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5S1 E N A 



Empcdocks. He was possessed of considerable poetical talent?, and 

 ~v - has been supposed to be the author of that ancient 

 fragment, which bears the name of " The Golden Ver- 

 ses of Pythagoras." The fragments of his verses, dis- 

 persed through various ancient writers, have been col- 

 lected by Henry Stephens in his " Poetry of the Phi- 

 losophers " but, if credit may be given to the high 

 commendations bestowed by Aristotle, Lucretius, and 

 others, upon his poetry and eloquence, the greater part 

 of his productions in both these departments must 

 have perished at an early date. He was not less dis- 

 tinguished by his skill in medicine, and seems to have 

 owed much of his influence and reputation to the won- 

 derful cures which he was understood to have performed. 

 These lie did not hesitate to pass upon the multitude 

 as the effects of magic, or of some miraculous power ; 

 and pretended not only to cure all diseases, but to 

 drive away old age, and to restore the dead to life, to 

 raise or moderate the winds, to produce rain or heat, 

 and to check the progress of epidemical diseases. He 

 may be supposed, indeed, by his medical and physi- 

 cal knowledge, to have rendered several actual servi- 

 ces to his country, as when he is said to have remo- 

 ved one pestilence by fumigation, another by closing 

 a chasm in a neighbouring mountain, from which he 

 observed pestilential effluvia to proceed, and another 

 by correcting the corrupted waters of the river Seli- 

 nus, by directing two small streams into its channel ; 

 but he appears to have taken advantage of the ignorant 

 admiration which he received, and is reported to have 

 been highly gratified with the divine honours which 

 were paid him on some of these occasions. He made a 

 liberal use of his large paternal estate, especially in 

 giving dowries to young women, and procuring them 

 suitable marriages. I le took an active interest in the 

 political state of his native city, and was a determined 

 enemy to tyrannical measures, and a zealous advocate 

 tor the popular form of government. He at length 

 became an object of so great veneration to his fellow ci- 

 tizens, that they were ready to acknowledge him as ex- 

 alted alx>ve the nature of man, and finally offered to 

 invest him with the sovereign power. Preferring the 

 tranquillity of a private station, to the splendour and 

 embarrassments of public life, he declined to accept the 

 office and title, while, at the same time, he evinced a 

 strong disposition to assume all the distinctions and ap- 

 pearance of royalty. Clothed in a purple robe, crown- 

 ed with laurel, with brazen f-andals on his feet, witli 

 long flowing hair, with a grave and commanding as- 

 pect, habited, in short, like the gods, and accompanied 

 by a number of attendants, he was fond of parading 

 the public ways, and receiving the plaudits of the 

 people. He is said by Aristotle to have died at sixty 

 years of age ; but very various accounts are given of 

 the manner of his death. Some authors relate, that he 

 broke his leg by falling from a chariot, which brought 

 on a mortal distemper. Others say, that he termina- 

 ted his own existence by throwing himself into the sea, 

 or by strangulation with a rope. Another account af- 

 firms, that, in his anxiety to examine the crater of 

 Mount Etna, he advanced too far, and accidentally fell 

 into the burning gulf. While another report bears, 

 that, alter a sacred festival, he ascended Mount Etna 

 during tiie night, and threw himself into the volcano, 

 in the liope that, the manner of his death being un- 

 known, he might afterwards be accounted a divine j>er- 

 son ; but that one of his brazen sandals having been 

 thrown out in a subsequent irruption, his mortality 

 was sufficiently confirmed. 



Dent immortalit haberi 

 Dum mpit Empedocles, ardentem frigidui 

 Insilu.it. HORACE An Poet. V. 4C5. 



But the most probable opinion is, that, as Timaeus 

 relates, he went to Greece about the latter part of his 

 life, and never returned to his native country, so that 

 the time and manner of his death was never certainly 

 known. A statue was erected to his memory at Agri- 

 gentum, which was afterwards carried to Rome ; and 

 the inhabitants of that city, even in the time of Lu- 

 cretius, made it their highest boast, that it had given 

 birth to so eminent a person as Empedocles, whose 

 poems particularly they still regarded as oracles. Of the 

 few of his sayings which have been preserved, the 

 most frequently cited is his reproof of the luxurious 

 manners of the Agrigentines, namely, that " they pur- 

 sued pleasures with as much eagerness as if they were 

 to die before to-morrow, and that they built houses with 

 as much magnificence as if they were to live for ever." 

 His philosophy, as far as it can be collected from his 

 fragments, is evidently atomical ; that the first prin- 

 ciples of nature are of two kinds, active and passive ; 

 that the active is unity or God, a subtle ethereal fire, in- 

 telligent and divine, which gives being to all things, ani- 

 mates all things, and into which all things shall be finally 

 resolved ; that one spirit thus pervades the universe, 

 uniting all created beings to itself and to one another, 

 and that it is therefore unlawful to kill or eat animals, 

 which are allied to us in their principle of life ; that 

 the passive principle, viz. matter, is divided into round 

 corpuscles, indefinitely small, originally eternal, and 

 never capable of being annihilated ; that these cor- 

 puscles, being put into motion by the intellectual fire 

 or divine mind, the homogeneous particles united by 

 a principle of affinity, and the heterogeneous separated 

 by a principle of discord, and thus formed the four 

 elements, fire, earth, water and air, of which all bodies 

 are composed ; that the world is one whole, surrounded 

 by the heavens, which are a solid body of air crystal- 

 lized by lire, the sun a fiery mass, the stars fixed in the 

 crystal of heaven, while the planets wander freely be- 

 neath ; that many demons, emanations of the divine 

 nature, inhabit the region of the air, and administer 

 human affairs ; that the soul of man consists of two 

 parts, the sensitive, produced like the elements, and 

 the rational, a demon sprung from the divine soul of. 

 the universe, and sent down into this world as a punish- 

 ment for crimes committed in a former state, to be pu- 

 rified by transmigrations through animal and vegetable 

 bodies ; that he distinctly remembered himself to have 

 been successively a girl, a boy. a bird, a fish, a shrub, 

 and, lastly, Empedocles ; and that all nature is subject 

 to the immutable and eternal law of necessity. See 

 Cudworth's Intel. System; Stanley's Liars of the Phi- 

 losoplier* ; Fenelon's Lives of the Philostijilicrt transla- 

 ted by the Rev. J.Cormack; Castellan! I'll. Malic. Illus.; 

 and Brucker's Hist, of Phil, by Mn fit-Id, vol. i. (q) 



EMPETRUM, agenus of plants of the class Dioecia, 

 and order Triandria, See BOTANY, p. 335. 



EMPLEUNON, a genus of plants of the class Mo- 

 na-cia, and order Tetrandria. See BOTANY, p. 324. 



ENAMEL is a substance of the nature of glass, but 

 differs from it principally in two points ; first, in its be- 

 ing more easily fusible, which quality is given to it by 

 the manner in which the flux is compounded ; second- 

 ly, in having a large proportion of cither earth, or metallic 

 oxide, united with the flux, to produce opacity. Some 

 enamels are, however, very transparent, possessing 



Empedocles 



II 

 Enamel. 



