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Presocratic philosophy

Empedocles

Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁ Ἀκραγαντῖνος

c. 494 BCE – c. 434 BCEHistorically documented person

Philosopher, physician and politician of Acragas in Sicily (c. 494–434 BCE), author of two hexameter poems, On Nature and the Purifications, of which some five hundred lines and the Strasbourg papyrus survive. He taught that everything is made of four eternal roots, mixed by Love and separated by Strife, and that the soul, exiled for shed blood, transmigrates through every living form. The legend of his leap into Etna made him a literary figure.

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Empédocles, grabado de 1580

Empédocles, grabado de 1580 · CC BY 4.0

In their words

«For straitened are the powers that are spread over their bodily parts.»

DK 31 B2.1, en Sexto Empírico, Contra los matemáticos VII 123. Griego: texto de Fairbanks (1898), basado en la edición de Stein; numeración Diels-Kranz. Inglés: John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (1908). Español: traducción propia.

On Nature — Empedocles

Their central idea

The four roots (rhizomata): Empedocles accepts with Parmenides that nothing comes from what is not or is annihilated, but he does not give up explaining change.

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Biography

5 min read

The philosopher who called himself a god

No Presocratic has left as many lines as Empedocles: nearly five hundred, to which the Strasbourg papyrus added several dozen more in 1999. Like Parmenides he wrote in hexameters, and he was at once physicist, physician, orator, democratic politician, prophet of purity and wonder-worker. His theory of the four "roots"—fire, air, water and earth—moved by Love and Strife dominated European science for two thousand years; his announcement that he was "an immortal god, no longer a mortal" and the legend of his leap into Etna made him one of the most novelistic figures of antiquity. Aristotle called him the inventor of rhetoric and at the same time complained that he had nothing of the poet but the metre.

Acragas

He was born at Acragas, today's Agrigento, the richest city of Greek Sicily, whose Doric temples still dominate the valley. His father was called Meton, and his grandfather, also Empedocles, won the horse race at Olympia in 496 BCE, according to Aristotle as cited by Eratosthenes. Apollodorus fixed his prime in 444–443 BCE, the year Thurii was founded, which Glaucus of Rhegium says he visited; Aristotle stated that he died at sixty. Burnet summed up what can be known: he was a boy under the tyrant Theron, he was active at Acragas after 472, when Theron's son Thrasydaeus fell and the city recovered free government, and he died after 444. Hence the usual dates, around 494–434 BCE.

The democrat

The Sicilian historian Timaeus, writing a century and a half later from local traditions, related that his political career began at a banquet: a magistrate behaved like an apprentice tyrant and Empedocles, the next day, brought him to court and had him condemned to death. He also opposed the council's granting the physician Acron a plot for his father's tomb, and he dissolved the assembly of the Thousand, perhaps an oligarchic association. Aristotle added that he refused the kingship when it was offered to him. According to Timaeus, the descendants of his enemies later prevented his return, and Empedocles died in exile in the Peloponnese.

Physician, orator and magician

Galen placed him, with Philistion and Pausanias, at the origin of the Italian medical school, rival to those of Cos and Cnidus. His pupil Gorgias of Leontini, the great sophist, said according to Satyrus that he had seen him practise magic; Heraclides of Pontus told how he kept alive for thirty days a woman without breath or pulse. Timaeus called him "the wind-stopper" for hanging up ass-skins to check the etesian winds, and others credited him with draining the marshes of Selinus. Burnet observed that almost all these marvels are deduced from his own verses, in which he promises his pupil Pausanias remedies against old age, power over winds and rain and even the ability to bring a dead man back from Hades.

Two poems

Diogenes Laertius assigns to his two great poems, On Nature and the Purifications, some five thousand lines. The first, dedicated to Pausanias, sets out a physics: nothing is born or dies; four eternal roots, to which he gives divine names—Zeus, Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis—are only mixed and separated, under the alternating action of Love, which unites, and Strife, which separates. The cosmos thus swings between the perfect unity of the Sphere and total dispersion, and in the intermediate phases living beings arise, first as loose limbs—heads without necks, arms without shoulders—that combine at random. The second poem, addressed to his fellow citizens of Acragas, speaks of a daimon banished for thirty thousand seasons for having shed blood, who is reborn in every mortal form; hence the prohibition on eating meat and sacrificing animals.

For a century modern scholarship debated whether the two poems were compatible—a mechanistic physicist and a religious prophet—or whether they were really one. Brad Inwood and others even proposed that they formed a single work; Catherine Osborne stressed the continuity between physics and religion.

The Strasbourg papyrus

In 1904 the National and University Library of Strasbourg acquired in Egypt, from Panopolis (Akhmim), some papyrus fragments that remained unidentified for ninety years. In 1994 the papyrologist Alain Martin recognised in them lines of Empedocles, and in 1999 he published them with Oliver Primavesi. Copied in the late first century CE, they contain the remains of some seventy-four lines, partly unknown, from the first book of the physics, with a mark indicating line three hundred. The find showed that in that book the cosmic cycle appeared alongside laments for the "pitiless day" on which flesh was eaten—that is, that physics and the doctrine of guilt were more intertwined than had been thought.

Etna and the other deaths

Diogenes Laertius collects incompatible versions of his end. Heraclides of Pontus said that after a sacrifice he vanished at night; a servant heard a voice calling him and saw a light in the sky, and Pausanias ordered him honoured as a god. Hippobotus added that he threw himself into the crater of Etna to be thought immortal, but the volcano cast back one of his bronze sandals. Timaeus denied it: Empedocles went to the Peloponnese and never returned. Neanthes said he died from a fall from his chariot, and others that he hanged himself. Horace fixed the Etna version for posterity. Ava Chitwood has shown that, as with Heraclitus, these deaths were manufactured from his poems: the man who proclaimed himself an immortal god and made fire a root of the world had to die deified or consumed by fire.

Legacy

Aristotle adopted his four elements, adding ether, and with them came the medicine of the four humours; Plato alluded to the "Sicilian muses", and Lucretius praised him as the greatest of Sicily's sons. In modern times Hölderlin wrote, without finishing it, the tragedy The Death of Empedocles (1797–1800); Matthew Arnold, the dramatic poem Empedocles on Etna (1852); and Freud recognised in Love and Strife a precedent for his opposition between Eros and the death drive. He remains the clearest example that, at its origins, Greek philosophy did not separate science, poetry and salvation.

Sources: Diógenes Laercio. Vidas y opiniones de los filósofos ilustres VIII 51–77 (Empédocles), s. III d. C. Trad. inglesa de C. D. Yonge, Bohn, Londres, 1853 (Project Gutenberg n.º 57342); trad. inglesa de R. D. Hicks, Loeb, 1925 (Wikisource). · Diels, Hermann y Kranz, Walther. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6.ª ed. Weidmann, Berlín, 1951–1952, cap. 31 (Empedokles), A (testimonios) y B 1–154. · Kirk, G. S., Raven, J. E. y Schofield, M. The Presocratic Philosophers, 2.ª ed. Cambridge University Press, 1983, cap. X (Empedocles of Acragas). Trad. esp. de Jesús García Fernández, Gredos, 1987. · Burnet, John. Early Greek Philosophy, 2.ª ed. A. and C. Black, Londres, 1908, cap. V (Empedokles of Akragas), §§ 98–105 y traducción de los fragmentos (Project Gutenberg n.º 67097). · Martin, Alain y Primavesi, Oliver. L'Empédocle de Strasbourg (P. Strasb. gr. Inv. 1665–1666): introduction, édition et commentaire. Walter de Gruyter / Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg, Berlín, Nueva York y Estrasburgo, 1999.

Timeline

A life, year by year

Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.

  1. 496 BCE

    His grandfather's Olympic victory

    His grandfather Empedocles wins the horse race at the 71st Olympiad (496 BCE), according to Eratosthenes citing Aristotle (Diogenes Laertius VIII 51). Years BCE are expressed as negative numbers.

    Probable

  2. c. 494 BCE · age 0

    Birth

    Born at Acragas, son of Meton, of a wealthy and distinguished family. The date is inferred from his death at sixty (Aristotle) and his activity after 472; Wikidata records 494, 492 and 490.

    Probable

  3. c. 471 BCE · age 23

    Fall of Thrasydaeus and free government

    After Theron's death (472 BCE), his son Thrasydaeus is defeated by Hieron of Syracuse and expelled; Acragas recovers a free government in which Empedocles will be a democratic leader.

    Documented

  4. c. 460 BCE

    Dissolution of the assembly of the Thousand

    According to Timaeus (in Diogenes Laertius VIII 64–66), he prosecutes two magistrates with tyrannical airs, opposes Acron's funerary privilege and dissolves the assembly of the Thousand. He refuses the kingship offered to him (Aristotle). Dates unknown.

    Tradition

  5. c. 450 BCE

    Composition of the poems

    He composes On Nature, dedicated to Pausanias, and the Purifications, addressed to the people of Acragas. The date and order of composition are conjectural.

    Disputed

  6. 444 BCE

    Visit to Thurii

    Glaucus of Rhegium relates that he came to Thurii shortly after its foundation (444–443 BCE); Apollodorus fixed his prime in that year.

    Probable

  7. c. 440 BCE

    Exile

    According to Timaeus, the descendants of his enemies oppose his return to Acragas and he withdraws to the Peloponnese. Date unknown.

    Tradition

  8. c. 434 BCE · age 60

    Death

    Dies at about sixty (Aristotle in Diogenes Laertius VIII 52 and 74). The versions of the manner and place—vanishing after a sacrifice, leaping into Etna, falling from his chariot, dying in the Peloponnese—are contradictory.

    Disputed

  9. 427 BCE

    Gorgias in Athens

    His pupil Gorgias of Leontini comes to Athens as ambassador and dazzles with an artistic prose that, according to Diels, owed much to Empedocles' style.

    Documented

  10. c. 90 BCE

    Copy of the Strasbourg papyrus

    A scribe copies the first book of Empedocles' physics on a roll; its remains, reused in a funerary ornament, are the only direct witness to the poem.

    Documented

  11. c. 55 BCE

    Lucretius praises him

    In De rerum natura (I 716–733) Lucretius celebrates Empedocles as the most admirable man Sicily produced, though he criticises his theory of elements.

    Documented

  12. c. 1798

    Hölderlin's Death of Empedocles

    Friedrich Hölderlin writes three unfinished versions of the tragedy Der Tod des Empedokles (1797–1800).

    Documented

  13. 1852

    Matthew Arnold's Empedocles on Etna

    Matthew Arnold publishes the dramatic poem Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems.

    Documented

  14. 1994

    Identification of the papyrus

    Alain Martin identifies as lines of Empedocles the fragments P. Strasb. gr. Inv. 1665–1666, acquired in 1904.

    Documented

  15. 1999

    L'Empédocle de Strasbourg

    Alain Martin and Oliver Primavesi publish the edition of the papyrus, adding some seventy-four lines, partly new, to the corpus.

    Documented

Works

Essential works

The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.

On Nature — Empedocles

Written work · c. 450 BCE

On Nature

Περὶ φύσεως (Φυσικά)

A didactic poem in hexameters setting out Empedocles' physics. Nothing is born or perishes: four eternal roots—Zeus, Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis, that is, fire, air or earth, and water depending on the interpretation—are only mixed and separated under Love, which unites, and Strife, which separates. The cosmos alternates between the unity of the Sphere and dispersion, and in the intermediate phases living beings arise, first as loose limbs combining at random. It includes a theory of perception through effluences and pores, the comparison of breathing with the clepsydra and a physiology of the blood as the seat of thought.

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12 editions · amazon.com

Purifications — Empedocles

Written work · c. 445 BCE

Purifications

Καθαρμοί

A poem addressed to the "friends who dwell in the great city by yellow Acragas", to whom Empedocles presents himself as "an immortal god, no longer mortal", followed by crowds asking for oracles and cures. It sets out the oracle of Necessity: the daimon who stains his hands with blood is banished for thirty thousand seasons and reborn in every mortal form; the poet himself has been boy, girl, bush, bird and fish. Hence the condemnation of animal sacrifice and meat-eating—the father who kills his transformed son without recognising him—and the evocation of a golden age under Cypris when no altar was stained with bulls' blood. Favorinus relates that the rhapsode Cleomenes recited it at Olympia.

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9 editions · amazon.com

Strasbourg papyrus (fragments of On Nature, book I) — Empedocles

Manuscript · c. 90

Strasbourg papyrus (fragments of On Nature, book I)

P. Strasb. gr. Inv. 1665–1666

Remains of a papyrus roll from Panopolis (Akhmim, Egypt), acquired in 1904 by the Strasbourg library and reused in antiquity, according to its editors, for a funerary ornament. Its fragments—52, according to the editors—fall into several ensembles; the main one (a) contains lines 233–300 of the first book, identified by a stichometric mark (the letter gamma, 300), and connects with fragment B17. Besides new details of the cosmic cycle and zoogony, it includes first-person lines on the "pitiless day" on which the crime of eating flesh was committed, forcing a rethinking of the separation between the two poems.

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4 editions · amazon.com

Complete works (11)

Quotations

Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.

For straitened are the powers that are spread over their bodily parts.

στεινωποὶ μὲν γὰρ παλάμαι κατὰ γυῖα κέχυνται.

VerifiedDK 31 B2.1, en Sexto Empírico, Contra los matemáticos VII 123. Griego: texto de Fairbanks (1898), basado en la edición de Stein; numeración Diels-Kranz. Inglés: John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (1908). Español: traducción propia.

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Apocryphal quotes or disputed attributions (3)

  • «Everything is composed of four elements: earth, water, air and fire.»

    The doctrine is his, but not the vocabulary: Empedocles speaks of "roots" (rhizomata) and names them after gods. The term "elements" (stoicheia) comes from Plato and Aristotle.

  • «The nature of God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.»

    Often ascribed to Empedocles, it comes from the Book of the Twenty-Four Philosophers (12th century), proposition II, and was spread by Alan of Lille, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa and Pascal.

  • «The people of Acragas indulge in pleasure as if they were to die tomorrow, and build their houses as if they were to live for ever.»

    Diogenes Laertius (VIII 63) puts it in Empedocles' mouth, but Aelian (Varia Historia XII 29) ascribes an almost identical saying to Plato. It is a wandering apophthegm with no secure source.

Last words

There are no verifiable records of their last words.

No record of his last words survives. The versions of his death collected by Diogenes Laertius (VIII 67–75) are contradictory and legendary; in Heraclides of Pontus' version the only thing heard is a voice calling him in the night.

Source: Diógenes Laercio. Vidas y opiniones de los filósofos ilustres VIII 51–77 (Empédocles), s. III d. C. Trad. inglesa de C. D. Yonge, Bohn, Londres, 1853 (Project Gutenberg n.º 57342); trad. inglesa de R. D. Hicks, Loeb, 1925 (Wikisource).

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What their work answers

Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.

  • What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

    A holy and ineffable mind, with neither head nor human limbs

    An impersonal AbsoluteStated explicitly

    Empedocles fills his physics with divine names: the four roots are called Zeus, Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis, and the two forces that join and separate them are Love and Strife. When Love prevails, everything fuses in the Sphere, round and rejoicing in its solitude, which fragments B27–29 treat as a god. But in fragment B134 he explicitly rejects the anthropomorphic image: the divine has no human head upon its limbs, no arms or feet, but is only a holy and ineffable mind that darts through the whole cosmos with swift thoughts. The ultimate is thus divine and intelligent, yet faceless: a principle that thinks the world, not a lord who governs it from outside.

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  • Who am I? Is there a true self?

    A daimon exiled from the gods, wandering through many forms

    An evolving soulStated explicitly

    In the Purifications Empedocles speaks of himself as one of the long-lived daimons who, for having stained their hands with blood and trusted in Strife, have been exiled far from the blessed for thrice ten thousand seasons, being born in all kinds of mortal forms. He claims to have been already a boy and a girl, a bush, a bird and a mute fish of the sea, and describes the weeping of the newcomer to an unfamiliar place. The end of the journey is return: the best become seers, poets, physicians and leaders, and from there they spring up as gods, table companions of the immortals. The true self is that daimon passing through lives until it recovers its divine condition.

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  • Why do we suffer?

    We suffer because Strife exiled us from the blessed

    Separation from GodStated explicitly

    In the Purifications suffering has a precise origin. Empedocles counts himself among the daimons who, for having shed blood and trusted in raging Strife, were cast far from the gods and condemned to be born in mortal forms. The world they reach is a joyless place of murder, wrath and disease, and he himself says he wept on seeing the unfamiliar place. The slaughter continues: humans sacrifice and eat animals without seeing that they devour one another, and a father slaughters among prayers his son changed in form. Pain is exile, and its causes are bloodshed and the dominion of Strife over Love.

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  • What happens after death?

    There is no birth or death, only mixture; the daimon transmigrates until it returns

    Rebirth according to karmaStated explicitly

    Empedocles answers in two registers. In On Nature he denies that there is properly birth or death of mortal things: there is only mixture and exchange of what is mixed, and “birth” is a name humans give them. In the Purifications the exiled daimon passes for thrice ten thousand seasons through every kind of form — boy and girl, bush, bird and fish — and that is why eating meat is killing a kinsman. At the end of the cycle, the purified are born as seers, poets, physicians and leaders, and from there rise as gods, free of human pains and table companions of the immortals. Death is a step in the journey home.

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  • How is liberation or salvation attained?

    Abstain from blood, purify oneself and reach divine thoughts

    Through disciplined practiceStated explicitly

    The poem tradition calls the Purifications offers a way for the exiled daimon to return among the gods. Its core is an ethic of non-violence: to stop shedding blood, because the sacrificed animal may be a kinsman changed in form, and to abstain from certain foods, including beans and laurel. Knowledge is added to that discipline: blessed is he who has gained the wealth of divine thoughts, and wretched he who holds a dark opinion about the gods. The purified ascend through the highest callings — seers, poets, physicians, leaders — until they spring up as gods. It is a way of practice and sustained purification.

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  • Is a teacher necessary?

    A sage who speaks as a god passes a guarded knowledge to his disciple

    IndispensableInferred from their doctrine

    On Nature is addressed to a disciple, Pausanias, and Empedocles asks him to keep what he hears in his silent heart. He promises him knowledge of remedies against ills and old age, of stilling the winds and bringing a dead man back from Hades: a knowledge only he can impart. In the Purifications he presents himself to the citizens of Acragas as an immortal god, followed by crowds asking for oracles and cures. At the same time he acknowledges the limits of mortal knowledge and entreats the Muse. The figure that emerges is that of an inspired sage whose word is the necessary vehicle of truth, though the disciple must test it with all his senses.

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  • Is the world real?

    Four roots that Love unites and Strife divides, in an endless cycle

    Natural order in transformationStated explicitly

    Empedocles accepts from Parmenides that nothing comes from nothing nor is annihilated, but he saves the reality of the sensible world: what there is are four eternal roots — fire, air, earth and water — which mix and separate. Two forces move them: Love, which unites, and Strife, which divides. The account is double: sometimes everything comes together into one through Love, sometimes each thing is borne apart by the hatred of Strife, and this alternating change never ceases. Living beings, including the strange creatures of a primitive zoogony, arise from these combinations. The world is real and is a cyclical process of union and separation.

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  • What is love?

    Love gathers what is separated until it fuses all in the Sphere

    Longing and unionStated explicitly

    In Empedocles Love (Philotes, also called Aphrodite or Cypris) is one of the two forces moving the cosmos. It unites the separated roots and, when it rules completely, everything gathers in the Sphere, a round god rejoicing in its solitude, in which there is no strife. Humans know that force in their own limbs, he says, when they think loving thoughts and perform works of concord, but they do not see that it is the same one that whirls in the universe. In the Purifications the reign of Cypris is the golden age when no blood was shed. Love is thus the cosmic force returning what is scattered to the original unity, the exiled soul included.

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  • Are we free, or is everything determined?

    A decree of Necessity punishes shed blood, but purification is possible

    Karma and choiceStated explicitly

    Empedocles opens fragment B115 with an oracle of Necessity, an ancient decree of the gods, eternal and sealed with broad oaths: when one of the daimons stains his limbs with blood or swears falsely following Strife, he wanders far from the blessed for thrice ten thousand seasons. There is thus a cosmic law binding faults to their consequences over many lives. But that law does not cancel responsibility: Empedocles urges his hearers to leave off slaughter and abstain from the impure, and states that the purified ascend until they become gods. The past conditions; the present can change the course.

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  • Why meditate or pray?

    A bloodless worship and a pure mind contemplating what it has learned

    Ritual and self-cultivationStated explicitly

    The Purifications propose a reform of worship. In the golden age, when Cypris reigned, humans honoured the goddess with painted images, perfumes, myrrh and incense, and the altar was not drenched with the blood of bulls, which was the greatest abomination. The religious practice Empedocles defends consists in abstaining from slaughter and certain foods, purifying oneself and leading a pure life. In On Nature he adds a form of contemplation: if you fix these teachings in your firm mind and contemplate them with goodwill and pure meditation, they will stay with you all your life and grow. Purified rite and attention to doctrine form a single practice.

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  • Can reason know the ultimate?

    The means of knowing are narrow: the Muse helps the mortal mind

    Faith and reason help each otherStated explicitly

    Empedocles opens On Nature with a warning about human limits: narrow are the means of knowing spread through the limbs, many the miseries that blunt thought, and humans, having seen a small part of life, think they have found the whole. He asks the gods to turn madness from his tongue and the Muse to grant him what is lawful for ephemeral beings to hear. And he advises the disciple not to trust one sense more than another, but to consider each thing by every way it becomes evident. Observation, reasoning and divine inspiration cooperate in a knowledge aware of its limits, though it promises divine thoughts.

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  • Withdraw from the world or transform it?

    Physician, orator and democrat who refused kingship and toured the cities

    Engage with the worldInferred from their doctrine

    Empedocles lived in the midst of his city. According to Diogenes Laertius, drawing on Timaeus and Aristotle, he championed democracy in Acragas, helped dissolve an oligarchic assembly and refused the kingship offered to him; he was famed as a physician and Aristotle considered him the inventor of rhetoric. His own verses show him touring the cities, followed by thousands asking him the way to profit, oracles and remedies for disease. And the summit he promises the purified is not isolation but the callings that serve humans: seers, poets, physicians and leaders. Wisdom proves itself in service to the community.

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Affinities & tensions

Affinities and tensions

Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.

Anecdotes and stories

Anecdotes and stories

Disputedc. 434 a. C. (tradicional)

The bronze sandal of Etna

Empedocles, Hippobotus relates, got up and set off towards Etna as if to climb to the summit; on reaching the crater he threw himself in and vanished, so that he would be thought to have become a god. But the truth came out because the volcano cast up one of his sandals, which were of bronze. Heraclides of Pontus told it differently: after a sacrifice in the field of Peisianax the guests lay down to sleep, and at dawn Empedocles was gone; a servant had heard at midnight a very loud voice calling him and had seen a light in the sky, and Pausanias ordered the search abandoned and sacrifices made to him as to a god. Timaeus denied all of it: he went to the Peloponnese and never returned; Neanthes said he fell from his chariot and broke his thigh, and some showed his tomb at Megara.

Origin of the story: Diogenes Laertius VIII 67–75, with the versions of Heraclides of Pontus, Hippobotus, Diodorus of Ephesus, Timaeus, Neanthes and Demetrius of Troezen. Horace (Ars poetica 463–466) fixed the Etna version. Ava Chitwood (2004) analyses how they derive from the poems.

Source: Chitwood, Ava. Death by Philosophy: The Biographical Tradition in the Life and Death of the Archaic Philosophers Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Democritus. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2004.

Hagiographic accounts. V a. C. (tradicional)

The breathless woman

Heraclides of Pontus wrote a dialogue, On the Woman without Breath, in which Empedocles explained to Pausanias the case of a woman who had gone thirty days without breathing or pulse, her body uncorrupted, and whom he had brought back to life. Hermippus gave the patient a name, Panthea of Acragas, given up by the doctors, and added that her cure was the occasion of the sacrifice after which Empedocles vanished. Burnet thought it was a case of hysterical suffocation and that the story drew on the lines where Empedocles promises his pupil the power to bring back from Hades the strength of a dead man (B111).

Origin of the story: Diogenes Laertius VIII 60–61 and 67–69 (Heraclides of Pontus, Hermippus). Heraclides' treatise, lost, was a literary work of a medico-philosophical kind, not a clinical record.

Source: Diógenes Laercio. Vidas y opiniones de los filósofos ilustres VIII 51–77 (Empédocles), s. III d. C. Trad. inglesa de C. D. Yonge, Bohn, Londres, 1853 (Project Gutenberg n.º 57342); trad. inglesa de R. D. Hicks, Loeb, 1925 (Wikisource).

Unverifiables. V a. C. (tradicional)

The wind-stopper

One year, Timaeus relates, the etesian winds blew so hard over Acragas that they ruined the crops. Empedocles had some asses flayed, had their skins sewn into bags and hung them on the hills and high places to catch the wind. The wind ceased, and from then on he was called *kolysanemas*, "wind-stopper". Plutarch tells a more sensible version: he blocked a gorge through which an unhealthy wind came down to the plain. The story refers to fragment 111, where Empedocles promises Pausanias that he will know how to halt the fury of the tireless winds and unleash them again, and perhaps to the mockery of some satirical poet.

Origin of the story: Diogenes Laertius VIII 60 (Timaeus); Plutarch, Against Colotes 1126b and On Curiosity 515c. Burnet (Early Greek Philosophy, § 100) considers it deduced from B111.

Source: Diógenes Laercio. Vidas y opiniones de los filósofos ilustres VIII 51–77 (Empédocles), s. III d. C. Trad. inglesa de C. D. Yonge, Bohn, Londres, 1853 (Project Gutenberg n.º 57342); trad. inglesa de R. D. Hicks, Loeb, 1925 (Wikisource).

Oral traditionc. 470–460 a. C.

The magistrate's banquet

One of the magistrates of Acragas invited Empedocles to dinner. The meal went on and no wine was served; the others said nothing, but Empedocles, indignant, demanded it be brought. The host replied that he was waiting for the council's secretary, and when he arrived made him master of the feast; the newcomer began to give orders like a tyrant and commanded that all should drink or have the wine poured over their heads. Empedocles said nothing. The next day he brought both before the court and had them condemned to death. "This," Timaeus concludes, "was the beginning of his political career." Later he opposed the physician Acron's obtaining a public plot for his father's tomb and dissolved the assembly of the Thousand.

Origin of the story: Diogenes Laertius VIII 64–66, quoting Timaeus of Tauromenium (4th–3rd century BCE). Burnet (§ 99) considers them genuine local traditions gathered a century and a half later, though confused in their details.

Source: Burnet, John. Early Greek Philosophy, 2.ª ed. A. and C. Black, Londres, 1908, cap. V (Empedokles of Akragas), §§ 98–105 y traducción de los fragmentos (Project Gutenberg n.º 67097).

Testimonys. V a. C.

The refused crown

Aristotle, according to Diogenes Laertius, described Empedocles as a free man averse to all ambition to rule, so much so that he refused the kingship when it was offered to him, preferring a simple life. Xanthus of Lydia confirmed it. The contrast with the figure who presented himself as a god, with purple robe, golden girdle, bronze sandals and Delphic crown, already intrigued the ancients: Timaeus noted that his political views seemed at odds with the arrogance of his verses. Burnet resolved it by seeing in him the great democratic leader of Acragas and, at the same time, a religious preacher of the Pythagorean tradition.

Origin of the story: Diogenes Laertius VIII 63 (Aristotle, probably in the Sophist; Xanthus) and VIII 73 (the attire). It is one of the few reports going back to Aristotle.

Source: Diógenes Laercio. Vidas y opiniones de los filósofos ilustres VIII 51–77 (Empédocles), s. III d. C. Trad. inglesa de C. D. Yonge, Bohn, Londres, 1853 (Project Gutenberg n.º 57342); trad. inglesa de R. D. Hicks, Loeb, 1925 (Wikisource).

Disputeds. V a. C. (tradicional)

The marshes of Selinus

The people of Selinus, Diodorus of Ephesus relates, suffered a plague caused by the stench of a nearby river: the men died and the women had difficult births. Empedocles, at his own expense, diverted two other rivers into it and, by mixing their waters, made it wholesome. When the Selinuntines were holding a feast on the bank, Empedocles appeared among them, and they rose and worshipped him as a god; to confirm that belief, the story adds, he threw himself into the fire. Burnet observed that coins of Selinus do commemorate the purification of the marshes, with the river god offering sacrifice, but doubted that the work was ascribed to Empedocles until a late date.

Origin of the story: Diogenes Laertius VIII 70 (Diodorus of Ephesus). The Selinus coins showing the drainage (Head's Historia Numorum) prove the event, not Empedocles' involvement.

Source: Burnet, John. Early Greek Philosophy, 2.ª ed. A. and C. Black, Londres, 1908, cap. V (Empedokles of Akragas), §§ 98–105 y traducción de los fragmentos (Project Gutenberg n.º 67097).

Unverifiables. V a. C. (tradicional)

Expelled by the Pythagoreans

Timaeus asserted that Empedocles had been a pupil of the Pythagoreans and was expelled from their meetings, as Plato later was, for "stealing discourses", that is, for divulging their doctrines. Neanthes added that until Philolaus and Empedocles the Pythagoreans admitted anyone, but that when Empedocles made their teachings public in verse they decreed to admit no poet. Diogenes Laertius also records some lines about "a man of extraordinary knowledge" which, according to some, refer to Pythagoras and, according to others, to Parmenides. The anecdote reflects a real affinity—transmigration, abstinence from meat, purification—but its form belongs to the repertoire of stories about Pythagorean secrecy.

Origin of the story: Diogenes Laertius VIII 54–55 (Timaeus, Neanthes). Fragment B129 is quoted by Porphyry (Life of Pythagoras 30) and Iamblichus (On the Pythagorean Life 67) as referring to Pythagoras.

Source: Diógenes Laercio. Vidas y opiniones de los filósofos ilustres VIII 51–77 (Empédocles), s. III d. C. Trad. inglesa de C. D. Yonge, Bohn, Londres, 1853 (Project Gutenberg n.º 57342); trad. inglesa de R. D. Hicks, Loeb, 1925 (Wikisource).

Teachings

Teachings

The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.

The four roots (rhizomata)cuatro-raices
Empedocles accepts with Parmenides that nothing comes from what is not or is annihilated, but he does not give up explaining change. His solution is to posit four eternal and unchanging realities, the "roots of all things": fire, air (aither), water and earth. He names them after gods—shining Zeus, life-bringing Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis—and already in antiquity it was debated which god corresponded to which root (Aetius identifies Hera with air and Aidoneus with earth; Diogenes Laertius the reverse). No root turns into another: everything we call birth and death is mixture and separation, in different proportions, like the colours of a painter mixing pigments (B23). Plato called these principles "elements" (stoicheia), Aristotle adopted them adding the aither, and the theory, joined to humoral medicine, governed European science until modern chemistry.

Fragments B6, B8, B12, B17, B21, B23; reception in Aristotle, Metaphysics A 3–4.

Source: Kirk, G. S., Raven, J. E. y Schofield, M. The Presocratic Philosophers, 2.ª ed. Cambridge University Press, 1983, cap. X (Empedocles of Acragas). Trad. esp. de Jesús García Fernández, Gredos, 1987.

Love (Philotes) and Strife (Neikos)amor-y-discordia
To move the roots Empedocles introduces two powers, also eternal: Love, which he also calls Aphrodite, Cypris, Joy and Harmony, and which unites what is different; and Strife or Hate, which separates what is united. They are not abstract forces but realities that occupy a place among the roots, "equal in length and breadth" (B17.20), and their alternation is the law of the world. The Love that moves the cosmos is the same one men feel in their bodies, though no mortal has seen it whirling among the elements (B17.22–26). Aristotle considered Empedocles the first to posit two opposed causes of motion, though he complained that Love sometimes separates and Strife unites. Freud saw in this pair a precedent for his opposition between Eros and the death drive.

Fragments B17, B20, B22, B26, B35; Aristotle, Metaphysics A 4, 985a21–b4.

Source: Kingsley, K. Scarlett y Parry, Richard. «Empedocles». The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta y Uri Nodelman; primera publicación el 26 de septiembre de 2019, revisión sustancial del 25 de septiembre de 2024.

The cosmic cycle and the Sphereciclo-cosmico
Under the complete dominion of Love all the roots merge into the Sphere (*Sphairos*), a round, uniform whole that "rejoices in its encircling solitude" (B27–B28), heir to Parmenides' sphere. When, at the time fixed by an oath, Strife enters its limbs, the Sphere breaks apart; Strife comes to separate the roots completely, and then Love gathers them again. The world we live in belongs to one of the intermediate phases. The "twofold tale" of B17 describes this double birth and double death of mortal things. Interpreters debate whether there are two cosmogonies per cycle—one under growing Love and another under growing Strife—or only one; the Strasbourg papyrus has added new lines to the debate without settling it.

Fragments B17, B26–B31, B35; Strasbourg papyrus, ensemble a.

Source: Martin, Alain y Primavesi, Oliver. L'Empédocle de Strasbourg (P. Strasb. gr. Inv. 1665–1666): introduction, édition et commentaire. Walter de Gruyter / Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg, Berlín, Nueva York y Estrasburgo, 1999.

The exiled daimon and transmigrationdaimon-y-transmigracion
The Purifications start from an "oracle of Necessity, an ancient decree of the gods": the daimon who stains himself with blood or forswears is banished for three times ten thousand seasons far from the blessed, and is born in every mortal form, rejected by air, sea, earth and sun (B115). "Of these I now am one," Empedocles declares, recalling that he has been boy, girl, bush, bird and fish (B117). The ethical consequence is stark: killing and eating animals is devouring one's kin, and sacrifice may be an unwitting parricide (B136–B137). The doctrine links with the Pythagoreanism and Orphism of Magna Graecia (Zuntz, Kingsley) and with the hope that the wise, purified, will be reborn as prophets, poets, physicians and princes, and finally as gods (B146–B147).

Fragments B112, B115, B117, B136–B137, B146–B147.

Source: Zuntz, Günther. Persephone: Three Essays on Religion and Thought in Magna Graecia. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971.

Effluences and pores: perception and thoughtefluvios-y-poros
Empedocles explained perception with a theory that Plato attributes to Gorgias in the Meno: from all things flow effluences (*aporrhoai*) that enter the sense organs through pores of the right size. We know like by like: with earth we see earth, with water water, with love love (B109). The eye is like a lantern in which a fire enclosed in membranes goes out towards objects (B84). Breathing is explained by comparing the entry and exit of air through the skin's pores with a clepsydra, the perforated vessel a girl plays with (B100). Thought resides above all in the blood around the heart, because in it the roots are mixed in the most perfect proportion (B105). The theory shaped the physiology of the Sicilian medical school and reached Plato and Aristotle.

Fragments B84, B89, B100, B105, B109; Plato, Meno 76c–d; Theophrastus, On the Senses 7–24.

Source: Platón. Menón 76c–d (efluvios y poros); Sofista 242d–243a (las «musas sicilianas»). Trad. inglesa de Benjamin Jowett, 1892 (Project Gutenberg n.º 1643, Meno).

Zoogony: wandering limbs and combinationszoogonia
In one phase of the cycle the earth sent up loose limbs: heads without necks, arms without shoulders, eyes without foreheads (B57). Meeting by chance, they joined in every possible way, and monsters arose—oxen with human faces, men with oxen's heads, double-faced and double-breasted creatures (B61)—of which only those able to live and reproduce survived. Aristotle, in the Physics (II 8), discussed this explanation of adaptation without purpose and rejected it; in the nineteenth century it was read as a precedent of natural selection, and Darwin himself quoted the Aristotelian passage in a note to On the Origin of Species. The zoogony shows Empedocles' ambition: to explain life too from the roots and the two powers, without recourse to a plan.

Fragments B57–B62; Aristotle, Physics II 8, 198b29–32.

Source: Aristóteles. Metafísica A 3, 984a8–11, y A 4, 985a21–b4; Poética 1, 1447b17–20; Física II 8, 198b29–32; Sobre el alma I 2, 404b11–15; fragmentos del Sofista y de Sobre los poetas citados por Diógenes Laercio VIII 57 y 63. Trad. inglesa de W. D. Ross y otros (Internet Classics Archive, MIT).

Videos

Videos

Recordings, interviews and documentaries. Videos play from YouTube; they are not hosted here.

  • Empedocles – Autobiography of a Demon

    Lecture· EN· 2020· 19 min

    Jackman Humanities InstituteOfficial channel

  • HoP 011 - All You Need Is Love, and Five Other Things - Empedocles

    Lecture· EN· 2020· 17 min

    history of philosophy without any gapsOfficial channel

  • 4) The Pluralists and The Sophists

    Lecture· EN· 2016· 74 min

    Adam RosenfeldOfficial channel

  • 3-5 Empedocles

    Lecture· EN· 2026· 12 min

    Nicholaos JonesOfficial channel

  • Aristotle, Metaphysics (Empedocles, love, and final causes) - Introduction to Philosophy

    Analysis· EN· 2013· 64 min

    Gregory B. Sadler - That Philosophy GuyOfficial channel

  • Empédocles de Agrigento

    Documentary· ES· 2018· 27 min

    UNEDOfficial channel

  • Conferencia David Hernández Castro "Empédocles"

    Lecture· ES· 2018· 88 min

    Hercritia-Cátedra de Hermenéutica CríticaOfficial channel

  • Heráclito, Empédocles y Anaxágoras | Historia de la filosofía (7/61)

    Lecture· ES· 2017· 68 min

    Ernesto CastroOfficial channel

  • EMPÉDOCLE – De l'un au multiple - Sur les traces du présocratique (France Culture, 1997)

    Documentary· FR· 1997· 85 min

    ÉCLAIR BRUT

  • EMPÉDOCLE d'Agrigente – Un présocratique en terre arabe (France Culture, 2007)

    Interview· FR· 2007· 46 min

    ÉCLAIR BRUT

Gallery

Gallery

Images with verified licences. Each keeps its authorship and attribution.

Manuscripts

Manuscripts

Manuscript witnesses and ancient texts, with their custodian and conditions of access.

  • GRC · Escritura libraria griega sobre papiro · Poema compuesto en el s. V a. C.; copia de finales del s. I d. C.

    P. Strasb. gr. Inv. 1665–1666

    Surviving witness
    Fragmentos de un rollo de papiro (52 según los editores), con restos de unos 74 versos
    Custodian
    Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de Strasbourg · P. Strasb. gr. Inv. 1665–1666
    Digitisation
    commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Empedokles_fragm…
Manuscripts →

Connections

Connections

Influences, discipleships and affinities. Documented relations are distinguished from similarities identified by analysis.

  • Ideas akin to

    Heraclitus

    The alternation of Love and Strife extends, in another key, the Heraclitean tension between harmony and war.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Influenced by

    Parmenides

    Theophrastus calls him an "emulator and imitator" of Parmenides (Diogenes Laertius VIII 55); he accepts that nothing comes to be or perishes and writes, like him, in hexameters.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced by

    Pythagoras

    Timaeus and Neanthes make him a pupil of the Pythagoreans; Porphyry and Iamblichus refer the praise of B129 to Pythagoras. He shares with Pythagoreanism transmigration and abstinence from meat.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced by

    Jenófanes

    Hermippus, according to Diogenes Laertius (VIII 56), considered him an imitator of Xenophanes, with whom he supposedly lived; the report is isolated.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Contemporary of

    Anaxágoras

    Aristotle (Metaphysics A 3, 984a11) says Anaxagoras was older than Empedocles but later in his works; both explain change as mixture.

    Documented relation

  • Contemporary of

    Zenón de Elea

    Alcidamas, according to Diogenes Laertius (VIII 56), made them fellow pupils of Parmenides.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Teacher of

    Gorgias de Leontinos

    Satyrus, probably following Alcidamas, makes him Empedocles' pupil (Diogenes Laertius VIII 58); Plato ascribes to Gorgias the Empedoclean theory of effluences (Meno 76c).

    Documented relation

  • Teacher of

    Pausanias de Gela

    Physician, pupil and beloved of Empedocles, addressee of On Nature (B1).

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Plato

    He alludes to the "Sicilian muses" (Sophist 242d–243a), ascribes his theory of effluences to Gorgias (Meno 76c) and adopts the four elements in the Timaeus.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Aristotle

    He adopts the four roots as elements, calls him the inventor of rhetoric and discusses his zoogony (Physics II 8) and his causes (Metaphysics A 4).

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Lucrecio

    In De rerum natura (I 716–733) he praises him as Sicily's most admirable man and takes from him the model of the physical poem.

    Documented relation

  • Ideas akin to

    Mahāvīra

    Approximate contemporaries: the doctrine of transmigration through all living forms and the refusal to kill animals bring the Purifications close to Jain ethics, without known historical contact.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Influenced

    Sigmund Freud

    In Analysis Terminable and Interminable (1937) he recognises in Empedocles' Love and Strife a precedent of his theory of Eros and the death drive.

    Documented relation

Linked from other profiles

Sources

Sources

Bibliography and catalogues consulted for this profile.

  1. Wikidata, entidad Q83375 «Empedocles» (107 enlaces entre wikis; P31=Q5). Registra varios años de nacimiento (494, 492, 490 a. C.) y de muerte (444, 434, 432, 430 a. C.), Acragante como lugar de nacimiento y el Etna o el Peloponeso como lugar de muerte.
  2. Diógenes Laercio. Vidas y opiniones de los filósofos ilustres VIII 51–77 (Empédocles), s. III d. C. Trad. inglesa de C. D. Yonge, Bohn, Londres, 1853 (Project Gutenberg n.º 57342); trad. inglesa de R. D. Hicks, Loeb, 1925 (Wikisource).
  3. Diels, Hermann y Kranz, Walther. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6.ª ed. Weidmann, Berlín, 1951–1952, cap. 31 (Empedokles), A (testimonios) y B 1–154.
  4. Kirk, G. S., Raven, J. E. y Schofield, M. The Presocratic Philosophers, 2.ª ed. Cambridge University Press, 1983, cap. X (Empedocles of Acragas). Trad. esp. de Jesús García Fernández, Gredos, 1987.
  5. Kingsley, K. Scarlett y Parry, Richard. «Empedocles». The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta y Uri Nodelman; primera publicación el 26 de septiembre de 2019, revisión sustancial del 25 de septiembre de 2024.
  6. Burnet, John. Early Greek Philosophy, 2.ª ed. A. and C. Black, Londres, 1908, cap. V (Empedokles of Akragas), §§ 98–105 y traducción de los fragmentos (Project Gutenberg n.º 67097).
  7. Martin, Alain y Primavesi, Oliver. L'Empédocle de Strasbourg (P. Strasb. gr. Inv. 1665–1666): introduction, édition et commentaire. Walter de Gruyter / Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg, Berlín, Nueva York y Estrasburgo, 1999.
  8. Laks, André y Most, Glenn W. (eds. y trads.). Early Greek Philosophy, vol. V: Western Greek Thinkers, Part 2. Loeb Classical Library 528, Harvard University Press, 2016.
  9. Inwood, Brad. The Poem of Empedocles: A Text and Translation with an Introduction, ed. revisada. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2001 (1.ª ed. 1992).
  10. Wright, M. R. Empedocles: The Extant Fragments. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1981 (reed. Bristol Classical Press, 1995).
  11. Chitwood, Ava. Death by Philosophy: The Biographical Tradition in the Life and Death of the Archaic Philosophers Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Democritus. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2004.
  12. Aristóteles. Metafísica A 3, 984a8–11, y A 4, 985a21–b4; Poética 1, 1447b17–20; Física II 8, 198b29–32; Sobre el alma I 2, 404b11–15; fragmentos del Sofista y de Sobre los poetas citados por Diógenes Laercio VIII 57 y 63. Trad. inglesa de W. D. Ross y otros (Internet Classics Archive, MIT).
  13. Kingsley, Peter. Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995.
  14. Zuntz, Günther. Persephone: Three Essays on Religion and Thought in Magna Graecia. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971.
  15. Lucrecio. De rerum natura I 716–733 (elogio de Empédocles), s. I a. C.
  16. Horacio. Arte poética 463–466 («deus immortalis haberi / dum cupit Empedocles, ardentem frigidus Aetnam / insiluit»).
  17. Hölderlin, Friedrich. Der Tod des Empedokles (tres versiones, 1797–1800); Arnold, Matthew, Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems, B. Fellowes, Londres, 1852 (Internet Archive).
  18. Leonard, William Ellery (trad.). The Fragments of Empedocles, Translated into English Verse. Open Court, Chicago, 1908 (Internet Archive).
  19. Fairbanks, Arthur (ed. y trad.). The First Philosophers of Greece. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, Londres, 1898, cap. X (Empedokles), texto griego según la edición de H. Stein (1852) (Project Gutenberg n.º 78670).
  20. «Empedocles», Wikipedia en inglés, y «Empédocles», Wikipedia en español (consultadas para contrastar datos y bibliografía; texto propio).
  21. Open Library (Internet Archive): ediciones de los fragmentos de Empédocles verificadas por ISBN.
  22. De Smet, Daniel. Empedocles Arabus. Une lecture néoplatonicienne tardive. Paleis der Academiën (Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België), Bruselas, 1998.
  23. Eggers Lan, Conrado (dir.), Cordero, Néstor Luis, Olivieri, Francisco J., La Croce, Ernesto y Santa Cruz, María Isabel. Los filósofos presocráticos II. Biblioteca Clásica Gredos 24, Gredos, Madrid, 1979 (Empédocles, trad. de Ernesto La Croce).
  24. Bollack, Jean. Empédocle, 3 vols. (4 tomos). Éditions de Minuit, París, 1965–1969; reed. Gallimard (Tel), 1992.
  25. Platón. Menón 76c–d (efluvios y poros); Sofista 242d–243a (las «musas sicilianas»). Trad. inglesa de Benjamin Jowett, 1892 (Project Gutenberg n.º 1643, Meno).
  26. Galeno. De methodo medendi I 1 (X 5–6 Kühn): la escuela médica itálica de Filistión, Empédocles y Pausanias.
  27. Primavesi, Oliver. Empedokles Physika I: eine Rekonstruktion des zentralen Gedankengangs. Archiv für Papyrusforschung, Beiheft 22, Walter de Gruyter, Berlín, 2008.
  28. Osborne, Catherine. «Empedocles Recycled». The Classical Quarterly, 37 (1987), pp. 24–50; y Trépanier, Simon, Empedocles: An Interpretation, Routledge, Nueva York, 2004.
  29. Freud, Sigmund. «Die endliche und die unendliche Analyse». Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, 23 (1937), sección VI (Empédocles, el Amor y la Discordia).
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Textos antiguos en dominio público; cada traducción y edición crítica pertenece a su traductor o editorial

Pending confirmation

What this profile has not yet been able to settle. We would rather say so than fill it in.

  • Fechas: se adopta c. 494–434 a. C. (muerte a los sesenta años según Aristóteles y actividad posterior al 472, Burnet); Apolodoro situaba la madurez en 444–443 y Wikidata registra varios años alternativos.
  • Ediciones españolas específicas de Empédocles (aparte de Gredos, Kirk-Raven-Schofield y Bernabé): no verificadas en catálogo en esta sesión (la API de Google Books agotó su cuota).
  • «La esfera» pseudoempedoclea: verificar la edición de 1898 (probablemente E. Maass, Commentariorum in Aratum reliquiae) antes de citarla con detalle.
  • Papiro de Estrasburgo: comprobar si la BNU de Estrasburgo ofrece digitalización completa y sus condiciones; fecha exacta de adquisición (1904 o 1905).
  • Texto griego de las citas tomado de Fairbanks (edición de Stein, 1852); cotejar con Diels-Kranz (diferencias menores señaladas en B6 y B117).
  • Vídeos: diez verificados; faltan clases universitarias en español dedicadas monográficamente al papiro de Estrasburgo.
  • Programas de afiliación: ninguno verificado. Lista vacía.
  • Año de los vídeos: el de la grabación cuando la descripción lo indica y, si no, el de publicación en YouTube.

Researched on 2026-10-25