DiotimosReading Desk

Poetry and language

Embedded quotation

An embedded quotation is wording cited within a later author’s account.

From the book

Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II

Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordAn embedded quotation is wording cited within a later author’s account.
  • In this workThe Life presents poetry as evidence for extraordinary powers, philosophical affiliation and self-presentation.
  • In this editionThe source’s broad separation of Volume I as poetry and Volume II as report is a practical arrangement, not a clean separation of every sentence by evidentiary type.
  • A place to readPoetic promises are brought into a biographical story about extraordinary powers.

Meaning

An embedded quotation is wording cited within a later author’s account. Its evidentiary value differs from a paraphrase even when both stand beneath the same A number. A citation may be abbreviated, adapted, or transmitted with textual problems; quotation does not remove the need to inspect its frame.

Use in the book

The Life presents poetry as evidence for extraordinary powers, philosophical affiliation and self-presentation. That is evidence both for the verses being circulated and for a later use of them. In the doctrinal collection, Aëtius introduces an abbreviated quotation of the root verse and supplies an interpretation; the interpretation is not thereby part of the quoted verse. Similarly, Achilles introduces an abbreviated lunar-light verse within an astronomical report; the cited wording and his claim that the moon is a fragment of the sun are not identical evidence. An article can accordingly use the wording of a quotation to explain an image while treating a witness’s inference as a separate claim. The volume’s modern references back to B fragments sometimes identify a parallel text or a text used in reconstruction. Such references are helpful, but they should not make a repaired report look like a second independent verbatim witness. Where a witness prints only the beginning and end of a verse, separated by an ellipsis, that abbreviated incipit is not a complete quotation. Its missing words must not be silently restored from memory.

Places to read

  1. A 1 §§ 59–60 (biography)Diogenes Laertius VIII 59, reporting Satyrus and Gorgias. Poetic promises are brought into a biographical story about extraordinary powers.
  2. A 33 (quotation)2Aëtius I 3,20. An abbreviated quotation of B 6 precedes the witness’s interpretation of the divine names; the intervening verse is not printed in full.
  3. A 55 (quotation)Achilles, In Aratum 16 p. 43,2 Maass. The incipit and ending of B 45 are cited within a report about the moon; a quotation does not establish every astronomical claim attached to it.

Translation in this edition

The source’s broad separation of Volume I as poetry and Volume II as report is a practical arrangement, not a clean separation of every sentence by evidentiary type. A quotation’s extent and the witness’s commentary must be read together.