From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordThe poems' verbs emphasize devouring and eating rather than a neutral dietary category.
- In EmpedoclesB1282 joins the removal of life to the eating of limbs and calls that practice the greatest defilement among the people described.
- In this editionB139 is printed amid physical fragments in this edition.
- A place to readTearing out life and eating limbs is condemned.
Meaning
The poems' verbs emphasize devouring and eating rather than a neutral dietary category. Borā names food or the act of devouring; in B139 it belongs to cruel deeds contrived around the lips. “Vegetarianism” is a useful modern label for the resulting prohibition, but is not an Empedoclean word in this text.
Use in the book
B1282 joins the removal of life to the eating of limbs and calls that practice the greatest defilement among the people described. B136 directly rebukes an audience for devouring one another, while B137 brings the accusation into a family feast. Killing and consumption are consecutive parts of one ethical wrong, not independent topics.
B139 introduces remorse in the first person. The speaker wishes that a pitiless day had destroyed him before he devised cruel acts of devouring at his lips. The intensity of the regret matters: the poem's teacher does not always speak from a position of uncomplicated past innocence. This confession can be compared with the exile's admission of trust in Strife, though the fragments do not identify a single recoverable episode behind both utterances.
These passages strongly support abstention from slaughtered flesh. They do not establish that every plant may be eaten, since laurel and beans receive their own prohibitions. Nor do they supply a complete menu or modern health rationale. The foundation presented in the surviving moral poetry is the continuity of life and kinship across altered shapes, together with the pollution of violent acts.
Places to read
- B 128.8–10Tearing out life and eating limbs is condemned.
- B 136Devouring one another is charged to heedlessness.
- B 137.1–6The sacrificial killing becomes a feast on relatives.
- B 139The speaker laments his earlier cruel devising of devouring.
Translation in this edition
B139 is printed amid physical fragments in this edition. The residual Latin notices about Strasbourg-papyrus lines are apparatus-like placeholders, not four additional translated verses that can be interpreted as present evidence.