Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Empedocles, as Hippobotus says, was the son of Meton, the son of Empedocles, and was of Acragas. Timaeus also says the same in the fifteenth book of his Histories, adding that Empedocles, the grandfather of the poet, was an illustrious man. Hermippus also says the same as Timaeus. Likewise Heraclides in On Diseases says that he was of an illustrious family, his grandfather having kept racehorses. Eratosthenes also says in his Olympic Victors that the father of Meton won the seventy-first Olympiad, using Aristotle as a witness.

​Apollodorus the grammarian says in his Chronica: "He was the son of Meton; but Glaucus says that he came to Thurii when it was completely newly founded." Then, continuing further down: "Those who relate that, having fled from home, he was at Syracuse and fought with them against the Athenians, seem to me to be entirely ignorant; for he was either no longer alive or completely decrepit, which does not appear to be the case." For Aristotle, and further Heraclides, says that he died at sixty years of age. And the one who won the seventy-first Olympiad "with a riding horse was his namesake grandfather," so that the date is simultaneously indicated by Apollodorus.

​Satyrus says in his Lives that Empedocles was the son of Exaenetus, and himself also left a son Exaenetus; and that at the same Olympiad one won with a riding horse, and his son in wrestling, or, as Heraclides says in the Epitome, in the footrace. But I found in the Memorabilia of Favorinus that Empedocles also sacrificed an ox made of honey and barley meal to the sacred envoys, and had a brother Callicratides. Telauges, the son of Pythagoras, says in his letter to Philolaus that Empedocles was the son of Archinomus.

​That he was an Acragantine from Sicily, he himself says at the beginning of the Purifications: "O friends who dwell in the great city along the yellow Acragas, up on the heights of the citadel." Such, then, are the accounts concerning his family. That he heard Pythagoras, Timaeus relates throughout the ninth book, saying that having been convicted of plagiarism at that time, just like Plato, he was forbidden from sharing in the discourses. And he says that Empedocles himself also mentions Pythagoras, saying: "There was among them a man knowing surpassing things, who indeed acquired the greatest wealth of wisdom." Others, however, say that he speaks this referring to Parmenides.

​Neanthes says that down to Philolaus and Empedocles the Pythagoreans shared their discourses; but when he published them through poetry, they made a law not to impart them to any epic poet. And he says that Plato also suffered the same; for he too was barred. However, from which one of them Empedocles heard, he did not state; for the letter circulating under the name of Telauges, stating that he studied under Hippasus and Brontinus, is not trustworthy. Theophrastus says that he became an emulator and imitator of Parmenides in his poems; for the latter also put forth his discourse On Nature in epic verses.

​Hermippus says that he was an emulator not of Parmenides, but of Xenophanes, with whom he associated and whose epic poetry he imitated; and that later he met with the Pythagoreans. Alcidamas in the Physics says that around the same time Zeno and Empedocles heard Parmenides, then later withdrew, and Zeno philosophized on his own, while Empedocles heard Anaxagoras and Pythagoras; and from the latter he emulated the solemnity of both life and bearing, and from the former his natural philosophy.

​Aristotle in the Sophist says that Empedocles first discovered rhetoric, and Zeno dialectic. In On Poets he says that Empedocles was also Homeric and powerful in diction, being metaphorical and employing the other artistic achievements of poetry; and that although he had written other poems, both the Crossing of Xerxes and a Prelude to Apollo, a sister of his (or daughter, as Hieronymus says) later burned them, the prelude unintentionally, but the Persian poem deliberately because it was unfinished.