EMPEDOCLES

(-kléz), a Greek philosopher of Agrigentum, in Sicily, born about 490 B.c. He is said to have introduced the democratic form of government into his native city, and the Agrigentines regarded him with the highest veneration as public benefactor, poet, orator, physician, prophet, and magician. Aristotle states that he died in obscurity, at the age of sixty years, in the Peloponnesus; but he is also said to have thrown himself into the crater of Mount Etna, in order to make it be believed, by his sudden disappearance, that he was of divine origin, and had been translated to heaven alive (cf. Matthew Arnold’s Empedocles on Etna). According to Lucian, however, his sandals were thrown out from the volcano, and the manner of his death revealed. Empedocles held earth, water, fire, air, as the four fundamental and indestructible elements from whose union and separation everything that exists is formed. To these material elements are added the two moving or operative principles of love and hatred, or attraction and repulsion. He wrote his philosophy in verse; of his chief work, On Nature, about 400 lines out of the original 5,000 are preserved.