Sexual differentiation

Use in the book

B62 places the absence of the male member beside the absence of articulated limbs and voice. Sexual organization is thus something that appears within the formation of familiar human bodies. B63 then describes the formation or nature of the limbs as divided, with one part in “the man's” before the quotation breaks off. It supports a divided contribution to reproduction but does not on its own preserve a full account of paternal and maternal inheritance.

The most explicit causal statements concern temperature. B65 says that some poured material becomes women after encountering cold; the opposed male-and-heat clause is supplied editorially. B67 independently associates the male-bearing belly with a warmer region and links this with bodily darkness and greater hairiness. These are ancient explanatory claims, not reliable tests of fetal sex or modern medical propositions.

The role of desire appears alongside this physiology. B64 has Desire arriving through sight and reminding its recipient, while B66 names Aphrodite’s cloven meadows. Neither broken excerpt can safely supply every missing step between sight, intercourse, conception, and embryonic formation. Together they show that the account embraces both bodily conditions and the experience that draws differentiated creatures toward one another.

The modern introduction makes sexual reproduction the fourth phase of zoogony. That is a reconstruction informed by reports not printed as continuous verse. The secure local evidence concerns differentiation, divided generative contribution, thermal conditions, and erotic attraction; the exact narrative history joining those topics is not recovered merely by reading consecutive B-numbers.

Places to read

1. B 62.7–8The early forms have no male member.
2. B 63The formation of limbs is divided; the excerpt ends after naming the male side.
3. B 65Cold accompanies the production of women; the male-and-heat counterpart is supplied.
4. B 67The warmer male-bearing belly is associated with darkness and hairiness.
5. B 64Desire acts by sight in a separate short fragment.

Translation in this edition

The printed translation’s “nature” in B63 should not automatically become a theory of immutable sexual essence. The phrase occurs in a fragment about bodily generation, and its continuation is lost. The supplements in B65 must remain visible in any summary.

Use in the book

A8123 preserves several mechanisms that should remain distinct. Aristotle twice assigns Empedocles a womb-temperature explanation: male offspring develop in a hot womb, female in a cold one, with menstrual flow responsible for the local conditions. He objects that this treats a major anatomical difference too simply. Aëtius gives a related thermal geography for the first earthborn sexes: males arise preferentially east and south, females north. Censorinus instead groups Empedocles with Anaxagoras in assigning male generation to seed from right-hand parts and female generation to left-hand parts, then gives a complicated scheme of relative parental heat and resemblance. His twins notice adds different temperatures of occupied locations. These reports may share thermal and spatial oppositions, but they do not amount to one transparently consistent system. The apparatus even doubts whether the twins passage derives from Empedocles himself. A702's plant-sex account is another distinct use: plants contain male and female principles through proportionate mixture. That does not permit a direct transfer of the human womb explanation to plants.

Places to read

1. A 81 (polemical)23Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals, two notices. Attributes sex differentiation to womb temperature and criticizes the account.
2. A 81 (testimony)23Aëtius, first notice. Extends the thermal distinction to the geographical origin of earthborn males and females.
3. A 81 (testimony)23Censorinus, On the Birthday. Gives right/left and parental-temperature accounts, plus a doubtful notice about twins.
4. A 70 (testimony)2Aëtius; Nicolaus of Damascus, On Plants. Attribute a mixed male and female constitution to plants.

Translation in this edition

The dossier records historical theories, not accurate advice for influencing a child's sex. Agreement in the broad opposition of heat and cold does not justify erasing the different causal sites: womb, parental seed, geographical region, and local embryonic position.