of them and more of it. From these did blood arise and the manifold forms of flesh. R. P. 175 c.
(99)
The bell . . . the fleshy sprout (of the ear).[1]
(100)
Thus[2] do all things draw breath and breathe it out again. All have bloodless tubes of flesh extended over the surface of their bodies; and at the mouths of these the outermost surface of the skin is perforated all over with pores closely packed together, 5so as to keep in the blood while a free passage is cut for the air to pass through. Then, when the thin blood recedes from these, the bubbling air rushes in with an impetuous surge; and when the blood runs back it is breathed out again. Just as when a girl, playing with a water-clock of shining brass, 10puts the orifice of the pipe upon her comely hand, and dips the water-clock into the yielding mass of silvery water—the stream does not then flow into the vessel, but the bulk of the air[3] inside, pressing upon the close-packed perforations, keeps it out till she uncovers the compressed stream; 15but then air escapes and an equal volume of water runs in,—just in the same way, when water occupies the depths of the brazen vessel and the opening and passage is stopped up by the human hand, the air outside, striving to get in, holds the water back at the gates of the ill-sounding neck, pressing upon its surface, till she lets go with her hand. 20Then, on the contrary, just in the opposite way to what happened before, the wind rushes in and an equal volume of water runs out
- ↑ On fr. 99, see Beare, p. 96, n. 1.
- ↑ This passage is quoted by Aristotle (De respir, 473 b 9), who makes the curious mistake of taking ῥινῶν for the genitive of ῥίς instead of ῥινός The locus classicus on the klepsydra is Probl. 914 b 9 sqq. (where read αὐλοῦ for ἄλλου b 12). It was a metal vessel with a narrow neck αὐλός at the top and with a sort of strainer ἠθμός pierced with holes (τρήματα, τρυπήματα) at the bottom. The passage in the Problems just referred to attributes this theory of the phenomenon to Anaxagoras, and we shall see that he also made use of the experiment (§ 131).
- ↑ The MSS. of Aristotle have ἀέρος here, though the air is called αἰθήρ in four other verses of the fragment (vv. 5, 7, 18, 24.). It is easier to suppose that Aristotle made a slip in this one verse than that Empedokles should use ἀήρ in a sense he elsewhere avoids (p. 228, n. 2), and this suspicion is confirmed by the form ἀέρος instead of ἠέρος. I think, therefore, that Stein was right in reading αἰθέρος.
