Night-born shoots · Lexicon

From the book

Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I

Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordThe “night-born shoots” of B62 are shoots associated with men and women, not a separate botanical species.
In EmpedoclesEmpedocles announces that he will explain how separating fire brought these shoots upward.
In this editionThe edition’s “night-born” is a compact interpretive rendering.
A place to readThe poet announces the upward emergence of human shoots and then describes whole-natured forms.

Meaning

The “night-born shoots” of B62 are shoots associated with men and women, not a separate botanical species. Ὅρπηκας is growth-language transferred to the first emergence of human forms. The adjective rendered “night-born” contributes darkness or nocturnal emergence without a surviving explanation of its precise physical cause.

Use in the book

Empedocles announces that he will explain how separating fire brought these shoots upward. The next lines describe whole-natured forms rising from the earth. Read together, the images make human generation visibly continuous with sprouting: a hidden beginning pushes up from earth before familiar human distinctions appear. The same poem can describe neckless heads as sprouting and trees as bearing eggs, so the movement between botanical and animal vocabularies is systematic rather than exceptional.

The text nevertheless does not equate a human form with an ordinary seedling in every respect. These forms have shares of water and heat, and their upward movement is attributed to fire’s search for its like. The plant image makes emergence intelligible while the constituent account specifies the process. A lexicon should preserve both levels.

“Night-born” does not establish that darkness is itself a generative root or that the passage concerns reincarnation during sleep. Nothing of that sort appears in the fragment. Its interpretive value lies in the image of obscure beginnings becoming emergent form.

Places to read

B 62.1–6The poet announces the upward emergence of human shoots and then describes whole-natured forms.
B 57Heads also receive the verb of sprouting.
B 79The description of olives as eggs transfers reproductive language in the opposite direction.

Translation in this edition

The edition’s “night-born” is a compact interpretive rendering. Since the preserved excerpt does not explain the adjective, it is preferable to retain it rather than invent a story of a particular night or gestational season.