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EMPEDOOLES of the church, being one of the chief founders of Dickinson college and the originator of a plan designed to aid in the education of the sons of the clergy. Besides contributing near- ly every original article in the first two volumes of the "Methodist Quarterly Review," he wrote two pamphlets in reply to Bishop White's "Objections against Personal Assurance by the Holy Spirit;" "The Divinity of Christ vindicated against the Cavils of Mr. John Wright;" "The Defence of our Fathers ;" and " The Episcopal Controversy Reviewed." His son published his biography with a collection of his writings (8vo, New York, 1841). II. Robert, an American clergyman, son of the preceding, born in Philadelphia, July 29, 1814, died in Baltimore, May 18, 1848. He graduated at Columbia college in 1831, and commenced the study of law. In 1834 he was called to the chair of ancient languages in Dickinson college, resigned his professorship in 1839, and entered the Baltimore conference of the Metho- dist Episcopal church ; but in 1842 he was recalled, as president pro tern., during the absence of President Durbin, upon whose res- ignation Dr. Emory was chosen his successor. This office he held until the close of his life. Besides a life of his father, he wrote a " His- tory of the Discipline of the Methodist Epis- copal Church " (8vo, New York, 1843 ; re- vised and brought down to 1 856 by the Rev. W. P. Strickland), and an unfinished " Analysis of Butler's Analogy," which Avas completed by the Rev. George R. Crooks (1856). EMPEDOCLES, a Greek philosopher, born in Agrigentum, Sicily, flourished about the middle of the 5th century B. C. The son of a rich family, he was instructed by the Pythagoreans, and was acquainted with Parmenides and An- axagoras. Like his father Meton, the leader of the popular party at Agrigentum, he saved the republic from a dangerous conspiracy, and refused the supreme power. A priest and a poet, a physician and a philosopher, his con- temporaries esteemed him as a god ; Plato and Aristotle admired him, and Lucretius sang his praises. It is said that he saved the life of a woman in a lethargy from which other phy- sicians were powerless to revive her ; and that he blocked up a mountain gorge through which pestilential winds were driving upon Agrigen- tum, and at another time stopped the raging of the plague by turning two rivers through a morass. His vanity equalled his ability. He appeared in public only in the midst of a ret- inue of attendants, with a crown upon his head, sandals of brass on his feet, his hair float- ing over his shoulders, and a branch of laurel in his hand. He proclaimed his divinity him- self, and it was recognized throughout Sicily. It was his aim to affect the imagination not less than the reason. In his old age he left Sicily, not, as has been said, to converse with the priests of Egypt and the magi of the East, but to teach philosophy in Greece. He visited Thurium and Athens, sojourned in the Pelopon- EMPEROR 585 nesus, and read a poem at the Olympic games. His last days were passed in obscurity in the Peloponnesus. Some imagined that he was translated to heaven; others that he was drowned in the sea; that he fell from his chariot ; that he was strangled by his own hands ; or that he plunged into the crater of Etna, in order by hiding his body to certify his divinity, but that the volcano subsequently belched forth one of his sandals. The works of Empedocles were all in verse, embracing tragedies, epigrams, hymns, and an epic. The most important of them were two didactic poems, one on " Nature," the other on "Puri- fications," treating of worship and magic, and containing his religious precepts. Fragments only of these remain, but those of the treatise on nature are sufficient to give an idea of the plan of the work. It consists of three books : in the first, after stating the conditions of hu- man knowledge, he treats of the universe in general, of the forces which produce it, and the elements which compose it ; in the second, of natural objects, of plants and animals ; and in the third, of the gods and divine things, and of the soul and its destiny. A Homeric spirit, as Aristotle calls him, he personifies and deifies everything, and robes himself in symbols and mystery. The doctrine of Empedocles is de- veloped in the "Sophist," the "Meno," and the " Pha3do " of Plato, and in the " Soul " and the "Metaphysics" of Aristotle. The best edition of his remains is that by Karsten (Amsterdam, 1838), which is furnished with admirable dissertations. EMPEROR (Lat. imperator, commander), a title bestowed in the Roman republic on chief commanders of great armies, on consuls elect before entering upon their office, and often used by victorious troops to hail on the battle field a successful general. In later times it des- ignated the highest authority in the state. Caesar, returning from his last campaign, after the victory of Munda (45 B. C.), received it in this sense, but died soon after. Octavianus Augustus, after the battle of Actium (31 B. C.), assumed this now regal title in preference to rex, and Rome became an empire. Augustus and his successors took in addition the name of Caesar, and both the title and the name (Kaiser) were afterward adopted by mon- archs of other states. When the rule of the Roman empire was divided, the name Csesar designated the adopted assistant of the em- peror, who was himself honored by the title of Augustus. These titles disappeared in the West with the fall of Rome (476), but con- tinued in the eastern or Byzantine empire foi' nearly ten centuries longer. During the cru- sades we find also a Nicaaan and a Trapezun- tine empire in the East. But all these eastern states were swept away and replaced by the power of the Turks, whose sultans never offi- cially adopted the title of the vanquished Christian monarchs. This had been restored in the mean while in the West by Charle-