From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordTrachy is rough; leion is smooth.
- In this workAt §20 the critic asks how rough and smooth can be judged by effluence or by fitting into pores.
- In this editionThe passage is a question posed by Theophrastus.
- A place to readUses rough and smooth to test the adequacy of effluence and fit.
Meaning
Trachy is rough; leion is smooth. Their neuter forms denote tactile qualities or things characterized by them. The pair is introduced as a test case in Theophrastus's argument, not as an exhaustive list of tactile opposites attributed to Empedocles.
Use in the book
At §20 the critic asks how rough and smooth can be judged by effluence or by fitting into pores. The force of the question is that a general transmission mechanism still needs to explain why the transmitted item yields this particular tactile difference. Showing that something arrives or fits is not yet an account of roughness or smoothness being discerned.
This is a more specific objection than the earlier statement that touch lacks a separately described mechanism. It identifies qualities for which the model's explanatory application is obscure. The roughness in Aëtius's catarrh notice is lexically related but plays a different role: there it impedes smell rather than being the object to be perceived. The two uses should be connected without conflating a tactile property with a respiratory condition.
Places to read
- A 86 §§ 20–21 (polemical)2Theophrastus, On the Senses 20. Uses rough and smooth to test the adequacy of effluence and fit.
- A 94 (testimony)Aëtius. Uses related roughness vocabulary in an account of impaired smell, not tactile recognition.
Translation in this edition
The passage is a question posed by Theophrastus. It does not preserve Empedocles' answer, so reconstructing emitted “roughness particles” or surface-shape detectors would go beyond the supplied evidence.