From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordDiasphax designates a cleft or opening; emphraxas means blocking it and apoteichisas walling it off.
- In this workIn On Being a Busybody, Empedocles blocks a mountain opening through which a heavy, unhealthy south wind descends upon the plains, and is credited with excluding plague.
- In this editionAgainst Colotes includes an editorially supplied phrase for setting the city free.
- A place to readConnects a blocked mountain cleft with exclusion of plague.
Meaning
Diasphax designates a cleft or opening; emphraxas means blocking it and apoteichisas walling it off. Notos is the south wind. Together the terms give Plutarch’s version a concrete topographical and constructive form.
Use in the book
In On Being a Busybody, Empedocles blocks a mountain opening through which a heavy, unhealthy south wind descends upon the plains, and is credited with excluding plague. Against Colotes makes the protective act part of a larger civic portrait: he exposes leading citizens’ abuses and removes barrenness and plague by walling off openings. The two settings matter. A practical intervention can serve a moral example in one work and a defense of philosophical civic benefit in another. The construction is more specific than Clement’s assertion that the wind was stopped, but specificity alone does not verify historicity. The testimonia neither identify a surviving wall nor supply dimensions or a complete location. They preserve an explanatory narrative in which changing airflow changes communal health.
Places to read
- A 13–A 14 (biography)Plutarch, On Being a Busybody. Connects a blocked mountain cleft with exclusion of plague.
- A 13–A 14 (biography)Plutarch, Against Colotes. Joins walling-off to public liberation and removal of agricultural and medical harm.
Translation in this edition
Against Colotes includes an editorially supplied phrase for setting the city free. This should not be quoted as uncontested manuscript wording. Its wind account is a distinct version, not a proven original underlying all the others.