brought an illness which caused his death at the age of seventy-seven. Moreover, his tomb is in Megara. As to his age, Aristotle's account is different, for he makes him to have been sixty when he died ; while others make him one hundred and nine. He flourished in the 84th Olympiad. a Demetrius of Troezen in his pamphlet Against the Sophists said of him, adapting the words of Homer b : He tied a noose that hung aloft from a tall cornel-tree and thrust his neck into it, and his soul went down to Hades. In the short letter of Telauges which was mentioned above c it is stated that by reason of his age he slipped into the sea and was drowned. Thus and thus much of his death. There is an epigram of my own on him in my Pammetros in a satirical vein, as follows d : Thou, Empedocles, didst cleanse thy body with nimble flame, fire didst thou drink from everlasting- bowls. 6 I will not say that of thine own will thou didst hurl thyself into the stream of Etna : thou didst fall in against thy will when thou wouldst fain not have been found out. And another f : Verily there is a tale about the death of Empedocles, how that once he fell from a carriage and broke his right thigh. But if he leapt into the bowls of fire and so took a draught of life, how was it that his tomb was shown still in Megara ? His doctrines were as follows, that there are four elements, fire, water, earth and air, besides friendship by which these are united, and strife by which they are separated. These are his words g :