But Empedocles, born after these men, also said many things about the nature of demons, and how they being very many go about managing things upon the earth. He said that the beginning of the universe was Strife and Friendship and that the intellectual fire of the monad is God, and that all things were constructed from fire and will be resolved into fire.[48] In which opinion the Stoics also nearly agree, since they expect an ecpyrosis. But most of all he accepted the change into different bodies, saying:
“For truly a boy I became, and a maiden, And bush, and bird of prey, and fish, A wanderer from the salt sea.”[49]
[Sidenote: p. 15.] He declared that all souls transmigrated into all living things.[50] For Pythagoras the teacher of these men said he himself had been Euphorbus who fought at Ilion, and claimed to recognize the shield.[51] This of Empedocles.
But Heraclitus of Ephesus, a physicist, bewailed all things, accusing the ignorance of all life and of all men, and pitying the life of mortals. For he claimed that he knew all things and other men nothing.[52] And he also made statements nearly in accord with Empedocles, as he said that Discord and Friendship were the beginning of all things, and that the intellectual fire was God and that all things were borne in upon one another and did not stand still. And like Empedocles he said that every place of ours was filled with evil things, and that these come as far as the moon extending from the place surrounding the earth, but go no further, since the whole place above the moon is very pure.[53] Thus, too, it seemed to Heraclitus. [Sidenote: p. 16.] And after these came other physicists whose opinions we do not think it needful to declare as they are in no way incongruous with those aforesaid. But since the school was by no means small, and many physicists afterwards sprang from these, all discoursing in different fashion on the nature of the universe, it seems also fit to us, now that we have set forth the philosophy derived from Pythagoras, to return in order of succession to the opinions of those who adhered to Thales, and after recounting the same to come to the ethical and logical philosophies, whereof Socrates founded the ethical and Aristotle the dialectic.