From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordAdytum is an inner or restricted shrine; responsa are answers, especially apt for oracular replies.
- In this workLucretius grants that Empedocles and the earlier thinkers made many admirable discoveries and delivered answers as though from an inner sanctuary of the heart.
- In this editionThe simile marker tamquam should not disappear from interpretation.
- A place to readCompares inward philosophical answers with the Pythia’s and immediately qualifies them through failure of principles.
Meaning
Adytum is an inner or restricted shrine; responsa are answers, especially apt for oracular replies. Tamquam, “as though,” explicitly marks the analogy. Certa ratione introduces the contrasting authority of secure reasoning within this sacred vocabulary.
Use in the book
Lucretius grants that Empedocles and the earlier thinkers made many admirable discoveries and delivered answers as though from an inner sanctuary of the heart. Those answers are called holier and more securely reasoned than the Pythia’s utterances from Apollo’s tripod and laurel. The image therefore transfers oracular prestige to philosophical discovery while subjecting it to a different standard. It does not report Empedocles’ participation in a Delphic institution, nor identify the heart metaphor with a physiological doctrine. The next lines insist that these great thinkers nevertheless failed at the first principles of things. The praise is qualified without being simply canceled. In the wider dossier, Aristotle compares ambiguous poetic speech unfavorably to divination; Lucretius reuses the religious field to praise rational achievement. The opposed uses reveal how a shared image can express different judgments about philosophical authority.
Places to read
- Appendix I Lucretius (reception)Lucretius, On the Nature of Things I 734–741. Compares inward philosophical answers with the Pythia’s and immediately qualifies them through failure of principles.
- A 24–A 25 (polemical)2Aristotle, Rhetoric. Provides the contrasting use of divination as an analogy for misleading assent.
Translation in this edition
The simile marker tamquam should not disappear from interpretation. The edition calls the method right and the answer wrong; Lucretius’ wording supports qualified admiration, but that concise formula is modern synthesis.
Source note
The Latin temple image is metaphorical even though the paragraph compares it with a named cultic office and its objects. Keeping the grammatical simile visible prevents a false biographical inference.