Fig-juice and milk

Use in the book

The comparison begins “as when,” so the surviving line is explicitly an analogy. Its principal target is missing. The reader can identify the visible process being invoked without deciding whether the original argument concerned a particular tissue, a cosmic combination, or another form of cohesion.

The pairing illustrates more than simple addition. The result is that the milk becomes bound, a change in the behaviour and texture of the mixture. This makes it a natural comparison for other passages in which joining produces a stable form from materials that separately have different properties. B92’s two soft seeds yielding a dense mixture and B34’s water binding barley-meal offer related but distinct cases.

The fastening verb also connects it with Aphrodite’s rivets in B87. That link is lexical and explanatory: a craft operation can describe a material’s cohesion, not merely an artisan’s act on a manufactured object. It does not prove that milk is literally held by metal pins or that every Empedoclean mixture uses the same process.

The entry preserves the ordinary material scene because it is the basis of the analogy’s persuasive force. Its use here is historical and interpretive, not a food-preparation instruction.

Places to read

1. B 33The simile gives fig-juice binding and riveting white milk.
2. B 87Aphrodite’s rivets provide a related fastening image.
3. B 34Water glues barley-meal in another short material example.
4. B 92 (report)A later report describes altered texture on mixing two soft seeds.

Translation in this edition

“Curdling” is a helpful lookup label, but the printed line emphasizes binding and riveting. Since the target of “as when” is lost, the entry does not attach the simile to a particular organ as though that connection were preserved.