From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe source’s surface vocabulary includes χρωτὸς, rendered “flesh” in B76, and χροῒ, rendered “human flesh” in the clepsydra passage.
- In EmpedoclesIn B76 earth occupies the uppermost part of a shelled creature, above its flesh.
- In this edition“Skin” is an organizing English label.
- A place to readEarth is uppermost over flesh in shelled creatures.
Meaning
The source’s surface vocabulary includes χρωτὸς, rendered “flesh” in B76, and χροῒ, rendered “human flesh” in the clepsydra passage. B1002 also contains ῥινῶν, translated there as “nostrils.” The English headword gathers bodily covering and contact rather than pretending these forms are identical in sense.
Use in the book
In B76 earth occupies the uppermost part of a shelled creature, above its flesh. The point is positional: a harder earthy material can lie outside softer bodily material. The examples of shells, whelks, and tortoises keep that surface arrangement concrete.
B1002 makes the body’s outer region functionally important in a different way. Pipes of flesh reach the extremities, and close-set perforations permit aither a route while retaining blood. In the illustrative vessel, a person’s flesh closes the opening. The hand thus becomes a temporary seal; its contact allows the analogy to display what happens when a passage is closed or released.
The physiology should not be silently modernized into a description of skin pores as presently understood. The edition itself alternates between the outermost body and the nostrils in rendering the opening lines. That wording leaves a question about the extent and location of the process, even before any fuller reconstruction from other ancient reports is attempted. The secure image is a selectively permeable boundary, not an exact map of a modern organ system.
Places to read
- B 76.1–3Earth is uppermost over flesh in shelled creatures.
- B 100.1–5The body’s extremities and perforated passages regulate blood and aither.
- B 100.16–21Human flesh stops the clepsydra’s passage.
Translation in this edition
“Skin” is an organizing English label. Readers should check the local renderings: B76 says flesh, B1002 says human flesh at the hand and nostrils in its opening description. The entry does not erase those choices by imposing a single modern anatomical term.