Empedocles (c. 492–432 BC) was an exception. A Sicilian of noble birth, he was an orator, poet, politician, healer and charismatic seer. In the opening lines of his religious poem Purifications, he presents himself as an immortal god and describes how, when he enters a city, thousands flock to him requesting cures and oracles – requests which he satisfied, on at least on one occasion, by raising the dead. Jesus with an ego, then, or Zarathustra with attitude, but he was also an immensely influential natural philosopher who wrote On Nature, several thousand lines of verse containing, among
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