Greek Texts & Translations

Diodorus of Ephesus, when writing of Anaximander, declares that Empedocles emulated him, displaying theatrical arrogance and wearing stately robes. We are told that the people of Selinus suffered from pestilence owing to the noisome smells from the river hard by, so that the citizens themselves perished and their women died in childbirth, that Empedocles conceived the plan of bringing two neighbouring rivers to the place at his own expense, and that by this admixture he sweetened the waters. When in this way the pestilence had been stayed and the Selinuntines were feasting on the river bank, Empedocles appeared ; and the company rose up and worshipped and prayed to him as to a god. It was then to confirm this belief of theirs that he leapt into the fire. 8.2.71 These stories are contradicted by Timaeus, who expressly says that he left Sicily for Peloponnesus and never returned at all ; and this is the reason Timaeus gives for the fact that the manner of his death is unknown. He replies to Heraclides, whom he mentions by name, in his fourteenth book. Pisianax, he says, was a citizen of Syracuse and possessed no land at Agrigentum. Further, if such a story had been in circulation, Pausanias would have set up a monument to his friend, as to a god, in the form of a statue or shrine, for he was a wealthy man. "How came he," adds Timaeus, "to leap into the craters, which he had never once mentioned though they were not far off ? He must then have died in Peloponnesus. 8.2.72 It is not at all surprising that his tomb is not found ; the same is true of many other men." After urging some such arguments Timaeus goes on to say, "But Heraclides is everywhere just such a collector of absurdities, telling us, for instance, that a man dropped down to earth from the moon."

Hippobotus assures us that formerly there was in Agrigentum a statue of Empedocles with his head covered, and afterwards another with the head uncovered in front of the Senate House at Rome, which plainly the Romans had removed to that site. For portrait-statues with inscriptions are extant even now. Neanthes of Cyzicus, who tells about the Pythagoreans, relates that, after the death of Meton, the germs of a tyranny began to show themselves, that then it was Empedocles who persuaded the Agrigentines to put an end to their factions and cultivate equality in politics.

Moreover, from his abundant means he bestowed dowries upon many of the maidens of the city who had no dowry. No doubt it was the same means that enabled him to don a purple robe and over it a golden girdle, as Favorinus relates in his Memorabilia, and again slippers of bronze and a Delphic laurel-wreath. He had thick hair, and a train of boy attendants. He himself was always grave, and kept this gravity of demeanour unshaken. In such sort would he appear in public ; when the citizens met him, they recognized in this demeanour the stamp, as it were, of royalty. But afterwards, as he was going in a carriage to Messene to attend some festival, he fell and broke his thigh ; this brought an illness which caused his death at the age of seventy-seven. Moreover, his tomb is in Megara.

As to his age, Aristotle's account is different, for he makes him to have been sixty when he died ; while others make him one hundred and nine. He flourished in the 84th Olympiad. ^note Demetrius of Troezen in his pamphlet Against the Sophists said of him, adapting the words of Homer ^note :

He tied a noose that hung aloft from a tall cornel-tree and thrust his neck into it, and his soul went down to Hades.

In the short letter of Telauges which was mentioned above ^note it is stated that by reason of his age he slipped into the sea and was drowned. Thus and thus much of his death.

There is an epigram of my own on him in my Pammetros in a satirical vein, as follows ^note :

Thou, Empedocles, didst cleanse thy body with nimble flame, fire didst thou drink from everlasting bowls. ^note I will not say that of thine own will thou didst hurl thyself into the stream of Etna ; thou didst fall in against thy will when thou wouldst fain not have been found out.

And another ^note :

Verily there is a tale about the death of Empedocles, how that once he fell from a carriage and broke his right thigh. But if he leapt into the bowls of fire and so took a draught of life, how was it that his tomb was shown still in Megara ?

His doctrines were as follows, that there are four elements, fire, water, earth and air, besides friendship by which these are united, and strife by which they are separated. These are his words ^note : Shining Zeus and life-bringing Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis, who lets flow from her tears the source of mortal life,

where by Zeus he means fire, by Hera earth, by Aidoneus air, and by Nestis water.

"And their continuous change," he says, "never ceases," ^note as if this ordering of things were eternal. At all events he goes on ^note :

At one time all things uniting in one through Love, at another each carried in a different direction through the hatred born of strife.