From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordSōpē names silence, while Omphaiē evokes voice or utterance.
- In EmpedoclesSilence and Utterance close the surviving catalogue of B122/123.
- In this editionThe trailing ellipsis is meaningful.
- A place to readSilence and Utterance appear at the surviving end of the list.
Meaning
Sōpē names silence, while Omphaiē evokes voice or utterance. The latter has associations with voiced pronouncement, but the line does not specify prophecy. The edition makes the opposition clear through two capitalized English abstractions.
Use in the book
Silence and Utterance close the surviving catalogue of B122/123. Its ending is open, so the pair cannot be assumed to have been the conclusion of the original list. Their juxtaposition brings language itself into a series that already includes growth, movement, and knowledge-related contrasts.
Other fragments praise holy speech, warn against overreaching language, and describe a speaker who gives healing or oracular words. Those themes make this verbal pair pertinent to Empedocles' poetics, but there is no explicit identification of Omphaiē with the Muse or of Sōpē with an initiatory vow. A reader should therefore resist turning the names into a prescribed discipline of sacred silence. The surviving evidence supplies opposed personified modes of expression, not a rule governing when disciples may speak.
Places to read
- B 122/123.7Silence and Utterance appear at the surviving end of the list.
Translation in this edition
The trailing ellipsis is meaningful. The printed pair is the last surviving one here, not demonstrably the final pair composed by Empedocles.