Elder and linen · Lexicon

From the book

Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I

Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordB93 says that a grain of gray elder is mingled with fine linen.
In EmpedoclesThe line belongs among the poem’s concrete images of combination, alongside milk bound by fig-juice and barley-meal glued with water.
In this editionThe botanical and textile identifications follow the edition’s “gray elder” and “fine linen.”
A place to readThe entire line names the elder grain, fine linen, and their mingling.

Meaning

B93 says that a grain of gray elder is mingled with fine linen. The components are a small plant product and a textile material. The fragment preserves the fact of mingling but gives no explicit account of what effect the mixture is meant to produce.

Use in the book

The line belongs among the poem’s concrete images of combination, alongside milk bound by fig-juice and barley-meal glued with water. It differs from them in the absence of an expressly named resultant texture. “Mingled” is secure; hardening, softening, colouring, or strengthening is not specified in the excerpt.

The material names still make the example distinctive. A grain is a small, bounded item; linen is a fibrous or woven material; the adjective attached to elder provides a visible character. Their juxtaposition shows how particular substances, not only abstract roots, can appear in an argument about mixture. The missing context prevents deciding whether this line was an everyday analogy, a recipe-like example, or part of a more specialized discussion.

Plutarch’s On the Obsolescence of Oracles is the cited witness. Its subject does not by itself establish that the Empedoclean line concerns divination. The fragment’s physical vocabulary should remain the starting point, and the broader quoting work should be used as provenance rather than as permission to invent the original application.

Places to read

B 93The entire line names the elder grain, fine linen, and their mingling.
B 33Fig-juice and milk provide a comparison where binding is explicitly stated.
B 34Water and barley-meal provide a comparison where gluing is explicitly stated.

Translation in this edition

The botanical and textile identifications follow the edition’s “gray elder” and “fine linen.” A more specialized botanical species or manufacturing process is not established by the supplied line.