[Empedokles], son of Meton, though some [say] Archinomos and others Xenetos;[1] and he had a brother Kallikratides.[2] He studied first with Parmenides, and, according to Porphyry in his Philosophical History, became his beloved.[3] But others maintained that he was a disciple of Telauges, son of Pythagoras.[4] From Akragas,[5] [he was] a natural philosopher and epic poet. He flourished during the 77th Olympiad.[6] With a gold crown on his head and bronze shoes on his feet and Delphic laurels in his hands, he would go from city to city, seeking a godlike reputation for himself. When he became old, one night he threw himself into a volcano, so that his body would disappear, and thus he died, but his sandal strap was thrown back up by the volcano. He was also called Wind-preventer, because when a strong wind was oppressing Akragas he surrounded the city with hides of asses.[7] Gorgias, the rhetorician from Leontini, became his student. And he wrote two books of epic verse about the nature of things; there are about two thousand lines of verse. [He also wrote] On medical matters in prose, and many other works.