Empedocles: the Greek philosopher who jumped into a volcano to prove that he was a god

At the time of Empedocles’ birth around 495 BCE, Acragas ranked among the wealthiest and most culturally lively cities in the western Greek world in the view of many ancient writers.

The city’s architectural projects included temples that were raised during the middle decades of the fifth century BCE such as the Temple of Concordia and reflected the pride in the city and artistic goals of its rulers.

His family held a high position in the city’s aristocracy, with his grandfather achieving fame as a victor in an Olympic horse race and his father, traditionally identified as Meton, remaining active in public affairs.

During his youth, Empedocles moved in circles that valued skill in public speaking and public performance, and he absorbed teachings from both Pythagorean and Eleatic traditions.

As his reputation grew, so too did his love of public display. According to Diogenes Laertius, he adopted a striking costume that included bronze sandals and richly dyed robes that were fastened with a golden girdle, and he carried laurel wreaths that were often linked to oracular holiness.

Ancient writers claimed that he promoted himself as a healer and prophet, and he also presented himself as a weather-controlling wonderworker.

Through this careful self-presentation, he reinforced the spiritual side of his teachings and spread the influence of his philosophical authority. 

He also took part in public affairs. He opposed tyrannical rule and supported laws that favoured equality, although he avoided holding long-term political office.

Some ancient accounts linked him to the overthrow of Thrasydaeus, the son of the tyrant Theron, though the historical accuracy of this claim remains uncertain.

Instead, he focused on writing and oral teaching. His two works that survived were On Nature and Purifications in hexameter verse, and they combined natural philosophy with religious ethics.

Each poem addressed different aspects of existence: one tried to explain the physical structure of the cosmos, and the other guided souls toward spiritual release.

Later writers such as Simplicius and Plutarch preserved substantial fragments, and modern scholars who work from collections such as the Diels–Kranz fragments estimate that roughly 400 to 450 lines survive from both texts combined.

To explain how the world worked, Empedocles developed a theory that identified four basic substances as the basic parts of the world.

He called them “roots,” and they included earth, air, fire, and water. Each one existed eternally, and none could be created or destroyed.

The changes that people saw in nature resulted from their combination and separation under the influence of two cosmic forces rather than from transformation of the substances themselves. 

Instead of relying on gods in human form, he introduced Love and Strife as the opposing forces that caused change.

Love caused different elements to draw together, while Strife pulled them apart.

Over time, the two forces took turns in control, producing a repeating cosmic cycle.

Love was at its peak and merged the elements into a single sphere. Strife became ascendant and shattered that unity and allowed individual forms to reappear.

He described this process in vivid language and wrote, “By Love all things are brought together into one, by Strife they are driven apart.” 

As a result, all visible change, from birth and death to weather patterns and decay, came from shifting arrangements of the same four substances.

He argued that nothing came from nothing and that nothing truly ceased to exist.

According to Empedocles, matter always stayed present, and only its shape or position changed.

This claim has led many scholars to compare it to much later principles about the persistence of matter and has placed him among the earliest thinkers to reject the idea of things suddenly appearing or being completely destroyed. 

Importantly, his theory also sought to explain natural processes without calling on myth.

His element theory offered a possible model of the world that required no action from the gods, though it still rested on principles that blended science with poetry.

Later writers such as Aristotle responded to this model and recognised how far-reaching it was, and they also expressed concern over its reliance on metaphorical language.

Alongside his physical theories, Empedocles developed a vision of moral cleansing that rested on the belief in reincarnation.

He taught that souls, after committing crimes against purity, fell from the status of gods and began a cycle of rebirths in different bodies, in which they passed first through animal forms and then human lives, and in which purified souls at last returned to the status of gods.

Each stage in the cycle depended on the soul’s ethical conduct and its ability to correct past errors. 

According to verses that survived, he had already lived as a boy, a girl, a bush, a bird, and a fish.

He used these claims to stress the close connection between all living beings and to argue against animal sacrifice and the eating of flesh.

If a soul might inhabit any form, then acts of violence against animals risked harming what was once or would one day become human.

As a result, Empedocles promoted a life of self-denial and self-discipline, built around repeated acts of ritual cleansing.

In one of his verses, he warned, “Will you not cease from the noise of slaughter? Do you not see you are devouring one another in thoughtless ignorance?” 

He did not speak of these ideas in general terms. In fact, he identified himself as someone who had already broken much of the chain of punishment and reward.

In one preserved line, he declared, “Among you I go as an immortal god, no longer mortal.”

With such words, he cast himself as a teacher and as a model of a return to godhood, offering those around him the hope of joining him if they followed his path.

According to multiple ancient sources, the philosopher’s end reportedly took place near Mount Etna, an active volcano that dominated the eastern side of Sicily.

As his fame spread, so too did the claims among some followers that he had reached the status of gods.

At some point in his later life, he reportedly climbed Etna’s slopes and hurled himself into the crater because he intended to vanish in fire and smoke so that he would leave behind no physical trace and no evidence of mortality. 

Later accounts added a detail that worked against his plan. A single bronze sandal, distinctive and recognisable, flew out from the crater and landed where others could find it.

The volcano, it seemed, had exposed the trick, because his attempt to disappear had failed, and the presence of the sandal revealed that he had died a human death, not ascended as a god. 

Writers from Heraclides Ponticus to Lucian offered different interpretations.

Some believed Empedocles had staged the event to manipulate others into believing he had become a god.

Others treated the story as myth rather than history, arguing that it served as a moral or philosophical fable.

Still others saw it as a tragic result of pride, where a philosopher’s belief in his own doctrine went too far. Aristotle was generally sceptical and did not dismiss the report outright, which suggests that the tale persisted in respected circles. 

The image of the philosopher leaping into fire proved irresistible. Ancient poets drew on the story to explore the boundaries between wisdom and delusion, and later thinkers used it to mock those who claimed too much knowledge.

Whether the story was true or false, it became inseparable from Empedocles’ name.

Empedocles’ writings were incomplete and have influenced later Greek science and medicine.

His idea of the four roots became an important part of Hippocratic medicine and later alchemical theory, where people who used these ideas treated health as a balance of elemental forces.

Galen drew on his ideas when discussing the balance of humours, and medieval alchemists adapted his root elements into their set of symbols.

Aristotle, though critical of his poetic language and lack of exactness, engaged seriously with his cosmological framework and accepted the four elemental substances, and he rejected Love and Strife in favour of his own explanations of motion and causation. 

Roman writers continued to struggle with his image, and Lucretius admired early atomists and praised Empedocles for rejecting myth and seeking rational explanations.

Cicero commented on his poetic skill, and Christian theologians pointed to his story, which they treated as an example of pagan foolishness.

Later, in the Renaissance, humanists such as Marsilio Ficino revived his writings and returned to his theories as part of a wider interest in pre-Socratic philosophy.

Poets like Friedrich Hölderlin explored his death in dramatic verse, and they used the Etna leap as a symbol of the tragic longing to rise above human limits. 

Over time, many readers have come to see Empedocles as a figure caught between wisdom and madness.

His poems offered a vision of a cosmos ruled by forces that did not care about people and inhabited by souls that tried to return to purity.

His final act, whether real or invented, captured the struggle between the limits of human knowledge and the desire to escape those limits completely.

His influence mainly came through stories of flame and survives in scattered fragments and guesswork, along with the echo of a single bronze sandal hurled back by the earth.