Seed

Use in the book

In the Timaeus excerpt, marrow extending from the head through the neck and spine is identified with what the earlier account called seed. A passage is opened between it and the bodily outlet; the ensouled marrow’s breathing then produces a desire for outflow and generation. The passage combines anatomical description, vital movement, and desire within one ancient account.

Places to read

1. I.47.1.3Marrow is connected with seed and the desire to procreate.
2. I.49.39.3Creative sowing links souls with their appointed recipients.

Translation in this edition

“Seed” retains the source’s material vocabulary. It should not be silently replaced with a modern anatomical identification that the excerpt does not supply.

The sowing of souls

Spora is sowing or seed sown. In I.49.39.3 the creative sowing of souls is differentiated according to divine acts of making and the recipients allotted to the souls. The agricultural image explains ordered placement and generation. It should not turn souls into literal botanical seeds or imply creation from nothing.

Use in the book

The report describes hollow portions of one contribution fitting dense portions of the other. A resulting mixture can therefore possess a texture different from either starting material. The comparison is with metal hardened by the addition of tin. The edition’s note identifies Aristotle’s context as the sterility of mules; the argument is not an unqualified account of every successful conception. Its explanatory goal is to show how a generative mixture can become unsuitable for further generation.

This passage connects reproduction with the wider Empedoclean importance of fit, proportion, and texture. Bone, blood, and flesh also arise through distinctive combinations. In the seed report, however, complementary shape and density are foregrounded rather than a numerical recipe of the roots. The body produced or affected by a mixture need not simply average the properties of its sources.

B63, a genuine verse fragment, says that the formation of the limbs is divided and begins to locate one part in the man. It offers a limited point of contact for the dual contribution reported in B92. Because the rest of B63 is missing, it should not be expanded into a detailed doctrine about which parent supplies each organ or characteristic. Theon’s seven-week report concerns embryonic completion, a different question again.

Places to read

1. B 92 (report)Aristotle reports a dense mixture produced from two soft seeds and an analogy with tin and bronze.
2. B 92 (editorial discussion)The local note identifies mule sterility as the question being explained.
3. B 63A broken verse concerns the divided formation of limbs.
4. B 153a (report)The seven-week statement is a later report about embryonic completion.

Translation in this edition

B92 is an exception within the B-series: its Greek is a testimonium in prose. Its “seed” vocabulary cannot automatically be assigned to Empedocles' own wording, and its mule context should not be erased by quoting only the physical analogy.

Use in the book

Seed is the material through which A8123 explains multiple births, abnormal formation, likeness, and some differences of sex. Aëtius lists excess, deficiency, disturbed movement, excessive division, and deviation as causes of unusual births. Twins and triplets are assigned to excess and splitting. Resemblance follows the predominance of generative seeds, while dissimilarity is associated with heat evaporating from seed. Censorinus provides a more elaborate scheme in which the thermal relation of the parents' seeds affects both sex and resemblance, but it differs from Aristotle's womb-centred explanation. The language of two parental contributions is consequently important historical evidence without being an anticipation of Mendelian inheritance. Seed is also a moving and spatially directed material: the mule notice imagines it failing to strike or enter an obstructive womb. At A722, condensed nourishment and excitement of seminal motion accompany the fourth kind of generation. These testimonies collectively give reproductive material quantity, condition, movement, and relation causal roles, although no single excerpt organizes all four into a complete system.

Places to read

1. A 81 (testimony)23Aëtius. Uses seed quantity, division, motion, predominance, and loss of heat to explain reproductive outcomes.
2. A 81 (testimony)23Censorinus, On the Birthday. Describes relative heat in both parents' seeds and its alleged consequences.
3. A 82 (testimony)Aëtius. Gives seed a directed route into the womb that is allegedly blocked in mules.
4. A 72 (testimony)2Aëtius. Associates generation through one another with nourishment and seminal excitation.

Translation in this edition

Spermatikoi gonoi is translated generative seeds, but the compressed phrase does not specify modern units of heredity. The various mechanisms belong to witnesses of unequal reliability; the Censorinus twins passage is explicitly doubted in the apparatus.