From the book
Stobaeus, Volume I
John Stobaeus · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Purification
κάθαρσις; καθαρός
katharsis; katharosKatharsis names purification.
Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordKatharsis names purification.
- In StobaeusIamblichus asks who carries out the three processes and reports that most Pythagoreans and Platonists assign them to individual souls.
- In this edition“Purification” preserves the term’s place in the argument.
- A place to beginJudgment, punishment, and purification are distinguished and their agents questioned.
- English renderings
- purification
Meaning
Katharsis names purification. In the discussion of souls its meaning emerges through distinctions among judgment, punishment, and purification, rather than through a single general metaphor of washing.
Use in the book
Iamblichus asks who carries out the three processes and reports that most Pythagoreans and Platonists assign them to individual souls. The discussion presents and compares positions; it does not establish that every author quoted by Stobaeus accepts the same process after death.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
“Purification” preserves the term’s place in the argument. It is kept distinct from the punishment or requital named by dikē in the same sentence.
The Platonists
The reported agreement of “most” Pythagoreans and Platonists is qualified wording. The lexicon retains that qualification instead of converting it into a unanimous school doctrine.
Pure and purely
Katharos means pure or clean; katharōs means purely. The report at I.1.29b.4 describes pure participants sharing purely in divine souls. This repeated vocabulary concerns the participants’ condition as well as their manner of participation. The surrounding account is textually damaged, so its local language of purity should not be made to support an elaborately reconstructed ritual system.
Source note
Wachsmuth, volume I, printed pp. 35–36, 454. The introductory words “each of these things” look back into a larger discussion. The note in the bilingual edition cautions against restricting their reference to the immediately preceding excerpt.
From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Purification of soul
ex animi purgamento; purgamento
Purgamentum belongs to the Latin family of cleansing or purgation.
Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordPurgamentum belongs to the Latin family of cleansing or purgation.
- In this workCaelius Aurelianus attributes to followers of Empedocles a distinction between this purgative condition and mental derangement arising from a bodily cause or disorder.
- In this editionThe translation “purification of the soul” is interpretive Latin-to-English wording, not proof that the lost source used katharmos.
- A place to readReports a kind of condition arising ex animi purgamento among followers of Empedocles.
Meaning
Purgamentum belongs to the Latin family of cleansing or purgation. In this sentence ex animi purgamento is rendered “from a purification of the soul.” The exact conceptual relation between a purge, what is purged, and a purifying experience is not explained by the excerpt.
Use in the book
Caelius Aurelianus attributes to followers of Empedocles a distinction between this purgative condition and mental derangement arising from a bodily cause or disorder. The writer then selects the bodily kind for his medical treatment. That selection makes the other kind visible without developing its mechanism or status.
The phrase may reasonably be compared with wider Empedoclean purification traditions, but the comparison has limits. The sentence neither prints the Greek title Katharmoi nor names a poem, a medical treatise, a ritual procedure, or a doctrine of transmigration. Purgamentum is not automatically an explicit Latin citation of a book title. The volume's note claiming that the testimony names the Purifications and medical writings in one sentence therefore misdescribes the printed evidence. What is actually attested is a reported distinction involving soul-purgation among later followers. Preserving that narrower result makes the testimony more, not less, useful by keeping its remarkable content apart from an unsupported bibliographic conclusion.
Places to read
- A 98 (testimony)Caelius Aurelianus, On Chronic Diseases. Reports a kind of condition arising ex animi purgamento among followers of Empedocles.
Translation in this edition
The translation “purification of the soul” is interpretive Latin-to-English wording, not proof that the lost source used katharmos. No original Greek form should be reconstructed here merely from the title of the companion poem.