From the book
Empedocles’ Complete Fragments, Volume I
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordThe whelks of B76 are described as stony-skinned.
- In EmpedoclesWhelks follow the heavy-backed shells in an argument about the placement of earth on the outer side of flesh.
- In this editionThe translation identifies κήρυκες as whelks.
- A place to readWhelks, qualified as stony-skinned, supplement the shell example.
Meaning
The whelks of B76 are described as stony-skinned. The adjective makes their hard exterior intelligible through stone-like texture, while the noun is the animal-name given by this edition. The fragment does not provide a zoological classification beyond its example.
Use in the book
Whelks follow the heavy-backed shells in an argument about the placement of earth on the outer side of flesh. They thus sharpen an already concrete claim: an animal’s exterior can have the hardness of earth while flesh lies beneath. The compound “stony-skinned” fuses the tactile properties of a material with the anatomical place it occupies.
The diction should not be mistaken for a modern mineralogical identification. It does not specify calcium compounds or a process of shell secretion. What it securely gives is a material and spatial analogy within Empedocles' root-based account: the harder earthly character is perceptible on the outside.
The adjacent tortoise broadens the comparison to a different kind of creature. That juxtaposition makes the shared bodily arrangement more important than membership in a narrowly defined animal class. The lexical detail is therefore worth retaining independently even though the general argument belongs under shells: the animal-name and its stone-skin epithet show exactly how the physical example is made vivid.
Places to read
- B 76.3Whelks, qualified as stony-skinned, supplement the shell example.
Translation in this edition
The translation identifies κήρυκες as whelks. A reader should not infer a precise modern species from this English convenience, or take “stony” as a claim that the exterior is literally an ordinary rock.