From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordLeptos means fine or thin; kouphos means light.
- In this workTheophrastus reports that the greatest amount of odour flows from fine and light things.
- In this edition“Light” here is an adjective of bodies, not phōs, visual light.
- A place to readAssociates abundant odour with fine and light bodies.
Meaning
Leptos means fine or thin; kouphos means light. The paired descriptions concern bodies from which odour is said to flow. They do not by themselves identify a modern particle size, mass, or volatility.
Use in the book
Theophrastus reports that the greatest amount of odour flows from fine and light things. The two qualities suggest readiness for the movement presupposed by effluence, but the text does not explicitly derive one quality from the other. They should therefore not be collapsed into a single modern property.
At §22 the critic isolates lightness for attack: air and fire are lightest yet produce no perception of odour. Something must also have odour in it. The argument distinguishes a body's physical aptitude for movement from the sensible character supposedly carried by that movement. It does not prove that Empedocles regarded every fine or light body as fragrant, since the exact universal formulation is mediated by the critic. The entry concerns that local inferential dispute, leaving general accounts of light and heavy bodies to the physical lexicon.
Places to read
- A 86 § 9 (testimony)Theophrastus, On the Senses 9. Associates abundant odour with fine and light bodies.
- A 86 §§ 22–23 (polemical)Theophrastus, On the Senses 22. Uses odourless air and fire to challenge lightness as sufficient.
Translation in this edition
“Light” here is an adjective of bodies, not phōs, visual light. Keeping the Greek forms visible prevents an especially easy confusion between two unrelated English uses.