Vitae philosophorum

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.[*](444-441 b.c.) Demetrius of Troezen in his pamphlet Against the Sophists said of him, adapting the words of Homer[*](Od. xi. 278.):

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[*](viii. 35.) 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[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 123.):

Thou, Empedocles, didst cleanse thy body with nimble flame, fire didst thou drink from everlasting bowls.[*](i.e. the craters of Etna.) 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.

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[*](Fr. 6 D.):

Shining Zeus and life-bringing Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis, who lets flow from her tears the source of mortal life,

And their continuous change, he says, never ceases,[*](Fr. 17. 6 D.) as if this ordering of things were eternal. At all events he goes on[*](Fr. 17. 7 D.):

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

The sun he calls a vast collection of fire and larger than the moon; the moon, he says, is of the shape of a quoit, and the heaven itself crystalline. The soul, again, assumes all the various forms of animals and plants. At any rate he says[*](Fr. 117 D.):

Before now I was born a boy and a maid, a bush and a bird, and a dumb fish leaping out of the sea.

His poems On Nature and Purifications run to 5000 lines, his Discourse on Medicine to 600. Of the tragedies we have spoken above.

Epicharmus of Cos, son of Helothales, was another pupil of Pythagoras. When three months old he was sent to Megara in Sicily and thence to Syracuse, as he tells us in his own writings. On his statue this epigram is written[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 78.):

If the great sun outshines the other stars,
1. If the great sea is mightier than the streams,
2. So Epicharmus’ wisdom all excelled,
3. Whom Syracuse his fatherland thus crowned.