From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThese forms designate the people of Selinus, the civic community for whom Empedocles allegedly altered a harmful river.
- In this workThe Life explains an epidemic and reproductive harm at Selinus by foul emissions from the adjacent river.
- In this editionThe commentary’s appeal to river-god coin imagery does not by itself independently verify Empedocles’ intervention.
- A place to readPlaces disease and river intervention at Selinus.
Meaning
These forms designate the people of Selinus, the civic community for whom Empedocles allegedly altered a harmful river. The local population, rather than an abstract landscape, is the beneficiary and later the source of divine honors.
Use in the book
The Life explains an epidemic and reproductive harm at Selinus by foul emissions from the adjacent river. Empedocles reportedly brings in two neighboring streams at his own expense and improves the water through mixing. A subsequent scene makes the inhabitants rise from a riverside feast and pray to him as to a god. The narrative therefore moves from environmental benefaction to religious recognition, and then, in one version, to the leap into fire meant to confirm divinity. Timaeus challenges the death complex and says Empedocles went to the Peloponnese. The civic engineering report should not simply be declared verified because it sounds practical, nor should its association with a death legend automatically make every element worthless. Its precise evidential status is a report embedded within a composite biography.
Places to read
- A 1 §§ 69–70 (biography)Diogenes Laertius VIII 70. Places disease and river intervention at Selinus.
- A 1 §§ 71–72 (legend)Diogenes Laertius VIII 70–71. Turns civic gratitude into worship and a motive for the fire-leap story.
Translation in this edition
The commentary’s appeal to river-god coin imagery does not by itself independently verify Empedocles’ intervention. Iconography compatible with river cult is not equivalent to a dated documentary record of the project.