According to John Burnet: "there is another side to his public character ... He claimed to be a god, and to receive the homage of his fellow-citizens in that capacity. The truth is, Empedokles was not a mere statesman; he had a good deal of the 'medicine-man' about him. ... We can see what this means from the fragments of the "Purifications". Empedokles was a preacher of the new religion which sought to secure release from the 'wheel of birth' by purity and abstinence. Orphicism seems to have been strong at Akragas in the days of Theron, and there are even some verbal coincidences between the poems of Empedokles and the Orphicsing Odes which Pindar addressed to that prince."