From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe expressions mean lying alongside and touching.
- In this workAristotle’s wall comparison argues that Empedoclean mixture can amount only to composition: elements survive in minute portions next to one another.
- In this editionThis is the language of Aristotle and Galen about Empedocles, not an embedded Empedoclean quotation.
- A place to readInfers side-by-side small parts from the continued preservation of the elements.
Meaning
The expressions mean lying alongside and touching. They describe spatial relations between preserved small parts, in contrast with the thorough blending denied in Galen’s A43. The source’s apostrophe in Aristotle is printed παρ' ἄλληλα; the lexical point is adjacency, not a new named material.
Use in the book
Aristotle’s wall comparison argues that Empedoclean mixture can amount only to composition: elements survive in minute portions next to one another. Galen makes a related claim in prose, explicitly saying that the constituents are not blended through one another but juxtaposed and touching. Both descriptions belong to later accounts of what the invariant-root thesis entails.
This is stronger than simply saying that the roots persist. A theory might preserve constituents yet propose an organized or proportionate compound with properties not reducible to a visible heap. The testimonia do not let the reader resolve that possibility by decree. Nor does the presence of ratio in the bone account automatically disprove spatial adjacency. The exact explanatory relation between arrangement, ratio and resulting body remains what is contested.
Aëtius’ smallest fragments, printed in the same A-number, extend the account to alleged sub-elemental constituents. Juxtaposition of small portions does not by itself demonstrate such ultimate indivisible pieces. The lexicon keeps the wall argument and the further particle report separate.
Places to read
- A 43 (polemical)Aristotle, De gen. et corr. B 7. Infers side-by-side small parts from the continued preservation of the elements.
- A 43 (testimony)Galen, In Hipp. De nat. hom.. Describes small portions as lying alongside and touching, explicitly contrasting this with blending.
Translation in this edition
This is the language of Aristotle and Galen about Empedocles, not an embedded Empedoclean quotation. The inference from preserved roots to mere stacking is precisely a matter under dispute.