From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordThe vocabulary joins rivers, expenditure from one’s own resources, mixing, and making sweet.
- In this workThe Selinus story says Empedocles conceived a plan to introduce two neighboring rivers into the harmful water and paid for it himself.
- In this editionThe passage does not name the rivers or describe construction details.
- A place to readSpecifies the two rivers, private expense, and improvement through mixing.
Meaning
The vocabulary joins rivers, expenditure from one’s own resources, mixing, and making sweet. “Sweetening” describes the reported improvement of the flow and need not specify removal of salt or a chemically defined treatment.
Use in the book
The Selinus story says Empedocles conceived a plan to introduce two neighboring rivers into the harmful water and paid for it himself. Its explanatory sequence is explicit: foul water-related conditions cause illness; altered mixing improves the streams; the epidemic ceases. That concreteness distinguishes it from a bare assertion of supernatural healing, but does not independently prove the project or its mechanism. The personal expenditure also serves a biographical purpose. Like the dowries, it presents wealth redirected toward communal benefit, helping explain the public honors that follow. The river operation should not be read as a direct demonstration of the four-root doctrine simply because both use the language of mixture. This is a civic narrative, not a quotation of a physical treatise or a technical plan.
Places to read
- A 1 §§ 69–70 (biography)Diogenes Laertius VIII 70. Specifies the two rivers, private expense, and improvement through mixing.
- A 1 §§ 71–72 (legend)Diogenes Laertius VIII 70–71. Supplies the resulting festival gratitude and divine honors.
Translation in this edition
The passage does not name the rivers or describe construction details. The edition’s “public engineering” characterization is reasonable as a description of the story, but cannot supply missing archaeological verification.