CHAPTER VI EmpedoclesTHE mixture of philosopher, prophet, man of science, and charlatan, which we found already in
Pythagoras, was exemplified very completely in Empedocles, who flourished about 440 B.C., and
was thus a younger contemporary of Parmenides, though his doctrine had in some ways more
affinity with that of Heraclitus. He was a citizen of Acragas, on the south coast of Sicily; he was a
democratic politician, who at the same time claimed to be a god. In most Greek cities, and
especially in those of Sicily, there was a constant conflict between democracy and tyranny; the
leaders of whichever party was at the moment defeated were executed or exiled. Those who were
exiled seldom scrupled to enter into negotiations with the enemies of Greece--Persia in the East,
Carthage in the West. Empedocles, in due course, was banished, but he appears, after his
banishment, to have preferred the career of a sage to that of an intriguing refugee. It seems
probable that in youth he was more or less Orphic; that before his exile he combined politics and
science; and that it was only in later life, as an exile, that he became a prophet.
Legend had much to say about Empedocles. He was supposed to have worked miracles, or what
seemed such, sometimes by magic, sometimes by means of his scientific knowledge. He could
control the winds, we are told; he restored to life a woman who had seemed dead for thirty days;
finally, it is said, he died by leaping into the crater of Etna to prove that he was a god. In the words
of the poet:
Great Empedocles, that ardent soul Leapt into Etna, and was roasted whole.Matthew Arnold wrote a poem on this subject, but, although one of his worst, it does not contain
the above couplet.
Like Parmenides, Empedocles wrote in verse. Lucretius, who was