Laudator Temporis Acti

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 8.76 (on Empedocles; tr. R.D. Hicks):

His doctrines were as follows, that there are four elements, fire, water, earth and air, besides friendship by which these are united, and strife by which they are separated.

Ἐδόκει δ' αὐτῷ τάδε· στοιχεῖα μὲν εἶναι τέτταρα, πῦρ, ὕδωρ, γῆν, ἀέρα· Φιλίαν θ' ᾗ συγκρίνεται καὶ Νεῖκος ᾧ διακρίνεται.

David Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 17 (footnote omitted):

First, notice the by now familiar technique of working the four elements into a descriptive passage. The poem begins as follows (1-5):

Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas,
alma Venus, caeli subter labentia signa
quae mare navigerum, quae terras frugiferentis
concelebras, per te quoniam genus omne animantum
concipitur visitque exortum lumina solis.

Ancestress of the race of Aeneas, delight of humans and gods, nurturing Venus, who beneath the gliding beacons of the sky pervade the ship-bearing sea and the crop-carrying lands, because it is due to you that every race of living beings is conceived, and born to look upon the sunlight.

Planted in the text already are references to the sky (which we have seen to represent the element air in Empedoclean imagery), to the heavenly bodies and the sunlight (i.e. fire), to the sea, and to the land. We then launch into a second catalogue of the same four (6-9):

te dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli
adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus
summittit flores, tibi rident aequora ponti
placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum.

From you, goddess, and your approach the winds and the clouds of the sky flee away. For you the creative earth pushes up sweet flowers. For you the sea's surface laughs, and the sky, made calm, shines with diffused light.

Again, the four elements feature: the winds and clouds of the sky, the earth, the sea, the sunlight.