Baubo

Use in the book

The important distinction is between a name and the bodily sense explicitly assigned to Empedocles. A reader who sees “Baubo” may reasonably expect a mythological figure. The supplied evidence instead directs the Empedoclean occurrence toward the belly or womb. It does not preserve a story involving Demeter’s nurse, a speech spoken by her, or a ritual scene in which she appears.

This does not require denying any wider associations the word may have had. It requires keeping the claim proportionate to the witness. Hesychius offers a lexical equivalence and cites Empedocles as an example; the line that established that equivalence is lost. The precise distinction between abdomen and reproductive womb therefore remains unresolved here.

The bodily sense makes the fragment relevant to the surviving material on generation, especially B67’s male-bearing belly. Yet the shared domain does not prove that B153 came from that passage or that the poet used the two terms interchangeably. It is a lexical survival with a useful gloss, not a recoverable anatomical chapter.

Places to read

1. B 153 (report)Hesychius distinguishes the mythological name from the belly/womb meaning exemplified by Empedocles.
2. B 153 (editorial discussion)The edition supplies the lexicographer’s wording and warns by context against treating the isolated item as a full verse.
3. B 67The male-bearing belly offers a related anatomical context, without identifying the missing setting of B153.

Translation in this edition

The edition prints lowercase βαυβώ and translates “baubo (belly).” The broader “belly or womb” comes from its explanation of Hesychius. An entry headed Baubo should not transform the lexicographer’s first definition into evidence that Empedocles narrated the nurse’s myth.