SOURCE: Kingsley, Peter. Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic, pp. 1-10. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1995.

In the following excerpt, Kingsley argues that prior evaluations of Empedocles, particularly those based on Aristotle or Theophrastus, should be discarded in favor of new, less problematic perspectives.

This book covers a wide area in space and time, but takes as its starting-point one man who lived well over two thousand years ago. That man was called Empedocles.

Empedocles was probably born around the start of the fifth century bc.¹ He was from the Greek colony of Acragas—modern Agrigento—on the south-west coast of Sicily; but he appears to have spent much of his time travelling, as one would anyway expect from ‘seers’ of his type in the world of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East.² About when he died, or where, or how, we know nothing.³ And yet this...