Root

Use in the book

The Pythagorean oath calls the tetractys the source and root of ever-flowing nature. In its arithmetic setting, the first four numbers yield ten through their sum. “Root” thus expresses foundational and productive importance; it is not the modern mathematical operation of extracting a square root.

Places to read

1. I.10.12.11The tetractys is praised as nature’s source and root.

Translation in this edition

“Root” preserves the image without replacing it with the more abstract “principle.”

Use in the book

The secure starting points should be separated from the disputed ones. B 6 names four roots, Zeus, Hera, Aidoneus, and Nestis. B 172 names fire, water, earth, and the height of air, and then Strife and Love. These two lists support the familiar account of four permanent constituents whose combinations constitute the visible world. They do not, by themselves, supply a name-by-name concordance between every god and every constituent. Nestis is the least disputed identification, because she moistens the mortal spring with tears and reappears as an ingredient in bone. The other assignments require interpretation or testimony beyond B 6. The introduction records conflicting ancient identifications of Hera and Aidoneus and a modern alternative which also reassigns Zeus. None should be concealed in a translation.

The roots are permanent through the making and unmaking of particular things. B 172 does not say that all observable objects survive unchanged. It says that these very constituents remain, running through one another, while their combinations become different things. B 212 makes the contrast especially clear: trees, humans, animals, and long-lived gods derive from the same sources, but blending changes how they look. B 232's painters use differing quantities of existing pigments to produce many forms. This analogy concerns multiplicity from a limited stock; it is not proof that the roots themselves are pigments, particles of one uniform size, or chemical elements in the modern sense.

The roots also have differentiated characters and offices. Equality and equal age do not erase the contrast between warming fire, chilling rain, and solid earth. Nor does the doctrine reduce every root to one basic substance: earth can increase earth and aither aither, while the mixture which constitutes blood brings distinct ingredients together in approximately equal measures. Love and Strife affect how the roots meet, separate, and dominate in turn. Their inclusion beside the four in B 172 is important, but does not turn the announced four roots into a list of six roots. The poem can coordinate constituents and powers without supplying the later categories of material and efficient cause.

Divine vocabulary is integral to this account. B 98 places Earth, Hephaestus, rain, and shining aither in Cypris' harbours; B 109 names divine aither and recognises love by love. These usages prevent a simple split between a literal physical doctrine and disposable mythological decoration. Yet names vary with setting, and not every occurrence of Zeus, Hades, sun, or sea is a substitution cipher for a root. The roots enter cosmology, embodied life, perception, and the exile narrative together, without the surviving text fully explaining how those domains fit.

The important historical limit is equally clear. Empedocles precedes Plato. Calling the roots “elements” can be a useful modern shorthand, but it must not import the later technical vocabulary or the geometrical construction of bodies associated with Plato. This book's deliberate “roots” preserves the poet's own growth-language and allows his divine names to remain genuinely interpretive questions.

Places to read

1. B 6The explicit fourfold announcement and divine-name list; no individual root-to-god identifications are supplied in the three lines.
2. B 17.18–352The physical list, the two opposed powers, equality, distinct offices, and the persistence of the constituents across changing compounds.
3. B 21.3–142Visible qualities and the catalogue of living things and gods show what mixture makes from the persistent sources.
4. B 232The painter analogy explains diversity through different proportions of existing ingredients.
5. B 7The word “roots” is supplied editorially; the surviving adjective is “ungenerated.”
6. Introduction V (editorial discussion)The competing divine mappings and the distinction from later element-language are modern explanatory apparatus.

Translation in this edition

The translation consistently chooses “roots,” not “elements.” Its introduction's reconstruction is helpful context, but must not be mistaken for additional Empedoclean verses. In particular, B 7 does not independently transmit a complete statement “the roots are ungenerated”: the noun is bracketed. The headings and B-number order likewise do not establish where B 6 originally stood relative to B 172.

Use in the book

Theophrastus says that Empedocles assigns earth to roots and aether to shoots, separating their generative contributions. Aristotle criticizes the associated explanation that plants take root downward because earth naturally moves in that direction, while their upward growth follows fire. Both witnesses press the need to explain the unity of growth rather than distributing it between divergent material tendencies. Their agreement supports an attributed contrast between root and shoot growth. It does not settle whether “aether” and “fire” are interchangeable in this precise botanical account or whether the witnesses have translated it into their own frameworks. Aëtius' description of the plant as part of the earth, like an embryo within a womb, adds an organic analogy that should not be discarded merely because the critics emphasize opposed motion.

Places to read

1. A 70 (polemical)2Theophrastus, On the Causes of Plants. Objects to assigning earth to roots and aether to shoots.
2. A 70 (polemical)2Aristotle, On the Soul. Criticizes downward rooting through the natural movement of earth.
3. A 70 (testimony)2Aëtius. Calls growing plants parts of earth by comparison with embryos and womb.

Translation in this edition

The natural-motion terminology comes through Aristotle. It cannot by itself establish that Empedocles endorsed Aristotle's developed doctrine of natural places. “Botanical” in the title prevents confusion with the cosmological Roots article.

Use in the book

The four are fire, air, water and earth in the principal reports. Aristotle says that they persist and change only in the quantities combined into one or separated out of one; Simplicius, transmitting Theophrastus, likewise calls them eternal. These statements concern the persistence of constituents, not the permanence of the familiar bodies made from them. Their significance becomes clearer when contrasted with A52, where Aristotle exempts the elements, but nothing else, from perishability.

The divine nomenclature is integral to the evidence. The excerpt of B6 introduced at A332 is followed by rival explanations of Zeus, Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis. Agreement that four roots are named does not entail agreement about every name: the Hera/Aidoneus assignments are reversed in different reports. Nor is “four roots plus two forces” a neutral quotation of a six-item Empedoclean list. Simplicius’ total of six principles classifies the four corporeal constituents and the two movers in a later explanatory scheme.

The strongest difficulty concerns what happens in the Sphairos. Philoponus alleges that the roots lose their qualities there; Aristotle’s analysis of mixture instead stresses that they remain preserved. These are competing interpretative pressures, not a continuous descriptive account. The lexicon therefore uses “root” for the enduring constituent without deciding in advance whether its identity means visible qualitative distinctness, separate particles, or something else in the perfectly unified state.

Places to read

1. A 28 (testimony)Aristotle, Metaphysics A 3; Simplicius, Physics 25,21, from Theophrastus. Both reports make the four enduring constituents; the editorial note supplies the explicit lexical contrast between roots and elements.
2. A 33 (testimony)2Aëtius I 3,20; Homeric Allegories, in Stobaeus; Hippolytus, Refutatio VII 29. The notices interpret the divine names attached to the four, but disagree over Hera and Aidoneus.
3. A 41 (polemical)Philoponus, In De generatione et corruptione 19,3 Vitelli. The alleged qualitylessness of the Sphairos puts the permanence of the roots under critical pressure.

Translation in this edition

The source prints B6 in abbreviated form; its full wording must not be reconstructed as if quoted here. “Elements” in the translations often represents a witness’s terminology rather than Empedocles’ own. Root-language also does not establish modern chemical elements.