44 According to Heraclides, son of Serapion, Pythagoras died at the age of eighty, which accords with Pythagoras’s own outline of the ages of men.66 But most authorities say he was ninety. And my own playful verses about him run as follows:
You were not the only one to abstain from animate things, but so did we.
For who has partaken of animate things, Pythagoras?
Once a dish is boiled, roasted, and salted,
What we eat is no longer animate.
Another:
So wise was Pythagoras that he would not touch meat,
And declared it wrong to do so,
Though he let others partake. A marvel of wisdom:
One should not transgress, said he; though he let others do so.
45 And another:
If you wish to know the mind of Pythagoras,
Observe the boss of Euphorbus’ shield.67
For it says, “I was a mortal once.” If, when he says
He was, he was not, then he was no one when he was.
Two views of a herm supposedly depicting Pythagoras. Roman copy of a Greek original from the fifth century BC.
And another, on how he died:
Alas, alas, why did Pythagoras have such a reverence for beans?
He died amid his disciples.
There lay a beanfield; to avoid trampling the beans
He was slain at a crossroads by the Agrigentines.
46 He flourished in the sixtieth Olympiad,68 and his community endured for nine or ten generations. For the last of the Pythagoreans, whom Aristoxenus knew, were Xenophilus of the Thracian Chalcidice, Phanton of Phlius, Echecrates, Diocles, and Polymnestus, also of Phlius, who were students of Philolaus and Eurytus, both of Tarentum.69
47,48 There were four men named Pythagoras who lived at about the same time and at no great distance from one another. One was from Croton, a man who aspired to a tyranny; another from Phlius, an athlete, and some say a gymnastics trainer; a third from Zacynthus;70
Do you recall a Pythagoras, friend, long-haired Pythagoras,
A famous boxer from Samos?
I am that Pythagoras. And if you ask an Elian to recount
My exploits, you’ll find his tale incredible.
Favorinus says that Pythagoras73 was the first to use definitions throughout the subject of mathematics, and that these were applied even more extensively by Socrates and his disciples, and later by Aristotle and the Stoics.
49 Moreover, he is said to have been the first to call the heavens “the cosmos” and to have said that the earth is spherical, though Theophrastus claims it was Parmenides who did so, and Zeno74 that it was Hesiod. They say that Cylon was a rival of Pythagoras, as Antilochus was of Socrates.75
Pythagoras the athlete was also the subject of this epigram:
He went, still a lad, to box with the lads at Olympia
Pythagoras of Samos,
50 The philosopher Pythagoras also wrote the following letter:
Pythagoras to Anaximenes76
Even you, O best of men, had you not surpassed Pythagoras in birth and fame, would have left Miletus and migrated. But as it is, your ancestral glory detains you, as it would have detained me had I resembled Anaximenes. But if you, the most useful men, abandon your cities, their good order will be destroyed, and they will be in greater danger from the Medes. For it is not right to be always meditating on the aether; finer it is to safeguard one’s country. For I too am not wholly occupied with my discourses, but take part in the wars the Italians wage with one another.
Since we have completed our account of Pythagoras, we must speak of the noteworthy Pythagoreans; after them we will discuss those philosophers referred to by some as “scattered”;77 and then we will tackle the succession of all who were worthy of mention as far as Epicurus, as we promised earlier. We have already dealt with Theano and Telauges. We must now speak first about Empedocles, since some maintain that he was a student of Pythagoras.
Empedocles
51,52 Empedocles, according to Hippobotus, was the son of Meton, son of Empedocles, and was a native of Agrigentum.78 Timaeus says the same in the fifteenth book of his Histories and adds that Empedocles, the poet’s grandfather, had been a distinguished man. Hermippus also agrees with Timaeus. Likewise Heraclides, in his work On Diseases, says that Empedocles belonged to an illustrious family, his grandfather having bred horses. And Eratosthenes, in his Victors at the Olympic Games, reports (on Aristotle’s authority) that Meton’s father won a victory in the seventy-first Olympiad.79 In his Chronology the grammarian Apollodorus says, “Empedocles was the son of Meton. And Glaucus says that Empedocles went to Thurii,80 which had just been founded.” Farther on he adds, “Those who report that, being exiled from his home to Syracuse, he went to Syracuse and fought in their war against the Athenians, seem to me to be utterly ignorant. For by then he was no longer living, or was a very old man, which belies the story.” For Aristotle, like Heraclitus, says he died at the age of sixty. And the man who, in the seventy-first Olympiad, won the horse race, was this man’s grandfather and namesake, so that at the same time Apollodorus gives us an indication of the date.
Marble votive relief, Greek, c. 500 BC. Found in Attica, this relief was probably set up in a sanctuary of the gods to honor the victor of a horse race.
53,54 Satyrus, however, in his Lives, says that Empedocles was the son of Exaenetus, and that Empedocles left a son named Exaenetus; and that in the same Olympiad, Empedocles himself was victorious in the horse race, and his son in wrestling, or, as Heraclides reports in his Epitome, in the footrace. I found in the Reminiscences of Favorinus that Empedocles presented the festival envoys with a sacrificial ox made of honey and barley meal, and that he had a brother named Callicratides. Telauges, son of Pythagoras, says in his letter81 to Philolaus that Empedocles was the son of Archinomus. It is because he was from Agrigentum in Sicily that he himself says at the beginning of his Purifications:
My friends, who inhabit the great city that slopes to
Yellow Acragas,82 close by the citadel.
So much for his family.
Timaeus, in the ninth book of his Histories, says that Empedocles was a student of Pythagoras, adding that after being convicted of plagiarizing the man’s discourses he was excluded, like Plato, from taking part in the school’s discussions. He adds that Empedocles himself mentions Pythagoras when he says,
Among them was a man of rare knowledge,
Who possessed an immense wealth of wisdom.
Others, however, maintain that here he is referring to Parmenides.83
55 Neanthes says that down to the time of Philolaus84 and Empedocles the Pythagoreans admitted one and all to their discussions. But when Empedocles made them common property by his poem, they established a rule that they should not be shared with any epic poet. He says that the same thing happened to Plato, for he too was excluded. But of which Pythagorean Empedocles was a student Neanthes did not say. For he held that the letter attributed to Telauges, and according to which Empedocles was linked with both Hippasus and Brotinus, is not trustworthy.
85
56 Theophrastus says that Empedocles was an admirer of Parmenides and that he imitated him in his poems. For Parmenides too composed his discourse On Nature in verse. Hermippus, on the other hand, maintains that it was not Parmenides he emulated but Xenophanes,86 with whom he lived and whose poetry he imitated; and that it was only later that he encountered the Pythagoreans. Alcidamas, in his work On Nature, says that Zeno87 and Empedocles studied with Parmenides at the same time, that subsequently they left him, and that Zeno developed his own philosophical system, while Empedocles became a student of Anaxagoras88 and Pythagoras; and that he emulated the latter in the dignity of his life and demeanor, and the former in his study of nature.
57,58 Aristotle, in the Sophist, states that Empedocles was the inventor of rhetoric, Zeno of dialectic. In his work On Poets he says that Empedocles wrote in the Homeric manner and proved adept in phraseology, since he had a gift for metaphors and all the other poetic devices. He also says that he wrote other poems, in particular the Crossing of Xerxes89 and the Hymn to Apollo. These his sister later burned (or his daughter, as Hieronymus says)—the hymn inadvertently, the Persian poem intentionally, because it was unfinished. He says that Empedocles generally wrote tragedies and political discourses. But Heraclides, son of Serapion, says the tragedies were the work of a different author. Hieronymus says he himself has read forty-three of them, while Neanthes says that the tragedies were written in Empedocles’ youth and that he himself has read seven of them.
59 Satyrus, in his Lives, says that Empedocles was also a doctor and an excellent orator. Gorgias of Leontini,90 at any rate, who excelled in rhetoric and has left a treatise on the art, had been his student. Apollodorus, in his Chronology, says that Gorgias lived to the age of 109. Satyrus quotes Gorgias as saying that he was present when Empedocles performed magic tricks. He also says that Empedocles, in his poems, claims to have this power and many others when he says:
All the drugs that are a defense against ailments and old age
You will learn, since for you alone I shall accomplish all this.
You will halt the force of tireless winds that sweep over the earth,
Devastating the cornfields with their gusts;
And in turn, if you wish, you will bring on requiting winds.
The dark rain you will transform into a drought favorable to men;
And the dry heat of summer you will transform
Into precipitations that nourish the trees, and they will abide in the sky.
And you will bring back from Hades a dead man’s strength.
60,61 Timaeus too, in his eighteenth book, says that the man was admired on many grounds. For example, when the Etesian winds91 once blew with such violence that they were damaging the crops, Empedocles gave orders for asses to be flayed and their skins used to make bags; stretching these near crests and mountain ridges, he captured the wind; and for making it cease he was called the “Wind-Checker.” And Heraclides, in his work On Diseases, says that Empedocles informed Pausanias92 about the woman who had ceased to breathe. For Pausanias, according to Aristippus93 and Satyrus, was Empedocles’ beloved, and it was to him that the philosopher dedicated On Nature as follows:
Hearken, Pausanias, son of Architus the wise!
He even composed an epigram about him:
The doctor Pausanias, son of Architus, the aptly named
Descendant of Asclepius, his country, Gela, nourished.
Many a man wasting away from grievous ills
Did he bring back from Persephone’s94 innermost sanctuary.
As for the woman who had ceased to breathe, Heraclides says her state was such that Empedocles kept her body for thirty days, though she never breathed and had no pulse;95 hence Heraclides called him both a doctor and a prophet, deriving both titles from these lines:
62
My friends, who inhabit the great city that slopes to yellow Acragas,
Close to the citadel, careful tenders of your fertile lands,
Greetings! For you I am a deathless god, no longer mortal,
I go among you honored by all, as is right,
Crowned with ribbons and blooming garlands.
Votive relief fragment of goddesses, mother, nurse, and infant, late fifth century BC, Greek. Both mother and infant often died during childbirth in antiquity. Showing the mother and child alive postpartum, this small relief was likely a thanks offering to a healing deity such as Asclepius or Hygieia.
As soon as I enter with these into flourishing towns
I am worshipped by men and women; tens of thousands
Follow me to learn where lies the path to well-being,
Some eager for oracles, others afflicted with manifold diseases,
Hoping to hear a healing word.
63 He explains that Empedocles called Agrigentum great because it had 800,000 inhabitants. Hence Empedocles, speaking of their luxury, said, “The Agrigentines live luxuriously as if they would die tomorrow, but build their houses as if they would live forever.”
64 It is said that Cleomenes the rhapsode recited this very poem, the Purifications, at Olympia, as Favorinus says in his Reminiscences. Aristotle too declares that Empedocles was freedom-loving, and averse to all authority, seeing that, as Xanthus relates in his account of him, he declined the kingship when it was offered to him, since he clearly preferred the simple life. Timaeus agrees with him and describes the occasion that revealed Empedocles’ democratic spirit. For he says that Empedocles was invited to dinner by one of the magistrates, and the meal proceeded, but no wine was served. Though the others kept quiet, Empedocles grew indignant and demanded that wine be served. But their host said he was waiting for the officer of the Assembly. When the latter arrived he was made toastmaster,96 an obvious arrangement on the part of the host, who was hinting at his design to make himself tyrant; for he ordered his guests to either drink or have the wine poured on their heads. At the time, Empedocles kept quiet; but the next day, hauling both host and toastmaster into court, he had them convicted and condemned to death. This, then, was the beginning of his political career.
65 Another time, when Acron the doctor asked the Assembly for a site on which to build a monument to his father, who had been an eminent doctor, Empedocles came forward and prevented it in a speech in which he addressed the subject of equality and in particular posed this question: “What inscription shall we put on it? Should it be this?
Acron, the eminent doctor of Agrigentum, son of Acros,
Lies beneath the eminent crag of his most eminent native city.”
Others say the second line was:
Lies in an eminent tomb on a most eminent peak.97
Some attribute the verses to Simonides.98
66 At a later time Empedocles dissolved the assembly of the Thousand three years after it had been established, which suggests not only that he was wealthy but that he had embraced the cause of democracy.99 Timaeus, at any rate, in his first and second books (for he mentions Empedocles frequently), says he seems to have held opposite views
Greetings! To you I am a deathless god, no longer mortal,
and so on. When he traveled to Olympia he was deemed worthy of extravagant regard, to the point where, in conversations, no one was mentioned more than Empedocles.
67 Later, however, when he sought to settle in Agrigentum,100 the descendants of his enemies opposed his return home; and this is why he retired to the Peloponnese, where he died. Nor did he escape Timon, who attacks him in these words:
and Empedocles, a bawler of vulgar verse;
He drew distinctions as subtly as he could;
The principles he set forth require other principles to explain them.
68 Of his death, different accounts are given. Heraclides, after relating the story of the woman who had stopped breathing, and saying that Empedocles won renown because he had sent off the dead w
oman alive, reports that he was offering a sacrifice near the field of Peisianax. Some of his friends had been invited, including Pausanias. After the feast, the others dispersed to rest, some under the trees in the next field, others wherever they liked, while Empedocles himself remained where he had reclined for the feast. At daybreak they got up, and he alone was missing. A search was made, and his servants, when questioned, said they did not know where he was. At that point someone said that during the night he had heard a booming voice calling Empedocles. Getting up, he had seen a heavenly light and a gleam of torches, but nothing else. The company was astounded by what had happened, and Pausanias went down and sent people to search for him. But later he hindered them from taking further trouble, saying that what had happened was worthy of a prayer, and that they should sacrifice to Empedocles as if he had become a god.
69 Hermippus, on the other hand, says that Empedocles had cured Panthea, an Agrigentine woman whom the doctors had despaired of saving, and that this was why he was conducting the sacrifice, to which nearly eighty persons had been invited. Hippobotus says that when Empedocles got up he made his way to Etna,101 and when he got there he leaped into the fiery craters and disappeared; for he wished to strengthen the rumor that he had become a god. But later the truth came out when one of his boots was disgorged by the volcano. For it was his habit to wear boots made of bronze. Pausanias, however, disputes this account.
Lives of the Eminent Philosophers Page 50