From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordLeontes names lions.
- In EmpedoclesB127 singles out lions among beasts and laurels among trees as forms in which an unnamed plural subject becomes embodied.
- In this editionThe translation does not call the lion “king of beasts.”
- A place to readLions are selected among beasts and paired with laurels among trees.
Meaning
Leontes names lions. The accompanying epithets describe them as lying in the mountains and bedding on the ground. These are concrete features of the animal's setting and posture, not explicit titles of sovereignty.
Use in the book
B127 singles out lions among beasts and laurels among trees as forms in which an unnamed plural subject becomes embodied. The fragment is often read as marking elevated animal and plant lives in an ascent toward divinity; the introduction adopts that reading. The surviving couplet itself, however, does not say “highest,” identify the earlier lives, or state the order in which lion and laurel are reached.
The animal therefore belongs to the poem's moral account of transformations as well as to its wider inventory of living things. The mention does not imply that predatory behaviour is being prescribed for humans, or that the lion functions as an emblem of political power. Nor is it a zoological statement about how lions originate. What the fragment preserves is a selected kind of embodiment, whose probable privilege must be distinguished from an explicit rank or a complete ladder of rebirth.
Places to read
- B 127.1–2Lions are selected among beasts and paired with laurels among trees.
- Introduction V (editorial discussion)The introduction reads lion and laurel as the upper animal and plant stages.
Translation in this edition
The translation does not call the lion “king of beasts.” That familiar phrase would introduce an image and hierarchy not present in the printed couplet.