Season

Use in the book

Porphyry’s report of the Brahmans describes gatherings during summer and around autumn, when fruit is abundant. Hōra here locates activity within the year and its natural conditions. An appointed day is also mentioned, but the excerpt does not provide enough information to reconstruct a detailed festival calendar.

Places to read

1. I.3.56gSeasonal abundance accompanies journeys to a communal gathering.
2. I.8.42.5The seasons are defined through heat, cold, and their mixtures.
3. I.8.39.1Spring is one of four seasons offered for comparison.
4. Arith.1Summer is recognized through the heavenly signs taught by Prometheus.

Translation in this edition

“Season” fits the annual setting; do not impose the modern clock-hour meaning.

Spring

Ear is spring; poetic and dialectal forms include ēar and eiar. In I.8.39.1, lovely spring appears in a comparison of the attractions of all four seasons. The setting is a rustic dialogue about preference, so the name should not be forced into an astronomical definition or a fixed modern calendar interval.

Summer

Theros is summer. In Arith.1, Prometheus lists fruit-bearing summer among the seasons whose signs human beings learned to recognize through the stars. The seasonal word connects practical human activity with celestial observation. The excerpt’s particular wording must be followed even where it differs from the play’s more familiar transmitted text.

Autumn

Phthinopōron is autumn, associated here with plentiful fruit. I.3.56g reports visitors gathering in summer and around autumn at the site of a statue and ritual test. The seasonal indications locate the reported practice without supplying enough information to reconstruct an exact festival calendar.

Use in the book

Aëtius groups Empedocles with the Stoics: winter occurs when air predominates and something is forced upward through condensation; summer when fire predominates and something is forced downward. The missing or unclear subject is decisive. Diels identifies it as the sun, reconstructing a reference that he thinks was clear in a fuller original. Without that restoration, the compressed sentence can seem to make the air itself move upward and fire downward. The attribution must therefore be presented with its syntactic uncertainty intact. A58's solar turning and celestial tilt provide related astronomical notices, but they do not demonstrate how this air–fire account was coordinated with them. The doxographic pairing establishes that the compiler found a common proposition, not that Empedocles anticipated Stoic cosmology as a system.

Places to read

1. A 65 (testimony)Aëtius. Groups Empedocles and the Stoics in an air–fire account of winter and summer.
2. A 65 (apparatus)Diels, apparatus. Proposes the sun as the unexpressed subject of the relevant movement.
3. A 58 (testimony)Aëtius. Provides separate notices on the tilt of the heavens and the sun's turning.

Translation in this edition

The translation follows the surviving compression and should not settle a subject that the apparatus calls missing. “Winter” and “summer” are not evidence that this notice separately described spring and autumn.