diff --git a/lib/matrix.rb b/lib/matrix.rb
index f82ed65979..e0995c394f 100644
--- a/lib/matrix.rb
+++ b/lib/matrix.rb
@@ -204,6 +204,7 @@ class Matrix
   #
   def Matrix.diagonal(*values)
     size = values.size
+    return Matrix.empty if size == 0
     rows = Array.new(size) {|j|
       row = Array.new(size, 0)
       row[j] = values[j]
diff --git a/test/matrix/test_matrix.rb b/test/matrix/test_matrix.rb
index 26248e5746..50ab00cca7 100644
--- a/test/matrix/test_matrix.rb
+++ b/test/matrix/test_matrix.rb
@@ -179,6 +179,7 @@ class TestMatrix < Test::Unit::TestCase
   end
 
   def test_diagonal
+    assert_equal(Matrix.empty(0, 0), Matrix.diagonal( ))
     assert_equal(Matrix[[3,0,0],[0,2,0],[0,0,1]], Matrix.diagonal(3, 2, 1))
     assert_equal(Matrix[[4,0,0,0],[0,3,0,0],[0,0,2,0],[0,0,0,1]], Matrix.diagonal(4, 3, 2, 1))
   end