Written work · Essential works
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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Authorship note
Authentic, cited under this title by Diogenes Laertius (VIII 54, 63, 77) and others. Assigning each fragment to this poem or to On Nature is often conjectural, and the Strasbourg papyrus has shown that "religious" themes also appeared in the physics.
Editions and translations
Editions in your language first, without hiding the others. Each with its cover and its store.
English
Empedocles
Early Greek Philosophy, Volume V: Western Greek Thinkers, Part 2 (Loeb Classical Library 528)
The Conscious LibraryEarly Greek Philosophy, Volume V: Western Greek Thinkers, Part 2 (Loeb Classical Library 528)
Harvard University Press, 2016
Translation: André Laks y Glenn W. Most
ISBN 9780674997066
Edición bilingüe con el papiro de Estrasburgo.
The Poem of Empedocles: A Text and Translation with an Introduction (ed. revisada)
University of Toronto Press (Phoenix, suppl. vol.), 2001
Translation: Brad Inwood
ISBN 9780802083531
Incluye los versos del papiro de Estrasburgo; tela: ISBN 9780802048202.
The Presocratic Philosophers
Cambridge University Press, 1983
Translation: G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven y M. Schofield
ISBN 9780521274555
2.ª edición.
Empedocles: The Extant Fragments
Yale University Press, 1981
Translation: M. R. Wright
ISBN 9780300024753
Texto griego, traducción, comentario y concordancia. Reeditado por Bristol Classical Press en 1995 (ISBN 9780872202894) y Duckworth en 2002 (ISBN 9781853994821).
Empedocles
Early Greek Philosophy (2.ª ed.), cap. V
The Conscious LibraryEarly Greek Philosophy (2.ª ed.), cap. V
A. and C. Black / Project Gutenberg, 1908
Translation: John Burnet
Traducción completa de los fragmentos según la ordenación de Diels. Dominio público.
Empedocles
The Fragments of Empedocles, Translated into English Verse
The Conscious LibraryThe Fragments of Empedocles, Translated into English Verse
Open Court, 1908
Translation: William Ellery Leonard
Traducción en verso. Dominio público; reeditada en rústica por Open Court en 1973 (ISBN 9780875483016).
Empedocles
The First Philosophers of Greece, cap. X
The Conscious LibraryThe First Philosophers of Greece, cap. X
Kegan Paul / Project Gutenberg, 1898
Translation: Arthur Fairbanks
Texto griego y traducción. Dominio público.
Español
Empedocles
Los filósofos presocráticos II
The Conscious LibraryLos filósofos presocráticos II
Gredos (Biblioteca Clásica Gredos, 24), 1979
Translation: Ernesto La Croce (Empédocles)
ISBN 9788424935320
Volumen dirigido por Conrado Eggers Lan; incluye Zenón, Meliso, Empédocles y Anaxágoras. El ISBN corresponde a las reimpresiones de la década de 1990.
Empedocles
De Tales a Demócrito. Fragmentos presocráticos
The Conscious LibraryDe Tales a Demócrito. Fragmentos presocráticos
Alianza Editorial (El libro de bolsillo), 2005
Translation: Alberto Bernabé
ISBN 9788420672366
Selección traducida y anotada.
Other works by Empedocles
- On Nature · 450
- Strasbourg papyrus (fragments of On Nature, book I) · 90
- The Crossing of Xerxes (lost)
- Proem to Apollo (lost)
- Tragedies (disputed attribution)
- Political writings (lost)
- Medical Discourse (lost)
- Epigrams (doubtful attribution)
- The Sphere (spurious)
- Book of the Five Substances and other Arabic texts (spurious)
Sources
- 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.
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