From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordThe book preserves both the familiar fish-word and the less familiar καμασῆνες, rendered “fishes.”
- In EmpedoclesIn B212 and B232 fish stand beside trees, men, women, beasts, birds, and gods.
- In this editionThe edition renders καμασῆνες simply as fishes.
- A place to readWater-nurtured fish are among the products of the common constituents.
Meaning
The book preserves both the familiar fish-word and the less familiar καμασῆνες, rendered “fishes.” Their descriptive language stresses nourishment or habitation in water and a lack of song. These features make fish a distinct case within repeated catalogues of living forms.
Use in the book
In B212 and B232 fish stand beside trees, men, women, beasts, birds, and gods. The recurring list gives breadth to the claim that common constituents can produce the entire visible range of beings. In the painters' comparison, fish are among the forms created by mixing a restricted stock of pigments; in the physical assertion, they are among the compounds generated from the roots.
B20 calls fish water-housed, emphasizing habitat through the image of a dwelling. They share with bushes, beasts, and birds the alternating pattern of bodily association and separation. B72 places tall trees beside sea-fishes in a broken announcement of an explanation, again crossing the ordinary boundary between plant and animal topics.
The “songless tribe” in B74 gives fish a more individual lexical profile. Its participle, “leading,” has no securely recovered subject in the fragment itself. One should therefore preserve the image of a guided, widely scattered aquatic multitude without inventing the missing agent. Songlessness is the stated feature; a modern account of whether fish can produce sound would be a different question.
The fish among previous incarnations in B117 belongs to the daimon’s history. It demonstrates the poem’s ability to reuse an animal across physical and religious contexts, but the present entry concerns the fish’s place in the account of living form.
Places to read
- B 21.9–142Water-nurtured fish are among the products of the common constituents.
- B 20.6–7Water-housed fish share the bodily association-and-separation pattern.
- B 72Tall trees and sea-fishes are paired in a fragmentary announcement.
- B 74Fish are a widely scattered, songless tribe.
- B 23.5–8The same fish category appears among the painters’ representable forms.
Translation in this edition
The edition renders καμασῆνες simply as fishes. Its “songless” keeps the contrast in ἄμουσον without expanding it into an empirical claim that all aquatic animals are incapable of sound.