Born: 490 B.C.   Died: 430 B.C.

Empedocles of Agrigentum was a Greek Presocratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek colony in Sicily. He maintained that all matter is made up of four Elements (which he called roots): water, earth, air and fire. In addition to these, he postulated something called Love (philia) to explain the attraction of different forms of matter, and something called Strife (neikos) to account for their separation. Empedocles was also a mystic and a poet, and some consider him the inventor of the study of rhetoric (Gorgias of Leontini was his student). His actions and teaching betrayed an egalitarian streak: he fought to preserve Greek democracy, allowed that others could become divine through his teachings (as he himself claimed to have become divine through knowledge), and he even went so far to suggest that all living things were on the same spiritual plane, indicating he was influenced by the Pythagoreans. Like them, he believed in the transmigration of souls between humans and animals and followed a vegetarian lifestyle. (Source)