From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe Life’s wording orders asses to be flayed and askoi, skin bags, to be made.
- In this workIn Timaeus’ account transmitted by Diogenes, the hides are fashioned into bags and stretched about elevated places to catch or check the wind.
- In this editionThe translation “hides” should not erase askous, which is explicit in the earlier reported account.
- A place to readSpecifies flaying, bags, and deployment around hills and headlands.
Meaning
The Life’s wording orders asses to be flayed and askoi, skin bags, to be made. The Suda uses the simpler phrase “asses’ hides.” A skin bag is a manufactured container; translating both accounts merely as a wall obscures their different material images.
Use in the book
In Timaeus’ account transmitted by Diogenes, the hides are fashioned into bags and stretched about elevated places to catch or check the wind. In the Suda the hides surround Acragas and repel an incoming wind. The material is consequential because it differs from Plutarch’s blocked mountain clefts, and because the Life elsewhere celebrates an animal-shaped offering that avoids animal slaughter. The juxtaposition warns against constructing an entirely seamless ethical biography from the collected anecdotes. It does not prove that Empedocles approved or disapproved every use of animal products, since the stories may derive from different agendas and sources. Nor does the wording tell us how the bags were hung, joined, or orientated. A modern windbreak reconstruction remains a hypothesis, while the original vocabulary retains a suggestive mixture of practical material and wind-containment imagery.
Places to read
- A 1 §§ 59–60 (biography)Diogenes Laertius VIII 60, reporting Timaeus. Specifies flaying, bags, and deployment around hills and headlands.
- A 2 (legend)The Suda. Simplifies the material to hides encircling the city.
Translation in this edition
The translation “hides” should not erase askous, which is explicit in the earlier reported account. The edition’s interpretation as engineering is not independent evidence that this exact apparatus existed.