From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordAmor means love; in caos converso means turned into chaos.
- In this workIn the selected passage the speaker recalls a tremendous shaking and says he thought the universe felt Love, through which some believe the world has repeatedly become chaos.
- In this editionThe commentary’s assertion that Dante could only have encountered the doctrine in Aristotle is stronger than the excerpt proves.
- A place to readPresents shaking, felt Love, and repeated conversion of the world into chaos as an attributed belief.
Meaning
Amor means love; in caos converso means turned into chaos. Più volte, more than once, gives the transformation a recurrent character. These are Dante’s Italian terms within a dramatic recollection, not translations quoted from an extant Empedoclean line.
Use in the book
In the selected passage the speaker recalls a tremendous shaking and says he thought the universe felt Love, through which some believe the world has repeatedly become chaos. The doctrine is attributed indefinitely rather than by naming Empedocles. The edition identifies the allusion with a cosmic unification under Love and connects it to the Sphairos. That is a meaningful reception connection, but “chaos” brings its own evaluative and poetic associations and should not simply replace the Greek spherical unity in a lexicon definition. The larger Christian setting supplied by the commentary also transforms the doctrine: a pre-Christian physical explanation becomes a comparison within the geography and history of Hell. It is more precise to call this a mediated adaptation of an Empedoclean idea than to say the passage transmits the original system intact.
Places to read
- Appendix II Dante XII (reception)Dante, Inferno XII 40–43. Presents shaking, felt Love, and repeated conversion of the world into chaos as an attributed belief.
- A 1 §§ 76–77 (testimony)Diogenes Laertius VIII 76. Supplies the distinct ancient summary of combination through Love and separation through Strife.
Translation in this edition
The commentary’s assertion that Dante could only have encountered the doctrine in Aristotle is stronger than the excerpt proves. The cited lines do not name a source, and their first-person voice belongs to a character’s speech rather than an unqualified authorial profession of belief.
Source note
The Italian amor carries an Empedoclean allusion here, but it operates inside a Christian poem. That contextual reuse should remain visible instead of being treated as neutral doxography.