They say that Empedocles told [sc. his friend] Pausanias about the Non-Breather.[1] [He said that] the Non-Breather was someone who for 30 days kept his body without breath and without food. This man [Empedocles] was also a magician. And he says about himself: "You [who read this poem] shall learn whatever drugs are defense against evils and old age, since for you alone I shall accomplish all this. You shall stop the [strength] of restless winds, which arising on the earth lay waste to the fields with their blasts; and again, if you wish, you shall bring back winds in requital. You shall make after the black rain a seasonable [flow] drought for men,[2] and after the drought you shall cause tree-nourishing streams, and they will be in the summer.[3] You will bring back from Hades the strength of a dead man." And once when the Etesian winds[4] blew strongly, so as to damage the crops, having bidden donkeys to be skinned and bags to be made of their skins, he stretched them out on the hills and headlands to collect the wind. When the wind stopped, he was called 'Wind-stayer.'"[5]