Empedocles
c. 495 BCE–c. 435 BCE · Acragas
Sicilian philosopher-poet who proposed the four elements (fire, air, water, earth) governed by Love and Strife; combined Pythagorean reincarnation with Eleatic ontology.
“For before now I have been at some time boy and girl, bush, bird, and a mute fish in the sea.”
Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→
AcragasMagna Graecia (Sicily)
What they did here
Empedocles was born at Acragas (Akragas/Agrigentum) in Sicily c.494 BCE into a prominent family; his grandfather had won an Olympic victory (Diogenes Laertius 8.51-53).
About Acragas
A magnificent and immensely wealthy Greek city of southern Sicily—adorned with its still-standing Valley of the Temples—and the home of Empedocles, the philosopher-poet who taught that all things are made of four roots bound and parted by Love and Strife.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Empedocles’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Graeco-Roman world
- Epicharmus· 540 BCE–450 BCE
- Heraclitus· 540 BCE–480 BCE
- Aeschylus· 525 BCE–456 BCE
- Themistocles· 524 BCE–459 BCE
- Pindar· 518 BCE–438 BCE
- Bacchylides· 518 BCE–451 BCE
- Parmenides· 515 BCE–445 BCE
- Diogenes of Apollonia· 500 BCE–428 BCE
- Anaxagoras· 500 BCE–428 BCE
- Sophocles· 496 BCE–406 BCE
- Zeno of Elea· 490 BCE–430 BCE
- Protagoras· 490 BCE–420 BCE
- Herodotus· 484 BCE–425 BCE
- Gorgias of Leontini· 483 BCE–376 BCE
- Leucippus· 480 BCE–420 BCE
- Hippias of Elis· 480 BCE–415 BCE
- Antiphon· 480 BCE–411 BCE
- Euripides· 480 BCE–406 BCE
- Melissus of Samos· 470 BCE–430 BCE
- Socrates· 470 BCE–399 BCE
- Philolaus of Croton· 470 BCE–385 BCE
- Prodicus· 465 BCE–395 BCE
- Critias· 460 BCE–403 BCE
- Thucydides· 460 BCE–400 BCE
Jewish world
Buddhist world
Scientists
Luminaries & Explorers world
Hindu world
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.