Greek Texts & Translations

Satyrus in his Lives says that he was also a physician and an excellent orator : at all events Gorgias of Leontini, a man pre-eminent in oratory and the author of a treatise on the art, had been his pupil. Of Gorgias Apollodorus says in his Chronology that he lived to be one hundred and nine. 8.2.59 Satyrus quotes this same Gorgias as saying that he himself was present when Empedocles performed magical feats. Nay more : he contends that Empedocles in his poems lays claim to this power and to much besides when he says ^note: And thou shalt learn all the drugs that are a defence to ward off ills and old age, since for thee alone shall I accomplish all this. Thou shalt arrest the violence of the unwearied winds that arise and sweep the earth, laying waste the cornfields with their blasts ; and again, if thou so will, thou shalt call back winds in requital. Thou shalt make after the dark rain a seasonable drought for men, and again after the summer drought thou shalt cause tree-nourishing streams to pour from the sky. Thou shalt bring back from Hades a dead man's strength.

Timaeus also in the eighteenth ^notebook of his Histories remarks that Empedocles has been admired on many grounds. For instance, when the etesian winds once began to blow violently and to damage the crops, he ordered asses to be flayed and bags to be made of their skin. These he stretched out here and there on the hills and headlands to catch the wind and, because this checked the wind, he was called the "wind-stayer." Heraclides in his book On Diseases ^note says that he furnished Pausanias with the facts about the woman in a trance. This Pausanias, according to Aristippus and Satyrus, was his bosom-friend, to whom he dedicated his poem On Nature thus ^note:

Give ear, Pausanias, thou son of Anchitus the wise!

Moreover he wrote an epigram upon him ^note:

The physician Pausanias, rightly so named, son of Anchitus, descendant of Asclepius, was born and bred at Gela. Many a wight pining in fell torments did he bring back from Persephone's inmost shrine.

At all events Heraclides testifies that the case of the woman in a trance was such that for thirty days he kept her body without pulsation though she never breathed ; and for that reason Heraclides called him not merely a physician but a diviner as well, deriving the titles from the following lines also ^note:

My friends, who dwell in the grcat city sloping down to yellow Acragas, hard by the citadel, busied with goodly works, all hail! I go about among you an immortal god, no more a mortal, so honoured of all, as is meet, crowned with fillets and flowery garlands. Straightway as soon as I enter with these, men and women, into flourishing towns, I am reverenced and tens of thousands follow, to learn where is the path which leads to welfare, some desirous of oracles, others suffering from all kinds of diseases, desiring to hear a message of healing.

Timaeus explains that he called Agrigentum great, inasmuch as it had 800,000 inhabitants. ^note Hence Empedocles, he continues, speaking of their luxury, said, "The Agrigentines live delicately as if tomorrow they would die, but they build their houses well as if they thought they would live for ever."

It is said that Cleomenes the rhapsode recited this very poem, the Purifications, at Olympia ^note: so Favorinus in his Memorabilia. Aristotle too declares him to have been a champion of freedom and averse to rule of every kind, seeing that, as Xanthus relates in his account of him, he declined the kingship when it was offered to him, obviously because he preferred a frugal life. 8.2.64 With this Timaeus agrees, at the same time giving the reason why Empedocles favoured democracy, namely, that, having been invited to dine with one of the magistrates, when the dinner had gone on some time and no wine was put on the table, though the other guests kept quiet, he, becoming indignant, ordered wine to be brought. Then the host confessed that he was waiting for the servant of the senate to appear. When he came he was made master of the revels, clearly by the arrangement of the host, whose design of making himself tyrant was but thinly veiled, for he ordered the guests either to drink wine or have it poured over their heads. For the time being Empedocles was reduced to silence ; the next day he impeached both of them, the host and the master of the revels, and secured their condemnation and execution. This, then, was the beginning of his political career.