DiotimosReading Desk

Perception and sensation

Blackness and shadow

niger (niger, Latin); color (color, Latin); umbra (umbra, Latin)

B94 is printed in Latin rather than Greek.

From the book

Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I

Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordB94 is printed in Latin rather than Greek.
  • In EmpedoclesThe two settings share a condition of darkness without being the same kind of place.
  • In this editionThe absence of Greek is a substantive source-critical fact, not a typographical inconvenience to repair with an invented lemma.
  • A place to readThe Latin couplet attributes the river-bottom black colour to shadow and compares hollow caves.

Meaning

B94 is printed in Latin rather than Greek. It describes black colour at the bottom of a river arising from shadow and likewise visible in hollow caves. The forms here are accordingly labeled Latin; no missing Greek colour-word is reconstructed for the reader.

Use in the book

The two settings share a condition of darkness without being the same kind of place. A river bottom is seen through water, while a cave is a hollow recess. In both, shadow accounts for a black appearance. The fragment thus directs attention to the conditions under which a colour is seen, not only to an object’s supposed intrinsic material hue.

That observation is relevant to the account of perception but remains local. The couplet does not declare all colours unreal, describe a full theory of illumination, or explain how an eye discriminates black from other colours. It is an example connecting visible appearance with the arrangement of light and shelter.

The linguistic mediation is decisive. Because the book provides a Latin rendering through the cited Plutarchan material, the exact original Greek phrasing cannot be quoted from this edition. A lexicon can nevertheless index the physical claim and the imagery, provided that it marks the layer of evidence. The blackness of river depths and caves is transmitted Empedoclean content here; these Latin words are not Empedocles composing in Latin.

Places to read

  1. B 94 (report)The Latin couplet attributes the river-bottom black colour to shadow and compares hollow caves.
  2. Introduction VI (editorial discussion)The introduction explicitly identifies B94 as an exceptional Latin rendering rather than printed Greek verse.

Translation in this edition

The absence of Greek is a substantive source-critical fact, not a typographical inconvenience to repair with an invented lemma. The form field therefore gives the actual Latin forms and identifies their language.