Various accounts of Empedocle's death are given in ancient sources. His enemies said that his desire to be thought a god led him to throw himself into the crater of Mount Etna so that he might vanish from the world completely and thus lead men to believe he had achieved apotheosis. Unfortunately the volcano defeated his design by throwing out one of the philosopher's sandals.

None of the gods has formed the world, nor has any man, it has always been.

What is right may properly be uttered even twice.

Each man believes only his experience.

[On the volcano.] And many a fire there burns beneath the ground.

The force that unites the elements to become all things is Love, also called Aphrodite; Love brings together dissimilar elements into a unity, to become a composite thing. Love is the same force that human beings find at work in themselves whenever they feel joy, love and peace. Strife, on the other hand, is the force responsible for the dissolution of the one back into its many, the four elements of which it was composed.

At one time through love all things come together into one, at another time through strife s hatred, they are borne each of them apart.