Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/362

 340 HISTORY OF GREECE. certain moderate aptitude in the use of these weapons ; for the ambitious few, to devote much labor and to shine as accomplished orators. Such political and social motives, it is to be remembered, though acting very forcibly at Athens, were by no means peculiar to Athens, but prevailed more or less throughout a large portion ot the Grecian cities, especially in Sicily, when all the governments became popularized after the overthrow of the Gelonian dynasty. And it was in Sicily and Italy, that the first individuals arose, who acquired permanent name both in rhetoric and dialectics : Empedokles of Agrigentum in the former ; Zeno of Elea, in Italy, in the latter. 1 Both these distinguished men bore a conspicuous part in poli- tics, and both on the popular side ; Empedokles against an oli- garchy, Zeno against a despot. But both also were yet more distinguished as philosophers, and the dialectical impulse in Zeno, if not the rhetorical impulse in Empedokles, came more from his philosophy than from his politics. Empedokles (about 470-440 B.C.) appears to have held intercourse at least, if not partial communion of doctrine, with the dispersed philosophers of the Pythagorean league ; the violent subversion of which, at Kroton and elsewhere, I have related in a previous chapter. 2 He con- structed a system of physics and cosmogony, distinguished for 6rst broaching the doctrine of the Four elements, and set forth in a poem composed by himself: besides which he seems to have had much of the mystical tone and miraculous pretensions of Pythagoras; professing not only to cure pestilence and other distempers, but to teach how old age might be averted and the dead raised from Hades ; to prophesy, and to raise and calm the winds at his pleasure. Gorgias, his pupil, deposed to having been present at the magical ceremonies of Empedokles. 3 The eloquenlia putanda est ; sine qua etiam tu, Brute, judicavisti, tc illam justam eloquentiam, quam dialecticam dilatatam esse putant, consequi ncn posse Iluic ego doctori, et ejus artibus variis et multis, ita eram tamen deditus, ut b exercitationibus oratoriis nullus dies vacaret." (Cicero, Brutus, 9(1, 309.J 1 Aristotel. ap. Diog. Laert. viii, 57. 2 See my preceding vol. iv, ch. xxxvii. 1 Diogen. Laert. viii, 58, 59, who gives a remarkable extract from th poem of Empedokles, attesting these large pretensions.