From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe surviving descriptions are compounds of conspicuous bodily features: faces on both sides, breasts on both sides, ox-kind with a human “prow,” and human growth with ox-heads.
- In EmpedoclesThese forms bring the assemblage of an organism into view by presenting combinations that violate familiar bodily plans.
- In this edition“Monster” can be an effective lookup word, but it adds a classificatory and evaluative term absent from these quotations.
- A place to readA minimal description emphasizes extraordinary feet and an indefinite multiplicity of hands.
Meaning
The surviving descriptions are compounds of conspicuous bodily features: faces on both sides, breasts on both sides, ox-kind with a human “prow,” and human growth with ox-heads. The shorter B60 adds a shambling-footed creature with hands beyond counting. “Composite creatures” is a descriptive heading rather than the translation of a source noun meaning monster.
Use in the book
These forms bring the assemblage of an organism into view by presenting combinations that violate familiar bodily plans. A head can be joined to an alien trunk, fronts can be doubled, and traits associated with male and female bodies can be mingled. The prow image is especially pointed: the front of a creature is described through the projecting front of a vessel, so a recognizable anatomical part becomes a fitted leading component.
B59 supplies the nearby language of encounters: the things fall together wherever each happens to meet. It does not use the later language of a breeding population. Nor does B61 itself declare that every composite dies. The introduction reports an Aristotelian survival account and a debate over natural-selection readings, but the quotation preserves a catalogue of combinations, not that argument in full.
The words at the end of B61 are rendered “shadowy parts.” Since the excerpt offers neither a definition nor an explanatory continuation, they should not be made to certify a precise reproductive anatomy. The safer emphasis is the text’s unmistakable crossing and doubling of forms. B60 and B61 together show that the range of early combinations exceeds the present inventory of ordinary animals, while leaving their exact place in a cosmic history open.
Places to read
- B 60A minimal description emphasizes extraordinary feet and an indefinite multiplicity of hands.
- B 61The main catalogue includes doubled fronts, human–bovine composites, and mixed sexual characteristics.
- B 59Chance encounter belongs to the nearby account of combination.
- Introduction V (editorial discussion)The survival and natural-selection discussion is supplied in modern exposition.
Translation in this edition
“Monster” can be an effective lookup word, but it adds a classificatory and evaluative term absent from these quotations. The printed B61 is transmitted by Aelian; its infinitival wording is retained as a fragment within a later author’s quotation.