EMPEDOCLES of AGRIGENTUM ("Εμπεδοκλῆς, Empedocles"). — A complex figure, a physician, naturalist, philosopher, and statesman, concerning whom legend and history are not easily disentangled, lived between 490-430 B.C. He promoted the democratic party in his homeland, but seems to have died in exile in the Peloponnese. Undoubtedly legendary is the tradition accepted by Horace: "deus immortalis haberi dum cupit Empedocles, ardentem frigidus Actnam insiluit" (Ep., II, 3, 464), although in a well-known fragment he says he wanders as a god among mortals, honored by all.
He wrote two works: I. Περὶ φύσεως ("On Nature") and Καθαρμοί ("Purifications") (some others are attributed to him with little foundation by Diogenes Laercius). In the first, it can be said, broadly speaking, that he occupies, like Anaxagoras and Democritus, a mediating position between the eclectic doctrine of being, which excludes becoming, and the Heraclitean doctrine of becoming, which excludes being: according to E., there is both being and becoming, the former represented by the four elements: fire, air, water, earth, the latter by the processes of mixture (μείξις) and separation (διάκρισις), respectively operated by Love (Διότις, Ἁρμονία, Ἀφροδίτη, Στοργή, Ἐνθουάνη, Κύπρις) and Strife (Νεῖκος, Κότος, Δῆμος, Ἄργος). The nature of these causes, which alternate in the governance of reality, is uncertain.
BIBL.:
E., Rome 1905; F. Johns, Luluzze n. E., Erlangen 1907; Cl. E. Milde, On the Interpretation of F., Chicago 1908; E. Bignone, I poeti filosofi della Grecia, E. Studio critico, Traduz. e commento delle testimonianze e dei frammenti, Turin 1916; F. Cherver, I. pp. 97-97, 48-49; V. Ziegenfuss, s.V. in Philosophien-Lexikon, I, Berlin 1940, pp. 283-284.