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 verb epiklithēnai means to have been inclined or tilted.
- In this workAëtius assigns the heavens an acquired inclination: the air yields to the sun's onrush, the Bears tilt, the north rises, and the south sinks, with the whole cosmos implicated.
- In this editionThe editorial description of the seasons as the residue of an accident adds the categories accident and design to a report that uses neither.
- A place to readThe sun's onrush makes the air yield and produces the inclination of north, south, and cosmos.
Meaning
The verb epiklithēnai means to have been inclined or tilted. The arktoi are literally the Bears, the northern constellations; the apparatus interprets the expression as the celestial north pole. Boreia and notia designate the northern and southern regions in the reported displacement.
Use in the book
Aëtius assigns the heavens an acquired inclination: the air yields to the sun's onrush, the Bears tilt, the north rises, and the south sinks, with the whole cosmos implicated. The notice makes the present configuration the outcome of interaction among physical constituents, rather than supplying a geometrical description alone. Yet it does not identify an angle, a rotational axis in modern terms, or the date of the event. Its vocabulary of rising and sinking also presupposes a standpoint that the compressed report does not explain. The accompanying notice about the sun's turning introduces an enclosing sphere and tropic circles, but it gives a different causal description. Reading both together is useful; combining them into a fully reconstructed seasonal mechanism goes beyond what either surviving sentence specifies.
Places to read
- A 58 (testimony)Aëtius. The sun's onrush makes the air yield and produces the inclination of north, south, and cosmos.
- A 58 (testimony)Aëtius, second notice. The sun's return is attributed to the enclosing sphere and tropic circles.
Translation in this edition
The editorial description of the seasons as the residue of an accident adds the categories accident and design to a report that uses neither. Likewise, the apparatus' identification of the Bears with the pole is explanatory, not a second ancient assertion.