From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe fragment speaks of “fragments of the limbs of beasts” investigated with nostrils.
- In EmpedoclesThe scene gives olfaction a material pathway.
- In this editionThe word translated “living” is supplied in angle brackets.
- A place to readThe complete fragment describes investigation by nostrils of traces left from beasts’ feet in grass.
Meaning
The fragment speaks of “fragments of the limbs of beasts” investigated with nostrils. Its final words place the traces in soft grass, where the beasts have left them through their feet. The perceiving subject is not named in the surviving excerpt.
Use in the book
The scene gives olfaction a material pathway. A moving animal leaves something of its body behind, and another creature can use those remains as evidence of its passage. The language of investigation is active: the nostrils are not simply struck by an unexplained smell but participate in a search.
The bodily fragments need not be imagined as visibly severed pieces of limb. The scale is not specified, but their use in scent-tracking encourages the interpretation of small residues. This makes the passage relevant to effluences without requiring the word “particle” as a verbatim ancient description. The grass also matters: the trace is deposited in an intervening surface, so the scene is more particular than an abstract claim that objects emit continuously into open air.
It is tempting to supply a hunting dog as the subject. The book’s printed Greek, translation, and local citation do not name one. Retaining the anonymous tracker respects the fragmentary evidence while leaving its recognizable behavioural setting vivid. The exact point of perception is the nostrils' encounter with what the feet have left, not an unsupported taxonomy of especially keen-smelling animals.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
The word translated “living” is supplied in angle brackets. It should not become the basis of an elaborate distinction between living and dead emissions. Neither the named species of tracker nor a precise particle size is preserved.