Now Telauges and Theano we have mentioned; and we must now speak of Empedocles, in the first place, for, according to some accounts, he was a pupil of Pythagoras.
LIFE OF EMPEDOCLES.
I. Empedocles, as Hippobotus relates, was the son of Meton, the son of Empedocles, and a citizen of Agrigentum. And Timæus, in the fifteenth book of his Histories, gives the same account, adding that Empedocles, the grandfather of the poet, was also a most eminent man. And Hermippus tells the same story as Timæus; and in the same spirit Heraclides, in his treatise on Diseases, relates that he was of an illustrious family, since his father bred a fine stud of horses. Erastothenes, in his List of the Conquerors at the Olympic Games, says, that the father of Meton gained the victory in the seventy-first olympiad, quoting Aristotle as his authority for the assertion.
But Apollodorus, the grammarian, in his Chronicles, says that he was the son of Meton; and Glaucus says that he came to Thurii when the city was only just completed. And then proceeding a little further, he adds:—
And some relate that he did flee from thence,
And came to Syracuse, and on their side
Did fight in horrid war against th’ Athenians;
But those men seem to me completely wrong—
For by this time he must have been deceased,
Or very old, which is not much believed;