Note: Translator Pauline Bancroft Flach died in 1966, less than 70 years ago. Therefore, this work is protected by copyright, restricting your legal rights to reproduce it. However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now. Read more about copyright.
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VICTORY 315
XI
VICTORY
Far back in ancient days the great philosopher
Empedokles lived in Sicily. He was the most
beautiful and the most perfect of men; so wonderful
and so wise that the people regarded him as an
incarnate god.
Empedokles owned a country-place on Etna, and
one evening he prepared a feast there for his friends.
During the repast he spoke such words that they
cried out to him: “Thou art a god, Empedokles;
thou art a god!” J
During the night Empedokles thought: “You
have risen as high as you can rise on earth. Now
die, before adversity and feebleness take hold of
you.” And he wandered up to the summit of Etna
and threw himself into the burning crater. “ When
no one can find my body,” he thought, “the people
will say that I have been taken up alive to the
gods.”
The next morning his friends searched for him
through the villa and on the mountain. They too
came up to the crater, and there they found by the
crater’s mouth Empedokles’ sandal. They
understood that Empedokles had sought death in the
crater in order to be counted among the immortals.
He would have succeeded had not the mountain
cast up his shoe.
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