From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordMythos is a telling, speech, or utterance.
- In EmpedoclesThe double exposition of one and many in B 172 is introduced as something to hear, with the bounds of the speaker's mythoi made clear.
- In this edition“Tale” in this translation preserves the poetic manner, but should not be heard as “mere fiction.”
- A place to readThe cosmological exposition is repeatedly called words or a tale.
Meaning
Mythos is a telling, speech, or utterance. The edition renders its various forms as words or tale. Its occurrence is not an instruction to classify a passage as a modern “myth” opposed to factual explanation.
Use in the book
The double exposition of one and many in B 172 is introduced as something to hear, with the bounds of the speaker's mythoi made clear. That same fragment soon calls the instruction an undeceiving logos. Both words belong to the poet's explanatory undertaking. Their coexistence is stronger evidence than any modern expectation that myth and argument must be separate.
At the close of the painter simile in B 232, the listener is told to know clearly because the mythos has been heard from a god. The utterance is a vehicle of authority and insight. B 62 likewise qualifies its tale as neither wide of the mark nor unknowing while introducing an account of the emergence of human forms. Truth or error therefore depends on the tale and its speaker, not on an inherent unreliability of the noun.
B 114 makes the point explicit by asserting that truth is present in the mythoi the speaker will utter. The problem is how humans receive conviction. B 24, finally, figures a course of words as a path joining summits. Here mythoi have arrangement and progression. The isolated quotation does not disclose all of the speaker's intended route, but it preserves reflection on the way a teaching is composed.
For this lexicon, mythos names part of Empedocles' vocabulary of communication. It does not settle whether the modern reader should endorse the cosmology, theology, or powers described. Nor should the term be used as a shortcut for deciding which fragments belong to a supposed religious poem.
Places to read
- B 17.14–17The cosmological exposition is repeatedly called words or a tale.
- B 23.9–112The painter simile ends with a tale heard from a god.
- B 62.1–3An account of human emergence is declared neither inaccurate nor unknowing.
- B 114Truth is said to inhabit the speaker’s forthcoming words.
- B 24The arrangement of words is figured as a path among summits.
Translation in this edition
“Tale” in this translation preserves the poetic manner, but should not be heard as “mere fiction.” Conversely, the statement that a tale comes from a god is the poem's claim to authority, not an external authentication of its contents.