From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordDēris means strife or contention, and Eris belongs to the same field of quarrelling.
- In EmpedoclesBloody Quarrel appears beside grave-eyed Harmony in B122/123.
- In this editionDēris, Eris, and Neikos are not interchangeable spellings.
- A place to readBloody Quarrel is paired with grave-eyed Harmony.
Meaning
Dēris means strife or contention, and Eris belongs to the same field of quarrelling. They are lexically distinct from Neikos, the principal cosmic name translated “Strife.” The translation's “Quarrel” and “Quarrels” lets related imagery remain recognizable without flattening the words into a single proper name.
Use in the book
Bloody Quarrel appears beside grave-eyed Harmony in B122/123. That adjacency gives the clearest pair of conflict and fitting-together in the personification catalogue. B27a says that no faction or unseemly quarrel is present in the divine body's limbs. The absence of contention corresponds to an undivided condition, but the fragment does not name the speaker or describe a civic institution.
B20 applies the plural Erides to the cutting apart of living limbs. It contrasts their action with Love's gathering of the body at its flourishing peak. B124 laments the mortal race's birth from strifes and groanings, again making conflict a condition of suffering. Across these places, contention belongs simultaneously to bodily separation and ethically charged experience. The overlap with Neikos is functional and poetic; the texts do not require several independent cosmic principles for each near-synonym.
Places to read
- B 122/123.2Bloody Quarrel is paired with grave-eyed Harmony.
- B 27aQuarrel and faction are absent from the divine limbs.
- B 20.1–5Wicked Quarrels cut apart bodily limbs.
- B 124Mortals are lamented as born from strifes and groanings.
Translation in this edition
Dēris, Eris, and Neikos are not interchangeable spellings. This article keeps the first two as a lexical family of contention while directing the central two-power doctrine to Strife.