From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordTimon’s insult calls Empedocles a bawler of market-place verses.
- In this workThe quoted hexameters attack both inflated expression and explanatory incompleteness.
- In this editionThe editorial note calls Timon a “contemporary” hostile voice; that characterization should not be repeated as established by the passage.
- A place to readPreserves the satirical verses and the objection about principles needing others.
Meaning
Timon’s insult calls Empedocles a bawler of market-place verses. His final phrase describes principles that need other principles. The register mixes abuse of verbal style with a compact philosophical objection.
Use in the book
The quoted hexameters attack both inflated expression and explanatory incompleteness. The image of cramming in as many words as strength allows reduces elevated poetic authority to noisy excess. The last line is more specific: a system whose supposed first principles need something further has not made them fully first. The edition explains this as the four roots requiring Love and Strife to move them; that is a plausible local interpretation rather than a detailed argument developed in Timon’s short quotation. The passage should not be dismissed as merely comic, but neither should its compressed objection be expanded into a full independent reconstruction of Empedoclean causality. Its main importance is the preservation of hostile poetic reception beside the Life’s admiring and miraculous traditions. The biographer allows the famous poet to be heard through an opponent’s verse as well as his own abbreviated quotations.
Places to read
- A 1 §§ 67–68 (quotation)2Diogenes Laertius VIII 67, quoting Timon. Preserves the satirical verses and the objection about principles needing others.
Translation in this edition
The editorial note calls Timon a “contemporary” hostile voice; that characterization should not be repeated as established by the passage. The apparatus also records a textual adjustment in the line about packing words together.