From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordChitōn is a tunic, here made of flesh.
- In EmpedoclesB126 places the detached word daimōn before a phrase about wrapping in an alien tunic of flesh.
- In this editionThe phrase is incomplete and the participle is feminine.
- A place to readThe fragment supplies the flesh-tunic image with a detached daimōn.
Meaning
Chitōn is a tunic, here made of flesh. The adjective allognōs, represented by the printed form allognōti, conveys foreignness or unfamiliarity. The feminine participle peristellousa describes wrapping or clothing. The metaphor makes embodiment an act of envelopment rather than supplying a literal garment.
Use in the book
B126 places the detached word daimōn before a phrase about wrapping in an alien tunic of flesh. The translation supplies “them” to make English sense, but the quotation does not preserve an explicit object. It would consequently be too confident to identify a fully recoverable scene in which a named goddess clothes named souls.
The image can illuminate the estrangement in B1152 and B118: flesh is a covering experienced as alien, and mortal forms are stages in the exile's movement. Yet it cannot by itself prove a complete body–soul dualism, the worthlessness of all bodies, or the material independence of the wearer. Empedocles also explains bodily flesh as a mixture under Cypris in B98. A lexicon should keep both idioms visible rather than allowing the clothing metaphor to cancel the physical account.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
The phrase is incomplete and the participle is feminine. The English object “them” is supplied by the translation's syntax; it is not a separately attested noun in the Greek quotation.