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.
Acragas through the eras
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Classical Age
Founded around 580 BCE and risen to extraordinary prosperity, Acragas (Latin Agrigentum) endured the tyranny of Phalaris and his notorious bronze bull before flourishing as one of the greatest cities of the Greek world—ranked by Pindar 'the fairest of mortal cities.' Here in the fifth century BCE lived Empedocles—physician, statesman, and democratic reformer as well as thinker—who held that the four elements of earth, water, air, and fire are eternally mixed and separated by the cosmic forces of Love and Strife, and who, by legend, leapt into the crater of Mount Etna. The city's glory was shattered when Carthage besieged and sacked it in 406 BCE during the long Sicilian wars.
Hellenistic Age
Caught for generations between Carthaginian power and the ambitions of Syracuse, Acragas changed hands repeatedly until it was drawn into the orbit of Rome. During the First Punic War the Romans besieged and took the city in 262 BCE, and after further struggles it passed permanently into Roman hands, becoming the provincial town of Agrigentum within Rome's first overseas province of Sicily.