his grandfather, also named Empedocles, had won a victory in the horse race at Olympia in the 71st Olympiad (496-495 BC). Little else can be determined with accuracy.

Primary sources of information on the life of Empedocles come from the Hellenistic period, several centuries after his own death and long after any reliable evidence about his life would have perished. Modern scholarship generally believes that these biographical details, including