Bone

Use in the book

The Hermetic account of sleep assigns incoming earth to bones and marrow while other elements nourish other structures. Bone exemplifies a differentiated bodily part within the proposed distribution. Its association with earth belongs to that physiology and is not a claim that bones are simply pieces of ordinary soil.

Places to read

1. I.41.8.5Bones and marrow receive the earthy component during sleep.

Translation in this edition

“Bone” is direct; maintain the distinction between bone and the marrow associated with it.

Use in the book

Bone is the clearest surviving example of a particular tissue explained through a quantitative composition. Earth receives two portions out of eight of Nestis' gleam and four of Hephaestus. The familiar interpretation assigns the remaining two portions to earth. The text expressly states the two and four, while earth’s remainder is inferred from the total eight and the role of earth as subject. That distinction is worth retaining even when the resulting recipe is summarized as two parts earth, two water, and four fire.

The divine names remain active in the description. Nestis and Hephaestus are not discarded as poetic ornament once a physical reading is available. This edition preserves their names, and the wider uncertainties over divine identifications should not be suppressed by an apparently transparent modern formula. Bone is at once a compounded material and the result of divine fitting.

The crucibles and glue do different explanatory work. A crucible provides a bounded place in which materials are brought together; glue explains their cohesive articulation. Neither image licenses the idea that a literal workshop stood outside the world to manufacture every skeleton. They make the relation between constituents, proportion, and stable structure vivid.

Comparison with B98 is particularly illuminating. Blood and flesh are formed from an approximately balanced mixture, allowing small variations, whereas bone is associated with a strikingly uneven numbered share. Differences between tissues are thus differences in combination, not evidence that each tissue possesses its own eternal substance. The fragment does not supply a modern chemical formula, and its numerical precision should not be mistaken for modern experimental quantification.

The colour word also deserves attention. Bone is white in the resulting body, while its named materials are introduced through gleam, earth, and divine fire. The poem can therefore move from an invisible proportional explanation to a familiar visible character. B712 asks generally how mixture yields the forms and colours of mortal things; B96 supplies one especially concrete tissue whose colour and texture are part of its recognizable identity. The fragment does not isolate whiteness as a fifth ingredient or offer a separate pigment theory.

The “broad-breasted” description of the crucibles similarly works at two levels. A receptacle is given a bodily shape just as bodies elsewhere are described through vessels, pipes, and rivets. The account does not divide a purely technical explanation from a merely decorative poetic surface. Its bodily and craft vocabularies help convey receptivity, proportion, and fitting. Reading the image closely is therefore part of understanding the explanation, even while a literal furnace or workshop remains unasserted.

Places to read

1. B 96The whole fragment gives the eight-part mixture and the white bones fitted by Harmonia.
2. B 98Near-equal contributions produce blood and other flesh, offering a contrasting mixture.
3. Introduction VI (editorial discussion)The introduction explains fitting and joinery as central to its rendering of Harmonia.

Translation in this edition

The local note restores the standard identification B96 against an inconsistent read-back number. References should therefore use B96. The two parts conventionally assigned to earth are an inference from the verse’s arithmetic, whereas the two of Nestis and four of Hephaestus are stated.

Use in the book

Aëtius assigns bone a numerical composition involving water, earth, and fire, with four portions of fire and two-part language for water and earth. The edition's English wording can obscure how the non-fiery allotment is distributed. Its apparatus is therefore indispensable: the word for two is emended and the entire clause is reconstructed by Diels using B96. This is not independent, intact prose confirmation of a verse recipe. The article should preserve the printed allocation and its uncertainty rather than silently normalize it into a modern compositional formula. Aristotle's On the Parts of Animals provides the more secure conceptual claim. Empedocles, he says, is led by truth to make a thing's being and nature its ratio: bone is not one element, several elements, or simply all of them, but their ratio of mixture. The concession occurs inside Aristotle's argument for nature as a principle more fundamental than matter, so it interprets the predecessor through Aristotelian explanatory priorities. On the Soul then makes the differing ratios of bone and flesh a problem for identifying soul with ratio. Pseudo-Aristotle's On Breath adds a different objection: a common ratio would seem unable to distinguish horse, lion, and human. These arguments show how a material recipe could bear on identity, life, and species difference. They do not prove that Empedocles accepted Aristotle's developed distinction between formal and material cause. Nor does the presence of a ratio alone decide whether constituents fuse or remain juxtaposed. A43's brick-wall criticism remains a distinct question about the manner of combination.

Places to read

1. A 78 (testimony)2Aëtius. Gives the numerically specified but heavily reconstructed bone recipe.
2. A 78 (testimony)2Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals. Credits Empedocles with treating bone's being and nature as its ratio of mixture.
3. A 78 (polemical)2Aristotle, On the Soul. Uses the difference between bone and flesh ratios in an objection to soul as ratio.
4. A 78 (polemical)2Pseudo-Aristotle, On Breath. Objects that a common ratio would leave horse, lion, and human indistinguishable.
5. A 43 (polemical)Aristotle, De gen. et corr. B 7. Separately questions whether Empedoclean mixture is only juxtaposition.

Translation in this edition

The edition's introductory slogan “bone is a number” captures the importance of proportion but narrows logos and risks erasing the constituents and their manner of combination. B96 is relevant through the A782 apparatus; it cannot count as another independently preserved witness within this volume.