From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordHosios concerns what is holy or religiously right.
- In EmpedoclesThe opening of B 32 turns the problem of unreliable human thinking into a prayer about speech.
- In this editionThe edition's pure spring and chariot are figures in the verse, not descriptions of a documented ritual performance.
- A place to readPrayer purifies the tongue and limits speech before directing the hearer toward evidence.
Meaning
Hosios concerns what is holy or religiously right. B 32 applies its inflected forms both to mouths and to the permissible extent of speaking. Katharēn, pure, describes the spring the gods are asked to channel; glōssēs refers to the tongue.
Use in the book
The opening of B 32 turns the problem of unreliable human thinking into a prayer about speech. The gods are asked to avert madness from the speaker's tongue and to send a pure spring through holy mouths. The source of instruction is imagined as flowing water, but the bodily outlet remains a mouth. The figure makes purification, communication, and access to truth interdependent without reducing one to a decorative metaphor for another.
The following appeal to the Muse specifies what creatures of a day may lawfully hear. Public honour can tempt a speaker to exceed that measure and then claim the heights of wisdom. The passage therefore places an ethical constraint on authoritative teaching. It does not praise unlimited boldness merely because the speaker invokes divinity.
The second half of the same fragment turns to observation through every faculty. That transition is especially important: religiously regulated speech introduces a discipline of evidence rather than replacing it. B 4 similarly pairs the Muse's assurances with an account sifted through the inward parts. B 131's prayer for help with a good account of the gods renews the connection between speech, study, and divine assistance.
B 5 offers a different restraint, the sheltering of teaching within a speechless breast. The exact object is supplemented, and the line's original context is lost; it may illuminate careful retention without proving a universal command of secrecy. Across the relevant fragments, holy speech is an economy of what may be received, what may be said, and how the speaker should withstand the attractions of acclaim.
The spring-image reaches beyond speech. Nestis moistens the mortal fountain in B 6, and B 232 denies another spring or source for the manifest mortal things. B 143 mentions five springs in an enigmatic operation involving bronze. These uses make sources and issuing flows a recurrent figure, while their differences prevent one fixed interpretation of every spring as an organ, root, or divine fountain.
Places to read
- B 3.1–132Prayer purifies the tongue and limits speech before directing the hearer toward evidence.
- B 4Muse-supported assurance accompanies inward consideration.
- B 5A fragmentary injunction concerns sheltering something within a speechless breast.
- B 131Prayer seeks help in presenting a good account of the blessed gods.
- B 6.3Nestis moistens the mortal spring, a different use of source imagery.
- B 23.9–112The argument denies another source for the manifest mortal things.
- B 143An enigmatic five-springs image is distinct from the spring of holy speech.
Translation in this edition
The edition's pure spring and chariot are figures in the verse, not descriptions of a documented ritual performance. The names Muse, Calliopeia, and Piety deserve their own entries; this article concerns what their invocation does to the practice of speaking.