From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordB150 consists of a noun and its adjective: the liver is “blood-rich.”
- In EmpedoclesThe phrase is a small but distinct anatomical observation.
- In this editionThe adjective’s force is abundance, not a measured proportion.
- A place to readThe two-word fragment describes the liver as rich in blood.
Meaning
B150 consists of a noun and its adjective: the liver is “blood-rich.” The compound characterizes the organ by an abundance of blood. No verb survives to say what the organ does.
Use in the book
The phrase is a small but distinct anatomical observation. It associates an identifiable part with a conspicuous bodily material, and it belongs beside the fuller accounts of blood’s mixture, movement, and relation to thought. Those connections make the fragment relevant to physiology without allowing it to carry all the claims of the better-preserved blood passages.
In particular, the liver is not identified here as the seat of thought. B105 makes its explicit cognitive statement about blood around the heart. Nor does B150 assign the liver a role in making blood, filtering substances, predicting events, or determining temperament. Those are possible subjects in other anatomical traditions, but none is supplied by these two words.
Plutarch’s Table Talk is named as the witness. Since the edition gives no expanded local argument, the surviving result remains descriptive rather than explanatory. A granular lexicon can respect that limit while making the phrase findable for readers interested in the range of organs Empedocles actually names.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
The adjective’s force is abundance, not a measured proportion. It should not be converted into the precise near-equal recipe given for blood in B98 or into a modern account of hepatic function.