p Empedocles (c. 490-430 B.C.) of Acragas (Sicily) came of a wealthy and prominent family. His father Meton enjoyed the reputation of a champion of democracy and his grandfather Was known to have won a horse-race in the 7.1st Olympiad. Tradition describes him at once as poet and philosopher, 97 democratic reformer and mystic, physician and wonder– worker. He is said to, have thwarted an oligarchic conspiracy aiming to restore tyranny in Acragas, persuaded his fellowcitizens to abandon party strife and cultivate political equality, and for his own part to have refused the offer of a kingship.

p Stories of Empedocles are illustrative of his fame as a wonder-worker. One of them tells of an epidemic in the city of Selinus caused by pollution of the. nearby river. The plague was stopped by Empedocles, who diverted two neighbouring streams into the river and cleared its waters. According to another story, he kept a woman alive for thirty days without breath or pulse and brought her back to normal. It did not come down to us what reanimation techniques he had used, but the accounts of his feats caused him to be regarded by his superstitious contemporaries as a possessor of almost supernatural powers. His death is shrouded in mystery. According to one of the tales, he leapt into Etna in the midst of the celebration of his victory over plague when the grateful Selinuntines were paying his divine honours as he wanted them to believe in his ascension to Heaven and forever worship him as a god. According to another story, he made this sacrifice after the woman’s revival, but the volcano did not accept it and threw back his sandal... This latter version has a strong flavour of malicious slander likely to be circulated by Empedocles’s political opponents, the more so as other sources give a very plausible cause of his death: on the way to some public festival in Messina he fell, broke his thigh and the complication proved fatal. His tomb is in Megaris (Diog. L. VIII, 67-73).

p The essence of Empedocles’s teaching, according to Diogenes Laertius, consists in the following: "there are four elements, fire, water, earth, and air, besides friendship by which these are united, and strife by which they are separated" (Diog. L. VIII, 76). Empedocles wrote two poems entitled On Nature and Purifications. The first one was in two books (rolls) and comprised about 2000 lines, and the latter, religious in content and purpose, was in one. The surviving portions of both poems are very small, amounting to about 340 and 100 lines respectively. Some sources also ascribe to Empedocles a poem called The Invasion of Xerxes, a Hymn to Apollo, and some other writings but they are of secondary importance. from the philosophical viewpoint.

p The starting point of Enapedocles’s reasoning is the recognition of motion and multiplicity in the world as attested to by senses and reason. Here he disagrees with Parmenides whom he may have heard together with Zeno. Yet he accepts Parmenides’s proof of the non-existence of emptiness or not-being. This leaves him only one possibility to account for motion, generation and perishing, on the one hand, and for the plurality of the sensible world, on the other: the parts of reality might conceivably change their position with reference to one another, and plurality might be conceived as varying combinations of the four mingled elements.

p Hence, the difference between things derives from the correlation of elements that can be expressed in terms of mathematical proportions. As regards the One of Parmenides, it remains intact as one of the stages of the world process. Announcing the new order, based on four elements or “roots”—fire, earth, air, and water—Empedocles gives them divine names: "shining Zeus and life-bringing Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis, who lets flow from her tears the source of mortal life" (DK 31 B 6). They fill the universe and are in constant motion mingling with and separating from one another. They are eternal and immutable. The notion of these deities is not prompted by the anthropomorphic tradition: the elements precede gods and are gods themselves (A 40). In other words, the divine names are purely allegorical and do not in the least attest to mythological thinking.

p It is significant that Empedocles conceives the elements as immovable entities. Despite biomorphism which manifests itself in the very term “roots” and suggests the emergence of things in the manner of plants growing out of their roots, he understands genesis "like the putting together of a wall out of bricks and stones" (A 43). Hence another important consequence: nature (physis) is no longer regarded as the source of all things. In point of fact, Empedocles rejects the very idea of generation and destruction. "There is no coming into being of aught that perishes, nor any end for it in woeful death, but only mingling, and separation of what has been mingled." "When the elements have been mingled..., then men say that (things) come into being; and when they are separated, they call that, as is the custom, woeful death" (B8).

p True, Empedocles’s discourse is not entirely free from biological analogies. He says, for instance: "At a certain time 99 One alone grew out of Many, and at another it grew apart to be Many out of One" (B 26); "...Thus in that they have learned to grow one from many, and as the one is divided turn into many again..." (B 17, 1-2). On the whole, however, the idea of “mingling” predominates and it is only by way of " complying with custom" that the philosopher uses the words "birth and "death." Things are conceived by Empedocles as combinations of elements mixed in definite proportions and he goes on to explain that flesh and blood contain equal quantities of all elements, bone is made up of two parts of water, two parts of earth and four parts of fire, etc.

p Having discarded the Ionian doctrine of hylosoism or universally animated matter and facing the problem of motion, Empedocles is led to postulate, in addition to his four elements, two contrary forces, Love and Strife, as motive causes. These movers are also understood as material agents possessing physical properties. Love, for instance, is "equal in length and breadth" to the elements and pervades the universe, i.e. is regarded as extended in space. Speaking of "cementing Love" and "baneful Strife," Empedocles associates them respectively with moisture and fire, i.e. physical elements. On the other hand, however, they are anthropo- and sociomorphic forces, Love being also referred to as Amity, Harmony or Aphrodite, Strife, as hatred, war, or Ares. Empedocles thus brought together, as it were, the Italian and Ionian Muses—Heraclitean Strife and Pythagorean harmony. The result was that the living harmony of opposites, the union of contrasts inherent in reality gave way to a cyclic change in time.

The cosmic process described by Empedocles in terms of mixing and separation is an endless alternation of two opposite movements. When Love rules unopposed, all elements are fused into a unity and make a sphere, whereas Strife is held at its periphery. Then Strife enters the Sphere and begins to drive Love to the centre and separate the elements until it takes full possession. After this the reverse movement begins, Love reasserts itself and brings the separated elements together, restoring the sphere. This succession goes on for ever. Empedocles describes it in the following words: "I shall tell of a double (process); at one time it increased so as to be a single One out of Many; at another time again it grew apart so as to be Many out of One. There is a double creation of mortals and a double decline; the union of all things