Add, too, whoever make the primal stuff Twofold, by joining air to fire, and earth To water; add who deem that things can grow Out of the four- fire, earth, and breath, and rain; As first Empedocles of Acragas, Whom that three-cornered isle of all the lands Bore on her coasts, around which flows and flows In mighty bend and bay the Ionic seas, Splashing the brine from off their gray-green waves. Here, billowing onward through the narrow straits, Swift ocean cuts her boundaries from the shores Of the Italic mainland. Here the waste Charybdis; and here Aetna rumbles threats To gather anew such furies of its flames As with its force anew to vomit fires, Belched from its throat, and skyward bear anew Its lightnings’ flash. And though for much she seem The mighty and the wondrous isle to men, Most rich in all good things, and fortified With generous strength of heroes, she hath ne’er Possessed within her aught of more renown, Nor aught more holy, wonderful, and dear Than this true man. Nay, ever so far and pure The lofty music of his breast divine Lifts up its voice and tells of glories found, That scarce he seems of human stock create.
Of these [sc. the four-element theorists] the foremost is Empedocles of Acragas, born within the three-cornered terres- trial coasts of the island [Sicily] around which the Ionian Sea, flowing with its great windings, sprays the brine from its green waves, and from whose boundaries the rushing sea with its narrow strait divides the coasts of the Aeolian land with its waves. Here is destructive Charybdis, and here the rumblings of Etna give warning that they are once more gathering the wrath of their flames so that her violence may again spew out the fire flung from her jaws and hurl once more to the sky the lightning flashes of flame. Although this great region seems in many ways worthy of admiration by the human races, and is said to deserve visiting for its wealth of good things and the great stock of men that fortify it, yet it appears to have had in it nothing more illustrious than this man, nor more holy, admirable, and pre- cious. What is more, the poems sprung from his godlike mind call out and expound his illustrious discoveries, so that he scarcely seems to be born of mortal stock.
[edit: nevermind I see you already know about the following quotes. There’s other evidence of the influence in Sedley’s book I link below]
In De Reum Natura around line 716:
Or for a more modern translation from Sedley’s Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom