Book VIII
Since we have now gone through the Ionian philosophy, which was derived from Thales, and the lives of the several illustrious men who were the chief ornaments of that school; we will now proceed to treat of the Italian School, which was founded by Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, a seal engraver, as he is recorded to have been by Hermippus; a native of Samos, or as Aristoxenus asserts, a Tyrrhenian, and a native of one of the islands which the Athenians occupied after they had driven out the Tyrrhenians. But some authors say that he was the son of Marmacus, the son of Hippasus, the son of Euthyphron, the son of Cleonymus, who was an exile from Phlias; and that Marmacus settled in Samos, and that from this circumstance Pythagoras was called a Samian. After that he migrated to Lesbos, having come to Pherecydes with letters of recommendation from Zoilus, his uncle. And having made three silver goblets, he carried them to Egypt as a present for each of the three priests. He had brothers, the eldest of whom was named Eunomus, the middle one Tyrrhenus, and a slave named Zamolxis, to whom the Getae sacrifice, believing him to be the same as Saturn, according to the account of Herodotus.
He was a pupil, as I have already mentioned, of Pherecydes the Syrian; and after his death he came to Samos, and became a pupil of Hermodamas, the descendant of Creophylus, who was by this time an old man.
And as he was a young man, and devoted to learning, he quitted his country, and got initiated into all the Grecian and barbarian sacred mysteries. Accordingly, he went to Egypt, on which occasion Polycrates gave him a letter of introduction to Amasis; and he learnt the Egyptian language, as Antipho tells us in his treatise on those men who have been conspicuous for virtue, and he associated with the Chaldaeans and with the Magi.
Afterwards he went to Crete, and in company with Epimenides he descended into the Idaean cave (and in Egypt too, he entered into the holiest parts of their temples), and learned all the most secret mysteries that relate to their Gods. Then he returned back again to Samos, and finding his country reduced under the absolute dominion of Polycrates, he set sail, and fled to Crotona in Italy. And there, having given laws to the Italians, he gained a very high reputation, together with his scholars, who were about three hundred in number, and governed the republic in a most excellent manner; so that the constitution was very nearly an aristocracy.
Heraclides Ponticus says that he was accustomed to speak of himself in this manner: that he had formerly been Aethalides, and had been accounted the son of Mercury; and that Mercury had desired him to select any gift he pleased except immortality. And that he accordingly had requested that, whether living or dead, he might preserve the memory of what had happened to him. While, therefore, he was alive, he recollected everything; and when he was dead, he retained the same memory. And at a subsequent period he passed into Euphorbus, and was wounded by Menelaus. And while he was Euphorbus, he used to say that he had formerly been Aethalides; and that he had received as a gift from Mercury the perpetual transmigration of his soul, so that it was constantly transmigrating and passing into whatever plants or animals it pleased; and he had also received the gift of knowing and recollecting all that his soul had suffered in hell, and what sufferings too are endured by the rest of the souls.
But after Euphorbus died, he said that his soul had passed into Hermotimus; and when he wished to convince people of this, he went into the territory of the Branchidae, and going into the temple of Apollo, he showed his shield which Menelaus had dedicated there as an offering. For he said that he, when he sailed from Troy, had offered up his shield which was already getting worn out, to Apollo, and that nothing remained but the ivory face which was on it. And when Hermotimus died, then he said that he had become Pyrrhus, a fisherman of Delos; and that he still recollected everything, how he had been formerly Aethalides, then Euphorbus, then Hermotimus, and then Pyrrhus. And when Pyrrhus died, he became Pythagoras, and still recollected all the circumstances that I have been mentioning.
Now, some people say that Pythagoras did not leave behind him a single book, but they talk foolishly; for Heraclitus, the natural philosopher, speaks plainly enough of him, saying: “Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, was the most learned of all men in history; and having selected from these writings, he thus formed his own wisdom and extensive learning, and mischievous art.” And he speaks thus, because Pythagoras, in the beginning of his treatise on Natural Philosophy, writes in the following manner: “By the air which I breathe, and by the water which I drink, I will not endure to be blamed on account of this discourse.”
And there are three volumes extant written by Pythagoras: One on Education, one on Politics, and one on Natural Philosophy. But the treatise which is now extant under the name of Pythagoras is the work of Lysis of Tarentum, a philosopher of the Pythagorean School, who fled to Thebes, and became the master of Epaminondas. And Heraclides, the son of Sarapion, in his Abridgment of Sotion, says that he wrote a poem in epic verse on the Universe; and besides that a sacred poem, which begins thus:
Dear youths, I warn you cherish peace divine, And in your hearts lay deep these words of mine.
A third about the Soul; a fourth on Piety; a fifth entitled Helothales, which was the name of the father of Epicharmus of Cos; a sixth called Crotona, and other poems too. But the mystic discourse which is extant under his name, they say is really the work of Hippasus, having been composed with a view to bring Pythagoras into disrepute. There were also many other books composed by Aston of Crotona, and attributed to Pythagoras.
Aristoxenus asserts that Pythagoras derived the greater part of his ethical doctrines from Themistoclea, the priestess at Delphi. And Ion, of Chios, in his Victories, says that he wrote some poems and attributed them to Orpheus. They also say that the poem called the Scopiadae is by him, which begins thus:
Behave not shamelessly to anyone.
And Sosicrates, in his Successions, relates that he, having being asked by Leon, the tyrant of the Phliasians, who he was, replied: “A philosopher.” And adds that he used to compare life to a festival. “And as some people came to a festival to contend for the prizes, and others for the purposes of traffic, and the best as spectators; so also in life, the men of slavish dispositions,” said he, “are born hunters after glory and covetousness, but philosophers are seekers after truth.” And thus he spoke on this subject. But in the three treatises above mentioned, the following principles are laid down by Pythagoras generally:
He forbids men to pray for anything in particular for themselves, because they do not know what is good for them. He calls drunkenness an expression identical with ruin, and rejects all superfluity, saying: “That no one ought to exceed the proper quantity of meat and drink.” And on the subject of venereal pleasures, he speaks thus: “One ought to sacrifice to Venus in the winter, not in the summer; and in autumn and spring in a lesser degree. But the practice is pernicious at every season, and is never good for the health.” And once, when he was asked when a man might indulge in the pleasures of love, he replied: “Whenever you wish to be weaker than yourself.”
And he divides the life of man thus: A boy for twenty years, a young man (νεάνισκος) for twenty years, a middle-aged man (νεανίας) for twenty years, an old man for twenty years. And these different ages correspond proportionably to the seasons: boyhood answers to spring, youth to summer, middle age to autumn, and old age to winter. And he uses νεάνισκος here as equivalent to μειράκιον, and νεανίας as equivalent to ἀνὴρ.
He was the first person, as Timaeus says, who asserted that the property of friends is common, and that friendship is equality. And his disciples used to put all their possessions together into one store, and use them in common; and for five years they kept silence, doing nothing but listen to discourses, and never once seeing Pythagoras, until they were approved; after that time they were admitted into his house, and allowed to see him. They also abstained from the use of cypress coffins, because the sceptre of Jupiter was made of that wood, as Hermippus tells us in the second book of his account of Pythagoras.
He is said to have been a man of the most dignified appearance, and his disciples adopted an opinion respecting him that he was Apollo who had come from the Hyperboreans; and it is said that once when he was stripped naked, he was seen to have a golden thigh. And there were many people who affirmed that when he was crossing the river Nessus it addressed him by his name.
Timaeus, in the tenth book of his Histories, tells us that he used to say that women who were married to men had the names of the Gods, being successively called virgins, then nymphs, and subsequently mothers.
It was Pythagoras also who carried geometry to perfection, after Moeris had first found out the principles of the elements of that science, as Aristiclides tells us in the second book of his History of Alexander; and the part of the science to which Pythagoras applied himself above all others was arithmetic. He also discovered the numerical relation of sounds on a single string; he also studied medicine. And Apollodorus, the logician, records of him that he sacrificed a hecatomb when he had discovered that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the squares of the sides containing the right angle. And there is an epigram which is couched in the following terms:
When the great Samian sage his noble problem found, A hundred oxen dyed with their lifeblood the ground.
He is also said to have been the first man who trained athletes on meat; and Eurymenes was the first man, according to the statement of Phavorinus in the third book of his Commentaries, who ever did submit to this diet, as before that time men used to train themselves on dry figs and moist cheese, and wheaten bread; as the same Phavorinus informs us in the eighth book of his Universal History. But some authors state that a trainer of the name of Pythagoras certainly did train his athletes on this system, but that it was not our philosopher; for that he even forbade men to kill animals at all, much less would have allowed his disciples to eat them, as having a right to live in common with mankind. And this was his pretext; but in reality he prohibited the eating of animals because he wished to train and accustom men to simplicity of life, so that all their food should be easily procurable, as it would be if they ate only such things as required no fire to dress them, and if they drank plain water; for from this diet they would derive health of body and acuteness of intellect.
The only altar at which he worshipped was that of Apollo the Father at Delos, which is at the back of the altar of Ceratinus, because wheat and barley and cheesecakes are the only offerings laid upon it, being not dressed by fire; and no victim is ever slain there, as Aristotle tells us in his Constitution of the Delians. They say, too, that he was the first person who asserted that the soul went a necessary circle being changed about and confined at different times in different bodies.
He was also the first person who introduced measures and weights among the Greeks; as Aristoxenus the musician informs us.
Parmenides, too, assures us that he was the first person who asserted the identity of Hesperus and Lucifer.
And he was so greatly admired that they used to say that his friends looked on all his sayings as the oracles of God. And he himself says in his writings that he had come among men after having spent two hundred and seven years in the shades below. Therefore the Lucanians and the Peucetians, and the Messapians, and the Romans, flocked around him, coming with eagerness to hear his discourses; but until the time of Philolaus there were no doctrines of Pythagoras ever divulged; and he was the first person who published the three celebrated books which Plato wrote to have purchased for him for a hundred minae. Nor were the number of his scholars who used to come to him by night fewer than six hundred. And if any of them had ever been permitted to see him, they wrote of it to their friends, as if they had gained some great advantage.