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 99 of 126
Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 84
Ancient Greek and Latin
p. 188Censorinus, On the Birthday
E., quem in hoc Aristoteles secutus est, ante omnia cor iudicavit increscere, quod hominis vitam maxime contineat.
Aëtius
Ἐ. τὸν μὲν ὕπνον καταψύξει τοῦ ἐν τῶι αἵματι θερμοῦ συμμέτρωι γίνεσθαι, τῆι δὲ παντελεῖ θάνατον.
Aëtius
Ἐ. τὸν θάνατον γίγνεσθαι διαχωρισμῶι τοῦ πυρώδους ⟨καὶ ἀερώδους καὶ ὑδατώδους καὶ γεώδους⟩, ἐξ ὧν ἡ σύγκρισις τῶι ἀνθρώπωι συνεστάθη· ὥστε κατὰ τοῦτο κοινὸν εἶναι τὸν θάνατον σώματος καὶ ψυχῆς· ὕπνον δὲ γίνεσθαι διαχωρισμῶι τοῦ πυρώδους.
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II: Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies
p. 189The heart forms first
Censorinus, On the Birthday
Empedocles — whom Aristotle followed in this — judged that the heart grows before all else, on the ground that it more than anything holds a man's life together.
Report: a rare case of Aristotle following him.
One sentence, and it records a rare thing: Aristotle following Empedocles rather than correcting him. The reason given is not anatomical but functional, and it is the reason the heart will keep its primacy in physiology for the next two thousand years.
Sleep and death
Aëtius
Empedocles: sleep comes about by a moderate cooling of the heat in the blood, and death by a complete one.
Aëtius
Empedocles: death comes about by the separating off of the fiery ⟨and the airy and the watery and the earthy⟩, out of which the compound was put together for a man; so that in this respect death is common to body and soul alike. Sleep comes about by the separating off of the fiery alone.
Doxographic report, two notices, the second drawing a consequence.
Sleep and death differ by degree, not in kind: both are the withdrawal of fire from the blood, and sleep is the lesser withdrawal. The second notice draws the consequence that mattered most to later readers — that on this physics death is common to body and soul, since the soul is the ratio of a mixture and the mixture comes apart. Whether Empedocles himself held that, given what the Purifications say about the wandering daimon, is the oldest unsettled question about him.
Bearing on Volume I. The point at which the physics of Volume I and the religion of the Purifications appear to contradict each other.
34 καταψύξει B: κατὰ ψύξιν ACG. — 35 τῆι δὲ παντελεῖ Bernadakis, the manuscripts varying. — 36 the words in angle brackets supplied by Diels. — 38 διαχωρισμῶι Bernadakis: διαχωρισμόν in the manuscripts.
Socrates
Reading Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II · Light, Sea, Plants and Bodies · A 84
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.