a celebrated philosopher and poet, Empedocles was born at Agrigentum, a city in Sicily. He followed the Pythagorean philosophy, and admitted the doctrine of the metempsychosis. He constantly appeared with a crown of gold on his head, in order to maintain, by this outward pomp, the reputation which he had acquired of being a very extraordinary person. Yet Aristotle says that he was a great lover of liberty, extremely averse to state and command, and that he even refused a kingdom which was offered him. His principal work was a treatise in verse on the Nature and Principles of Things. Aristotle, Lucretius, and all the ancients, pronounce the most magnificent eulogiums on his poetry and eloquence. Empedocles taught rhetoric, and often alleviated the anxieties of his mind, as well as the pains of his body, with music. It is reported that his curiosity to visit the flames of the crater of Ætna proved fatal to him. Some maintain that he wished it to be believed that he was a god, and, in order that his death might be unknown, threw himself into the crater, and perished in the flames. If such were his expectations, however, they were frustrated; for the volcano, by throwing up one of his sandals, discovered to the world that Empedocles had perished by fire. Others report that he lived to an extreme old age, and was drowned in the sea about 440 years before the Christian era.