From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordThe ordinary words for day and night acquire a cosmological role when the witnesses explain them through material regions or speak of their separation.
- In this workPs.-Plutarch at A30 describes two hemispheres carried round the earth.
- In this editionA30’s Greek is disordered and A702’s solar-spreading phrase is textually uncertain.
- A place to readIdentifies the mixed air-and-fire hemisphere with night in an account of two revolving hemispheres.
Meaning
The ordinary words for day and night acquire a cosmological role when the witnesses explain them through material regions or speak of their separation. The expressions concern differentiated conditions in a formed world, not the alternating dominance of Love and Strife themselves.
Use in the book
Ps.-Plutarch at A30 describes two hemispheres carried round the earth. One is wholly fiery; the other is air mixed with a little fire, and this latter hemisphere is identified with night. The explicit assignment is to night. It is natural to compare the fiery half with day, but the printed sentence does not separately state that equation in the same words. The physical account accordingly links night with a revolving mixed region rather than merely naming absence of sunlight.
Aëtius’ plant notice at A702 places the first trees before the sun was spread round and before day and night were separated. Here the distinction marks a stage in the world’s differentiation and a relative sequence for the emergence of living things. The expression about the sun’s spreading is uncertain in the apparatus; the notice does not supply a modern calendar or an exact duration before ordinary days began.
These two reports can be compared as accounts of how the familiar alternation belongs to a formed cosmos. They should not be conflated with the longer cosmic cycle, or assembled into a precise chronology beyond what each witness states.
Places to read
- A 30 (testimony)Ps.-Plutarch, Stromateis, in Eusebius P.E. I 8,10. Identifies the mixed air-and-fire hemisphere with night in an account of two revolving hemispheres.
- A 70 (testimony)2Aëtius, plant notice. Places the first trees before the sun’s spreading and the separation of day and night.
Translation in this edition
A30’s Greek is disordered and A702’s solar-spreading phrase is textually uncertain. Neither report warrants identifying a cosmic day with a complete Love–Strife cycle.