Book 8
2.62
My friends, who dwell in the grcat city sloping down to yellow Acragas, hard by the citadel, busied with goodly works, all hail! I go about among you an immortal god, no more a mortal, so honoured of all, as is meet, crowned with fillets and flowery garlands. Straightway as soon as I enter with these, men and women, into flourishing towns, I am reverenced and tens of thousands follow, to learn where is the path which leads to welfare, some desirous of oracles, others suffering from all kinds of diseases, desiring to hear a message of healing.
2.63
Timaeus explains that he called Agrigentum great, inasmuch as it had 800,000 inhabitants.According to the vulgate, an unknown writer Potamilla is the authority cited by Diogenes. Diels, however (Frag der Vorsokr. ii.3 p. 196), prefers the reading of two mss. ποταμὸν ἄλλα (sc. ὑπομνήματα or ἀντίγραφα λέγει), regarding this as derived from a marginal note which was afterwards put in the text. In the Palatine ms. the gloss is ποταμὸν ἄλλοι. Apelt, however, suggests ποτ’ ἀμέλει, not as a scholium, but as part of the text. Hence Empedocles, he continues, speaking of their luxury, said, The Agrigentines live delicately as if tomorrow they would die, but they build their houses well as if they thought they would live for ever.
