From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordKinō evokes movement, while Astemphēs means unshaken or immovable.
- In EmpedoclesThe pair begins the sixth line of B122/123, after Bed and Waking.
- In this edition“Immobility” is the chosen English abstraction for an adjective-name meaning unshaken.
- A place to readMovement and Immobility open the sixth line.
Meaning
Kinō evokes movement, while Astemphēs means unshaken or immovable. The edition translates their names “Movement and Immobility.” The second expression emphasizes resistance to displacement as well as simple inactivity.
Use in the book
The pair begins the sixth line of B122/123, after Bed and Waking. Their juxtaposition gives motion and steadiness personal form. It is a different opposition from Swift-One and Slow-One earlier in the catalogue: slow motion is still motion, while immobility names its absence or refusal.
The poem's physical fragments also describe both ceaseless change and stable continuity at different explanatory levels. Those claims offer useful intellectual context, but this line does not say that Kinō or Astemphēs is the personified Sphere, the cosmic cycle, or one of its phases. Assigning such identities would require more evidence. The article therefore records the pair's exact local contribution without turning an evocative catalogue into a systematic mechanics.
Places to read
- B 122/123.6Movement and Immobility open the sixth line.
Translation in this edition
“Immobility” is the chosen English abstraction for an adjective-name meaning unshaken. It does not by itself state that the figure lacks life, thought, or power.