a compliment paid to a list. The last notice, on the woman's imagination shaping the child, had an extraordinarily long life: it is still being repeated, with Empedocles' name attached, in the medical literature of the seventeenth century.
Bearing on Volume I. Sex determined by temperature, and the first men and women generated in different latitudes — the embryology and the zoogony are one doctrine.
32 ταραχήν G: ἀρχήν in (A)BC. — 34 αἰτιολογίας Reiske: ἀπολογίας in (A)BC. Compare Hippocrates, On Seed 8; Soranus p. 204, 18 Rose; ps.-Galen XIV 253; Dionysius, On Imitation p. 17, 18 Usener. — Censorinus 3 Empedoclis Diels: enpedocles in the manuscripts; talia profatur Lachmann. — 5 frigus Carrio: frigidus in the manuscripts. — 9 ⟨est⟩ Carrio. — Of the passage on twins Diels notes that it can hardly derive from Empedocles himself.
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.