Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers,
Book 8: The Pythagoreans (tr C.D. Yonge, 1895)
LIFE OF PYTHAGORAS.
I. 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 Getæ
sacrifice, believing him to be the same as Saturn, according to the
account of Herodotus.[107]
II. 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.
III. 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 Chaldæans and with the
Magi.
Afterwards he went to Crete, and in company with Epimenides, he descended
into the Idæan 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.
IV. Heraclides Ponticus says, that he was accustomed to speak of himself
in this manner; that he had formerly been Æthalides, 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
Æthalides; 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 Branchidæ, 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[108] 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 Æthalides,
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.
V. 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 Scopiadæ is by
him, which begins thus:—
Behave not shamelessly to any one.
VI. 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.”
VII. 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.
VIII. He was the first person, as Timæus 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.
IX. 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.
X. Timæus, 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.
XI. It was Pythagoras also who carried geometry to perfection, after
Mœris 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 hypothenuse 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 life-blood the ground.
XII. 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 cheese-cakes 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.
XIII. He was also the first person who introduced measures and weights
among the Greeks; as Aristoxenus the musician informs us.
XIV. Parmenides, too, assures us, that he was the first person who
asserted the identity of Hesperus and Lucifer.
XV. And he was so greatly admired, that they used to say that his friends
looked on all his sayings as the oracles of God.[109] 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 minæ. 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.
The people of Metapontum used to call his house the temple of Ceres; and
the street leading to it they called the street of the Muses, as we are
told by Phavorinus in his Universal History.
And the rest of the Pythagoreans used to say, according to the account
given by Aristoxenus, in the tenth book of his Laws on Education, that
his precepts ought not to be divulged to all the world; and Xenophilus,
the Pythagorean, when he was asked what was the best way for a man to
educate his son, said, “That he must first of all take care that he was
born in a city which enjoyed good laws.”
Pythagoras, too, formed many excellent men in Italy, by his precepts,
and among them Zaleucus,[110] and Charondas,[111] the lawgivers.
XVI. For he was very eminent for his power of attracting friendships; and
among other things, if ever he heard that any one had any community of
symbols with him, he at once made him a companion and a friend.
XVII. Now, what he called his symbols were such as these. “Do not stir
the fire with a sword.” “Do not sit down on a bushel.” “Do not devour
your heart.” “Do not aid men in discarding a burden, but in increasing
one.” “Always have your bed packed up.” “Do not bear the image of a God
on a ring.” “Efface the traces of a pot in the ashes.” “Do not wipe a
seat with a lamp.” “Do not make water in the sunshine.” “Do not walk in
the main street.” “Do not offer your right hand lightly.” “Do not cherish
swallows under your roof.” “Do not cherish birds with crooked talons.”
“Do not defile; and do not stand upon the parings of your nails, or the
cuttings of your hair.” “Avoid a sharp sword.” “When you are travelling
abroad, look not back at your own borders.” Now the precept not to stir
fire with a sword meant, not to provoke the anger or swelling pride
of powerful men; not to violate the beam of the balance meant, not to
transgress fairness and justice; not to sit on a bushel is to have an
equal care for the present and for the future, for by the bushel is meant
one’s daily food. By not devouring one’s heart, he intended to show
that we ought not to waste away our souls with grief and sorrow. In the
precept that a man when travelling abroad should not turn his eyes back,
he recommended those who were departing from life not to be desirous to
live, and not to be too much attracted by the pleasures here on earth.
And the other symbols may be explained in a similar manner, that we may
not be too prolix here.
XVIII. And above all things, he used to prohibit the eating of the
erythinus, and the melanurus; and also, he enjoined his disciples to
abstain from the hearts of animals, and from beans. And Aristotle informs
us, that he sometimes used also to add to these prohibitions paunches
and mullet. And some authors assert that he himself used to be contented
with honey and honeycomb, and bread, and that he never drank wine in the
day time. And his desert was usually vegetables, either boiled or raw;
and he very rarely ate fish. His dress was white, very clean, and his
bed-clothes were also white, and woollen, for linen had not yet been
introduced into that country. He was never known to have eaten too much,
or to have drunk too much, or to indulge in the pleasures of love. He
abstained wholly from laughter, and from all such indulgences as jests
and idle stories. And when he was angry, he never chastised any one,
whether slave or freeman. He used to call admonishing, feeding storks.
He used to practise divination, as far as auguries and auspices go, but
not by means of burnt offerings, except only the burning of frankincense.
And all the sacrifices which he offered consisted of inanimate things.
But some, however, assert that he did sacrifice animals, limiting himself
to cocks, and sucking kids, which are called ἁπάλιοι, but that he very
rarely offered lambs. Aristoxenus, however, affirms that he permitted
the eating of all other animals, and only abstained from oxen used in
agriculture, and from rams.
XIX. The same author tells us, as I have already mentioned, that he
received his doctrines from Themistoclea, at Delphi. And Hieronymus
says, that when he descended to the shades below, he saw the soul of
Hesiod bound to a brazen pillar, and gnashing its teeth; and that of
Homer suspended from a tree, and snakes around it, as a punishment for
the things that they had said of the Gods. And that those people also
were punished who refrained from commerce with their wives; and that on
account of this he was greatly honoured by the people of Crotona.
But Aristippus, of Cyrene, in his Account of Natural Philosophers,
says that Pythagoras derived his name from the fact of his speaking
(ἀγορεύειν) truth no less than the God at Delphi (τοῦ πυθίου).
It is said that he used to admonish his disciples to repeat these lines
to themselves whenever they returned home to their houses:—
In what have I transgress’d? What have I done?
What that I should have done have I omitted?
And that he used to forbid them to offer victims to the Gods, ordering
them to worship only at those altars which were unstained with blood. He
forbade them also to swear by the Gods; saying, “That every man ought
so to exercise himself, as to be worthy of belief without an oath.” He
also taught men that it behoved them to honour their elders, thinking
that which was precedent in point of time more honourable; just as in the
world, the rising of the sun was more so than the setting; in life, the
beginning more so than the end; and in animals, production more so than
destruction.
Another of his rules was that men should honour the Gods above the
dæmones, heroes above men; and of all men parents were entitled to the
highest degree of reverence. Another, that people should associate with
one another in such a way as not to make their friends enemies, but to
render their enemies friends. Another was that they should think nothing
exclusively their own. Another was to assist the law, and to make
war upon lawlessness. Not to destroy or injure a cultivated tree, nor
any animal either which does not injure men. That modesty and decorum
consisted in never yielding to laughter, and yet not looking stern.
He taught that men should avoid too much flesh, that they should in
travelling let rest and exertion alternate; that they should exercise
memory; that they should never say or do anything in anger; that they
should not pay respect to every kind of divination; that they should
use songs set to the lyre; and by hymns to the Gods and to eminent men,
display a reasonable gratitude to them.
He also forbade his disciples to eat beans, because, as they were
flatulent, they greatly partook of animal properties [he also said that
men kept their stomachs in better order by avoiding them]; and that such
abstinence made the visions which appear in one’s sleep gentle and free
from agitation. Alexander also says, in his Successions of Philosophers,
that he found the following dogmas also set down in the Commentaries of
Pythagoras:—
That the monad was the beginning of everything. From the monad proceeds
an indefinite duad, which is subordinate to the monad as to its cause.
That from the monad and the indefinite duad proceed numbers. And from
numbers signs. And from these last, lines of which plane figures consist.
And from plane figures are derived solid bodies. And from solid bodies
sensible bodies, of which last there are four elements; fire, water,
earth, and air. And that the world, which is endued with life, and
intellect, and which is of a spherical figure, having the earth, which
is also spherical, and inhabited all over in its centre, results from a
combination of these elements, and derives its motion from them; and also
that there are antipodes,[112] and that what is below, as respects us, is
above in respect of them.
He also taught that light and darkness and cold and heat, and dryness and
moisture, were equally divided in the world; and that, while heat was
predominant it was summer; while cold had the mastery it was winter; when
dryness prevailed it was spring; and when moisture preponderated, winter.
And while all these qualities were on a level, then was the loveliest
season of the year; of which the flourishing spring was the wholesome
period, and the season of autumn the most pernicious one. Of the day, he
said that the flourishing period was the morning, and the fading one the
evening; on which account that also was the least healthy time.
Another of his theories was, that the air around the earth was
immoveable, and pregnant with disease, and that everything in it was
mortal; but that the upper air was in perpetual motion, and pure and
salubrious; and that everything in that was immortal, and on that account
divine. And that the sun, and the moon, and the stars, were all Gods;
for in them the warm principle predominates which is the cause of life.
And that the moon derives its light from the sun. And that there is a
relationship between men and the Gods, because men partake of the divine
principle; on which account also, God exercises his providence for our
advantage. Also, that fate is the cause of the arrangement of the world
both generally and particularly. Moreover, that a ray from the sun
penetrated both the cold æther and the dense æther; and they call the air
(ἀὴρ), the cold æther (ψυχρὸν αἰθέρα), and the sea and moisture they call
the dense æther (παχὺν αἰθέρα). And this ray descends into the depths,
and in this way vivifies everything. And everything which partakes of
the principle of heat lives, on which account also plants are animated
beings; but that all living things have not necessarily souls. And that
the soul is a something torn off from the æther, both warm and cold, from
its partaking of the cold æther. And that the soul is something different
from life. Also, that it is immortal, because that from which it has been
detached is immortal.
Also, that animals are born from one another by seeds, and that it is
impossible for there to be any spontaneous production by the earth.
And that seed is a drop from the brain which contains in itself a warm
vapour; and that when this is applied to the womb, it transmits virtue,
and moisture, and blood from the brain, from which flesh, and sinews, and
bones, and hair, and the whole body are produced. And from the vapour is
produced the soul, and also sensation. And that the infant first becomes
a solid body at the end of forty days; but, according to the principles
of harmony, it is not perfect till seven, or perhaps nine, or at most ten
months, and then it is brought forth. And that it contains in itself all
the principles of life, which are all connected together, and by their
union and combination form a harmonious whole, each of them developing
itself at the appointed time.
The senses in general, and especially the sight, are a vapour of
excessive warmth, and on this account a man is said to see through air,
and through water. For the hot principle is opposed by the cold one;
since, if the vapour in the eyes were cold, it would have the same
temperature as the air, and so would be dissipated. As it is, in some
passages he calls the eyes the gates of the sun. And he speaks in a
similar manner of hearing, and of the other senses.
He also says that the soul of man is divided into three parts; into
intuition (νοῦς), and reason (φρὴν), and mind (θυμὸς), and that the first
and last divisions are found also in other animals, but that the middle
one, reason, is only found in man. And that the chief abode of the soul
is in those parts of the body which are between the heart and the brain.
And that that portion of it which is in the heart is the mind (θυμὸς);
but that deliberation (νοὺς), and reason (φρὴν), reside in the brain.[113]
Moreover, that the senses are drops from them; and that the reasoning
sense is immortal, but the others are mortal. And that the soul is
nourished by the blood; and that reasons are the winds of the soul.
That it is invisible, and so are its reasons, since the æther itself is
invisible. That the links of the soul are the veins, and the arteries,
and the nerves. But that when it is vigorous, and is by itself in a
quiescent state, then its links are words and actions. That when it
is cast forth upon the earth it wanders about, resembling the body.
Moreover, that Mercury is the steward of the souls, and that on this
account he has the name of Conductor, and Commercial, and Infernal,
since it is he who conducts the souls from their bodies, and from earth,
and sea; and that he conducts the pure souls to the highest region, and
that he does not allow the impure ones to approach them, nor to come
near one another; but commits them to be bound in indissoluble fetters
by the Furies. The Pythagoreans also assert, that the whole air is full
of souls, and that these are those which are accounted dæmones, and
heroes. Also, that it is by them that dreams are sent among men, and
also the tokens of disease and health; these last too, being sent not
only to men, but to sheep also, and other cattle. Also, that it is they
who are concerned with purifications, and expiations, and all kinds of
divination, and oracular predictions, and things of that kind.
They also say, that the most important privilege in man is, the being
able to persuade his soul to either good or bad. And that men are happy
when they have a good soul; yet, that they are never quiet, and that they
never retain the same mind long. Also, that an oath is justice; and that
on that account, Jupiter is called Jupiter of Oaths (Ὅρκιος). Also, that
virtue is harmony, and health, and universal good, and God; on which
account everything owes its existence and consistency to harmony. Also,
that friendship is a harmonious equality.
Again, they teach that one ought not to pay equal honours to Gods
and to heroes; but that one ought to honour the Gods at all times,
extolling them with praises, clothed in white garments, and keeping one’s
body chaste; but that one ought not to pay such honour to the heroes
till after midday. Also, that a state of purity is brought about by
purifications, and washings, and sprinklings, and by a man’s purifying
himself from all funerals, or concubinage, or pollution of every kind,
and by abstaining from all flesh that has either been killed or died of
itself, and from mullets, and from melanuri, and from eggs, and from such
animals as lay eggs, and from beans, and from other things which are
prohibited by those who have the charge of the mysteries in the temples.
And Aristotle says, in his treatise on Beans, that Pythagoras enjoined
his disciples to abstain from beans, either because they resemble some
part of the human body, or because they are like the gates of hell (for
they are the only plants without parts); or because they dry up other
plants, or because they are representatives of universal nature, or
because they are used in elections in oligarchical governments. He also
forbade his disciples to pick up what fell from the table, for the sake
of accustoming them not to eat immoderately, or else because such things
belong to the dead.
But Aristophanes says, that what falls belongs to the heroes; saying, in
his Heroes:—
Never taste the things which fall
From the table on the floor.
He also forbade his disciples to eat white poultry, because a cock of
that colour was sacred to Month, and was also a suppliant. He was also
accounted a good animal;[114] and he was sacred to the God Month, for he
indicates the time.
The Pythagoreans were also forbidden to eat of all fish that were sacred;
on the ground that the same animals ought not to be served up before both
Gods and men, just as the same things do not belong to freemen and to
slaves. Now, white is an indication of a good nature, and black of a bad
one. Another of the precepts of Pythagoras was, that men ought not to
break bread; because in ancient times friends used to assemble around one
loaf, as they even now do among the barbarians. Nor would he allow men to
divide bread which unites them. Some think that he laid down this rule in
reference to the judgment which takes place in hell; some because this
practice engenders timidity in war. According to others, what is alluded
to is the Union, which presides over the government of the universe.
Another of his doctrines was, that of all solid figures the sphere was
the most beautiful; and of all plane figures, the circle. That old
age and all diminution were similar, and also increase and youth were
identical. That health was the permanence of form, and disease the
destruction of it. Of salt his opinion was, that it ought to be set
before people as a reminder of justice; for salt preserves everything
which it touches, and it is composed of the purest particles of water
and sea.
These are the doctrines which Alexander asserts that he discovered in the
Pythagorean treatises; and Aristotle gives a similar account of them.
XV. Timon, in his Silli, has not left unnoticed the dignified appearance
of Pythagoras, when he attacks him on other points. And his words are
these:—
Pythagoras, who often teaches
Precepts of magic, and with speeches
Of long high-sounding diction draws,
From gaping crowds, a vain applause.
And respecting his having been different people at different times,
Xenophanes adds his evidence in an elegiac poem which commences thus:—
Now I will on another subject touch,
And lead the way.
And the passage in which he mentions Pythagoras is as follows:—
They say that once, as passing by he saw
A dog severely beaten, he did pity him,
And spoke as follows to the man who beat him:—
“Stop now, and beat him not; since in his body,
Abides the soul of a dear friend of mine,
Whose voice I recognized as he was crying.”
These are the words of Xenophanes.
Cratinus also ridiculed him in his Pythagorean Woman; but in his
Tarentines, he speaks thus:—
They are accustomed, if by chance they see
A private individual abroad,
To try what powers of argument he has,
How he can speak and reason: and they bother him
With strange antithesis and forced conclusions,
Errors, comparisons, and magnitudes,
Till they have filled and quite perplex’d his mind.
And Mnesimachus says in his Alcmæon:—
As we do sacrifice to the Phœbus whom
Pythagoras worships, never eating aught
Which has the breath of life.
Aristophon says in his Pythagorean:—
_A._ He said that when he did descend below
Among the shades in Hell, he there beheld
All men who e’er had died; and there he saw,
That the Pythagoreans differ’d much
From all the rest; for that with them alone
Did Pluto deign to eat, much honouring
Their pious habits.
_B._ He’s a civil God,
If he likes eating with such dirty fellows.
And again, in the same play he says:—
They eat
Nothing but herbs and vegetables, and drink
Pure water only. But their lice are such,
Their cloaks so dirty, and their unwash’d scent
So rank, that no one of our younger men
Will for a moment bear them.
XXI. Pythagoras died in this manner. When he was sitting with some of
his companions in Milo’s house, some one of those whom he did not think
worthy of admission into it, was excited by envy to set fire to it. But
some say that the people of Crotona themselves did this, being afraid
lest he might aspire to the tyranny. And that Pythagoras was caught as
he was trying to escape; and coming to a place full of beans, he stopped
there, saying that it was better to be caught than to trample on the
beans, and better to be slain than to speak; and so he was murdered
by those who were pursuing him. And in this way, also, most of his
companions were slain; being in number about forty; but that a very few
did escape, among whom were Archippus, of Tarentum, and Lysis, whom I
have mentioned before.
But Dicæarchus relates that Pythagoras died afterwards, having escaped
as far as the temple of the Muses, at Metapontum, and that he died there
of starvation, having abstained from food for forty days. And Heraclides
says, in his abridgment of the life of Satyrus, that after he had buried
Pherecydes in Delos, he returned to Italy, and finding there a superb
banquet prepared at the house of Milo, of Crotona, he left Crotona, and
went to Metapontum, and there put an end to his life by starvation, not
wishing to live any longer. But Hermippus says, that when there was war
between the people of Agrigentum and the Syracusans, Pythagoras went out
with his usual companions, and took the part of the Agrigentines; and
as they were put to flight, he ran all round a field of beans, instead
of crossing it, and so was slain by the Syracusans; and that the rest,
being about five-and-thirty in number, were burnt at Tarentum, when they
were trying to excite a sedition in the state against the principal
magistrates.
Hermippus also relates another story about Pythagoras. For he says that
when he was in Italy, he made a subterraneous apartment, and charged his
mother to write an account of everything that took place, marking the
time of each on a tablet, and then to send them down to him, until he
came up again; and that his mother did so; and that Pythagoras came up
again after a certain time, lean, and reduced to a skeleton; and that
he came into the public assembly, and said that he had arrived from the
shades below, and then he recited to them all that had happened during
his absence. And they, being charmed by what he told them, wept and
lamented, and believed that Pythagoras was a divine being; so that they
even entrusted their wives to him, as likely to learn some good from him;
and that they too were called Pythagoreans. And this is the story of
Hermippus.
XXII. And Pythagoras had a wife, whose name was Theano; the daughter of
Brontinus, of Crotona. But some say that she was the wife of Brontinus,
and only a pupil of Pythagoras. And he had a daughter named Damo, as
Lysis mentions in his letter to Hipparchus; where he speaks thus of
Pythagoras: “And many say that you philosophize in public, as Pythagoras
also used to do; who, when he had entrusted his Commentaries to Damo,
his daughter, charged her to divulge them to no person out of the house.
And she, though she might have sold his discourses for much money, would
not abandon them, for she thought poverty and obedience to her father’s
injunctions more valuable than gold; and that too, though she was a
woman.”
He had also a son, named Telauges, who was the successor of his father
in his school, and who, according to some authors, was the teacher of
Empedocles. At least Hippobotus relates that Empedocles said:—
“Telauges, noble youth, whom in due time,
Theano bore to wise Pythagoras.”
But there is no book extant, which is the work of Telauges, though
there are some extant, which are attributed to his mother Theano. And
they tell a story of her, that once, when she was asked how long a woman
ought to be absent from her husband to be pure, she said, the moment she
leaves her own husband, she is pure; but she is never pure at all, after
she leaves any one else. And she recommended a woman, who was going to
her husband, to put off her modesty with her clothes, and when she left
him, to resume it again with her clothes; and when she was asked, “What
clothes?” she said, “Those which cause you to be called a woman.”
XXIII. Now Pythagoras, as Heraclides, the son of Sarapion, relates, died
when he was eighty years of age; according to his own account of his age,
but according to the common account, he was more than ninety. And we have
written a sportive epigram on him, which is couched in the following
terms:—
You’re not the only man who has abstained
From living food, for so likewise have we;
And who, I’d like to know did ever taste
Food while alive, most sage Pythagoras?
When meat is boil’d, or roasted well and salted,
I don’t think it can well be called living.
Which, therefore, without scruple then we eat it,
And call it no more living flesh, but meat.
And another, which runs thus:—
Pythagoras was so wise a man, that he
Never eat meat himself, and called it sin.
And yet he gave good joints of beef to others.
So that I marvel at his principles;
Who others wronged, by teaching them to do
What he believed unholy for himself.
And another, as follows:—
Should you Pythagoras’ doctrine wish to know,
Look on the centre of Euphorbus’ shield.
For he asserts there lived a man of old,
And when he had no longer an existence,
He still could say that he had been alive,
Or else he would not still be living now.
And this one too:
Alas! alas! why did Pythagoras hold
Beans in such wondrous honour? Why, besides,
Did he thus die among his choice companions?
There was a field of beans; and so the sage,
Died in the common road of Agrigentum,
Rather than trample down his favourite beans.
XXIV. And he flourished about the sixtieth olympiad; and his system
lasted for nine or ten generations. And the last of the Pythagoreans,
whom Aristoxenus knew, were Xenophilus, the Chalcidean, from Thrace; and
Phanton, the Phliasian, and Echecrates, and Diodes, and Polymnestus, who
were also Phliasians, and they were disciples of Philolaus and Eurytus,
of Tarentum.
XXV. And there were four men of the name of Pythagoras, about the same
time, at no great distance from one another. One was a native of Crotona,
a man who attained tyrannical power; the second was a Phliasian, a
trainer of wrestlers, as some say; the third was a native of Zacynthus;
the fourth was this our philosopher, to whom they say the mysteries of
philosophy belong, in whose time that proverbial phrase, “Ipse dixit,”
was introduced into ordinary life. Some also affirm, that there was
another man of the name of Pythagoras, a statuary of Rhodes; who is
believed to have been the first discoverer of rhythm and proportion; and
another was a Samian statuary; and another an orator, of no reputation;
and another was a physician, who wrote a treatise on Squills; and also
some essays on Homer; and another was a man, who wrote a history of the
affairs of the Dorians, as we are told by Dionysius.
But Eratosthenes says, as Phavorinus quotes him, in the eighth book of
his Universal History, that this philosopher, of whom we are speaking,
was the first man who ever practised boxing in a scientific manner, in
the forty-eighth olympiad, having his hair long, and being clothed in a
purple robe; and that he was rejected from the competition among boys,
and being ridiculed for his application, he immediately entered among the
men, and came off victorious. And this statement is confirmed among other
things, by the epigram which Theætetus composed:—
Stranger, if e’er you knew Pythagoras,
Pythagoras, the man with flowing hair,
The celebrated boxer, erst of Samos;
I am Pythagoras. And if you ask
A citizen of Elis of my deeds,
You’ll surely think he is relating fables.
Phavorinus says, that he employed definitions, on account of the
mathematical subjects to which he applied himself. And that Socrates
and those who were his pupils, did so still more; and that they were
subsequently followed in this by Aristotle and the Stoics.
He too, was the first person, who ever gave the name of κόσμος to the
universe, and the first who called the earth round; though Theophrastus
attributes this to Parmenides, and Zeno to Hesiod. They say too,
that Cylon used to be a constant adversary of his, as Antidicus was
of Socrates. And this epigram also used to be repeated, concerning
Pythagoras the athlete:—
Pythagoras of Samos, son of Crates,
Came while a child to the Olympic games,
Eager to battle for the prize in boxing.
XXVI. There is a letter of this philosopher extant, which is couched in
the following terms:—
PYTHAGORAS TO ANAXIMENES.
“You too, my most excellent friend, if you were not superior to
Pythagoras, in birth and reputation, would have migrated from Miletus
and gone elsewhere. But now the reputation of your father keeps you
back, which perhaps would have restrained me too, if I had been like
Anaximenes. But if you, who are the most eminent man, abandon the cities,
all their ornaments will be taken from them, and the Median power will
be more dangerous to them. Nor is it always seasonable to be studying
astronomy, but it is more honourable to exhibit a regard for one’s
country. And I myself am not always occupied about speculations of my own
fancy, but I am busied also with the wars which the Italians are waging
against one another.”
But since we have now finished our account of Pythagoras, we must also
speak of the most eminent of the Pythagoreans. After whom, we must
mention those who are spoken of more promiscuously in connection with
no particular school; and then we will connect the whole series of
philosophers worth speaking of, till we arrive at Epicurus, as we have
already promised.
Now Telauges and Theano we have mentioned; and we must now speak of
Empedocles, in the first place, for, according to some accounts, he was a
pupil of Pythagoras.
LIFE OF EMPEDOCLES.
I. Empedocles, as Hippobotus relates, was the son of Meton, the son of
Empedocles, and a citizen of Agrigentum. And Timæus, in the fifteenth
book of his Histories, gives the same account, adding that Empedocles,
the grandfather of the poet, was also a most eminent man. And Hermippus
tells the same story as Timæus; and in the same spirit Heraclides, in
his treatise on Diseases, relates that he was of an illustrious family,
since his father bred a fine stud of horses. Erastothenes, in his List
of the Conquerors at the Olympic Games, says, that the father of Meton
gained the victory in the seventy-first olympiad, quoting Aristotle as
his authority for the assertion.
But Apollodorus, the grammarian, in his Chronicles, says that he was the
son of Meton; and Glaucus says that he came to Thurii when the city was
only just completed. And then proceeding a little further, he adds:—
And some relate that he did flee from thence,
And came to Syracuse, and on their side
Did fight in horrid war against th’ Athenians;
But those men seem to me completely wrong—
For by this time he must have been deceased,
Or very old, which is not much believed;
For Aristotle, and Heraclides too,
Say that he died at sixty years of age.
But certainly the person who got the victory with a single horse in the
seventy-first olympiad was a namesake of this man, and that it is which
deceived Apollodorus as to the age of this philosopher.
But Satyrus, in his Lives, asserts, that Empedocles was the son of
Exænetus, and that he also left a son who was named Exænetus. And
that in the same Olympiad, he himself gained the victory with the
single horse; and his son, in wrestling, or, as Heraclides says in
his Abridgment, in running. But I have found in the Commentaries of
Phavorinus, that Empedocles sacrificed, and gave as a feast to the
spectators of the games, an ox made of honey and flour, and that he had a
brother named Callicratidas.
But Telauges, the son of Pythagoras, in his letters to Philolaus, says
that Empedocles was the son of Archinomus; and that he was a citizen of
Agrigentum, he himself asserts at the beginning of his Purifications.
Friends, who the mighty citadel inhabit,
Which crowns the golden waves of Acragas.
And this is enough to say about his family.
II. Timæus, in his ninth book, relates that he was a pupil of Pythagoras,
saying that he was afterwards convicted of having divulged his doctrines,
in the same way as Plato was, and therefore that he was forbidden from
thenceforth to attend his school. And they say that Pythagoras himself
mentions him when he says:—
And in that band there was a learned man
Of wondrous wisdom; one, who of all men
Had the profoundest wealth of intellect.
But some say that when the philosopher says this, he is referring to
Parmenides.
Neanthes relates, that till the time of Philolaus and Empedocles, the
Pythagoreans used to admit all persons indiscriminately into their
school; but when Empedocles made their doctrines public by means of his
poems, then they made a law to admit no Epic poet. And they say that
the same thing happened to Plato; for that he too was excluded from the
school. But who was the teacher of the Pythagorean school that Empedocles
was a pupil of, they do not say; for, as for the letter of Telauges, in
which he is stated to have been a pupil of Hippasus and Brontinus, that
is not worthy of belief. But Theophrastus says that he was an imitator
and a rival of Parmenides, in his poems, for that he too had delivered
his opinions on natural philosophy in epic verse.
Hermippus, however, says that he was an imitator, not of Parmenides,
but of Xenophanes with whom he lived; and that he imitated his epic
style, and that it was at a later period that he fell in with the
Pythagoreans. But Alcidamas, in his Natural Philosophy, says, that Zeno
and Empedocles were pupils of Parmenides, about the same time; and that
they subsequently seceded from him; and that Zeno adopted a philosophical
system peculiar to himself; but that Empedocles became a pupil of
Anaxagoras and Pythagoras, and that he imitated the pompous demeanour,
and way of life, and gestures of the one, and the system of Natural
Philosophy of the other.
III. And Aristotle, in his Sophist, says that Empedocles was the first
person who invented rhetoric, and Zeno the first person who invented
dialectics. And in his book on Poetry, he says, that Empedocles was a
man of Homeric genius, and endowed with great power of language, and
a great master of metaphor, and a man who employed all the successful
artifices of poetry, and also that when he had written several poems, and
among them one on the passage of the Hellespont, by Xerxes, and also the
proœmium of a hymn to Apollo, his daughter subsequently burnt them, or,
as Hieronymus says, his sister, burning the proœmium unintentionally,
but the Persian poem on purpose, because it was incomplete. And speaking
generally, he says that he wrote tragedies and political treatises.
But Heraclides, the son of Sarapion, says that the tragedies were the
work of some other Empedocles; and Hieronymus says that he had met with
forty-three. Neanthes, too, affirms that when he was a young man, he
wrote tragedies, and that he himself had subsequently met with them; and
Satyrus, in his Lives, states that he was a physician, and also a most
excellent orator. And accordingly, that Gorgias, of Leontini, was his
pupil, a man of the greatest eminence as a rhetorician, and one who left
behind him a treatise containing a complete system of the art; and who,
as we are told by Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, lived to the age of a
hundred and nine years.
IV. Satyrus tells us that he used to say that he had been present when
Empedocles was practising magic; and that he professes this science, and
many others too in his poems when he says:—
And all the drugs which can relieve disease,
Or soften the approach of age, shall be
Revealed to your inquiries; I do know them,
And I to you alone will them disclose.
You shall restrain the fierce unbridled winds,
Which, rushing o’er the earth, bow down the corn,
And crush the farmer’s hopes. And when you will,
You shall recall them back to sweep the land:
Then you shall learn to dry the rainy clouds,
And bid warm summer cheer the heart of men.
Again, at your behest, the drought shall yield
To wholesome show’rs: when you give the word
Hell shall restore its dead.
V. And Timæus, in his eighteenth book, says, that this man was held in
great esteem on many accounts; for that once, when the etesian gales
were blowing violently, so as to injure the crops, he ordered some asses
to be flayed, and some bladders to be made of their hides, and these he
placed on the hills and high places to catch the wind. And so, when the
wind ceased, he was called wind-forbidder (κωλυσανέμας). And Heraclides,
in his treatise on Diseases, says that he dictated to Pausanias the
statement which he made about the dead woman. Now Pausanias, as both
Aristippus and Satyrus agree, was much attached to him; and he dedicated
to him the works which he wrote on Natural Philosophy, in the following
terms:—
Hear, O Pausanias, son of wise Anchites.
He also wrote an epigram upon him:—
Gela, his native land, does boast the birth
Of wise Anchites’ son, that great physician,
So fitly named Pausanias,[115] from his skill;
A genuine son of Æsculapius,
Who has stopped many men whom fell disease
Marked for its own, from treading those dark paths
Which lead to Proserpine’s infernal realms.
VI. The case of the dead woman above mentioned, Heraclides says, was
something of this sort; that he kept her corpse for thirty days dead,
and yet free from corruption; on which account he has called himself a
physician and a prophet, taking it also from these verses:—
Friends who the mighty citadel inhabit,
Which crowns the golden waves of Acragas
Votaries of noble actions, Hail to ye;
I, an immortal God, no longer mortal,
Now live among you well revered by all,
As is my due, crowned with holy fillets
And rosy garlands. And whene’er I come
To wealthy cities, then from men and women
Due honours meets me; and crowds follow me,
Seeking the way which leads to gainful glory.
Some ask for oracles, and some entreat,
For remedies against all kinds of sickness.
VII. And he says that Agrigentum was a very large city, since it had
eight hundred thousand inhabitants; on which account Empedocles, seeing
the people immersed in luxury, said, “The men of Agrigentum devote
themselves wholly to luxury as if they were to die to-morrow, but they
furnish their houses as if they were to live for ever.”
VIII. It is said that Cleomenes, the rhapsodist, sung this very poem,
called the Purifications, at Olympia; at least this is the account given
by Phavorinus, in his Commentaries.
IX. And Aristotle says, that he was a most liberal man, and far removed
from anything like a domineering spirit; since he constantly refused
the sovereign power when it was offered to him, as Xanthus assures us
in his account of him, showing plainly that he preferred a simple style
of living. And Timæus tells the same story, giving at the same time the
reason why he was so very popular. For he says that when on one occasion,
he was invited to a banquet by one of the magistrates, the wine was
carried about, but the supper was not served up. And as every one else
kept silence, he, disapproving of what he saw, bade the servants bring in
the supper; but the person who had invited him said that he was waiting
for the secretary of the council. And when he came he was appointed
master of the feast, at the instigation of the giver of it, and then he
gave a plain intimation of his tyrannical inclinations, for he ordered
all the guests to drink, and those who did not drink were to have the
wine poured over their heads. Empedocles said nothing at the moment,
but the next day he summoned them before the court, and procured the
execution of both the entertainer and the master of the feast.
And this was the beginning of his political career. And at another
time, when Acron, the physician, asked of the council a place where he
might erect a monument to his father, on account of his eminence as a
physician, Empedocles came forward and opposed any such grant, adducing
many arguments on the ground of equality, and also putting the following
question:—“And what elegy shall we inscribe upon it? Shall we say:—
“Ἄκρον ἰητρὸν Ἄκρων’ Ἀκραγαντῖνον πατρὸς ἄκρου
κρύπτει κρημνὸς ἄκρος πατρίδος ἀκροτάτης.”[116]
But some give the second line thus:—
Ἀκροτάτης κορυφῆς τύμβος ἄκρος κατέχει.
And others assert that it is the composition of Simonides.
But afterwards Empedocles abolished the assembly of a thousand, and
established a council in which the magistrates were to hold office for
three years, on such a footing that it should consist not only of rich
men, but of those who were favourers of the interests of the people.
Timæus, however, in his first and second book (for he often mentions
him), says that he appeared to entertain opinions adverse to a republic.
And, as far as his poetry goes, any one may see that he was arrogant and
self-satisfied. Accordingly, he says:—
Hail to ye,
I, an immortal God, no longer mortal,
Now live among you:
And so on.
But when he went to the olympic games he was considered a worthy object
of general attention; so that there was no mention made of any one else
in comparison of Empedocles.
X. Afterwards, indeed, when Agrigentum was settled, the descendants
of his enemies opposed his return; on which account he retired to
Peloponnesus, where he died. And Timon has not let even Empedocles
escape, but satirises him in this style, saying:—
And then Empedocles, the honeyed speaker
Of soft forensic speeches; he did take
As many offices as he was able,
Creating magistrates who wanted helpers.
But there are two accounts of the manner of his death.
XI. For Heraclides, relating the story about the dead woman, how
Empedocles got great glory from sending away a dead woman restored to
life, says that he celebrated a sacrifice in the field of Pisianax, and
that some of his friends were invited, among whom was Pausanias. And
then, after the banquet, they lay down, some going a little way off, and
some lying under the trees close by in the field, and some wherever they
happened to choose. But Empedocles himself remained in the place where he
had been sitting. But when day broke, and they arose, he alone was not
found. And when he was sought for, and the servants were examined and
said that they did not know, one of them said, that at midnight he had
heard a loud voice calling Empedocles; and that then he himself rose up
and saw a great light from heaven, but nothing else. And as they were all
amazed at what had taken place, Pausanias descended and sent some people
to look for him; but afterwards he was commanded not to busy himself
about the matter, as he was informed that what had happened was deserving
of thankfulness, and that they behoved to sacrifice to Empedocles as to
one who had become a God.
Hermippus says also, that a woman of the name of Panthea, a native of
Agrigentum, who had been given over by the physicians, was cured by him,
and that it was on this account that he celebrated a sacrifice; and that
the guests invited were about eighty in number. But Hippobotus says that
he rose up and went away as if he were going to mount Ætna; and that when
he arrived at the crater of fire he leaped in, and disappeared, wishing
to establish a belief that he had become a God. But afterwards the truth
was detected by one of his slippers having been dropped. For he used to
wear slippers with brazen soles. Pausanias, however, contradicts this
statement.[117]
But Diodorus, of Ephesus, writing about Anaximander, says that Empedocles
imitated him; indulging in a tragic sort of pride, and wearing
magnificent apparel. And when a pestilence attacked the people of
Selinus, by reason of the bad smells arising from the adjacent river, so
that the men died and the women bore dead children, Empedocles contrived
a plan, and brought into the same channel two other rivers at his own
expense; and so, by mixing their waters with that of the other river, he
sweetened the stream. And as the pestilence was removed in this way, when
the people of Selinus were on one occasion holding a festival on the bank
of the river, Empedocles appeared among them; and they rising up, offered
him adoration, and prayed to him as to a God. And he, wishing to confirm
this idea which they had adopted of him, leaped into the fire.
But Timæus contradicts all these stories; saying expressly, that he
departed into Peloponnesus, and never returned at all, on which account
the manner of his death is uncertain. And he especially denies the
tale of Heraclides in his fourth book; for he says that Pisianax was
a Syracusan, and had no field in the district of Agrigentum; but that
Pausanias erected a monument in honour of his friend, since such a
report had got about concerning him; and, as he was a rich man, made it
a statue and little chapel, as one might erect to a God. “How then,”
adds Timæus, “could he have leaped into a crater, of which, though they
were in the neighbourhood, he had never made any mention? He died then
in Peloponnesus; and there is nothing extraordinary in there being no
tomb of his to be seen; for there are many other men who have no tomb
visible.” These are the words of Timæus; and he adds further, “But
Heraclides is altogether a man fond of strange stories, and one who would
assert that a man had fallen from the moon.”
Hippobotus says, that there was a clothed statue of Empedocles which
lay formerly in Agrigentum, but which was afterwards placed in front of
the Senate House of the Romans divested of its clothing, as the Romans
had carried it off and erected it there. And there are traces of some
inscriptions or reliefs still discernible on it.
Neanthes of Cyzicus, who also wrote about the Pythagoreans, says, that
when Meton was dead, the seeds of tyrannical power began to appear; and
that then Empedocles persuaded the Agrigentines to desist from their
factious disputes, and to establish political equality. And besides, as
there were many of the female citizens destitute of dowry, he portioned
them out of his own private fortune. And relying on these actions of
his, he assumed a purple robe and wore a golden circlet on his hand, as
Phavorinus relates in the first book of his Commentaries. He also wore
slippers with brazen soles, and a Delphian garland. His hair was let
grow very long, and he had boys to follow him; and he himself always
preserved a solemn countenance, and a uniformly grave deportment. And
he marched about in such style, that he seemed to all the citizens, who
met him and who admired his deportment, to exhibit a sort of likeness to
kingly power. And afterwards, it happened that as on the occasion of some
festival he was going in a chariot to Messene, he was upset and broke his
thigh; and he was taken ill in consequence, and so died, at the age of
seventy-seven. And his tomb is in Megara.
But as to his age, Aristotle differs from this account of Neanthes;
for he asserts that he died at sixty years of age; others again say,
that he was a hundred and nine when he died. He flourished about the
eighty-fourth olympiad. Demetrius, of Trœzen, in his book against the
Sophists, reports that, as the lines of Homer say:—
He now, self-murdered, from a beam depends,
And his mad soul to blackest hell descends.[118]
But in the letter of Telauges, which has been mentioned before, it is
said that he slipped down through old age, and fell into the sea, and so
died.
And this is enough to say about his death.
There is also a jesting epigram of ours upon him, in our collection of
Poems in all Metres, which runs thus:—
You too, Empedocles, essayed to purge
Your body in the rapid flames, and drank
The liquid fire from the restless crater;
I say not that you threw yourself at once
Into the stream of Ætna’s fiery flood.
But seeking to conceal yourself you fell,
And so you met with unintended death.
And another:—
’Tis said the wise Empedocles did fall
Out of his chariot, and so broke his thigh:
But if he leapt into the flames of Ætna,
How could his tomb be shown in Megara?
XII. The following were some of his doctrines. He used to assert that
there were four elements, fire, water, earth, and air. And that that
is friendship by which they are united, and discord by which they are
separated. And he speaks thus on this subject:—
Bright Jove, life-giving Juno, Pluto dark,
And Nestis, who fills mortal eyes with tears.
Meaning by Jove fire, by Juno the earth, by Pluto the air, and by Nestis
water. And these things, says he, never cease alternating with one
another; inasmuch as this arrangement is perpetual. Accordingly, he says
subsequently:—
Sometimes in friendship bound they coalesce,
Sometimes they’re parted by fell discord’s hate.
And he asserts that the sun is a vast assemblage of fire, and that it is
larger than the moon. And the moon is disk-shaped; and that the heaven
itself is like crystal; and that the soul inhabits every kind of form of
animals and plants. Accordingly, he thus expresses himself.
For once I was a boy, and once a girl.
A bush, a bird, a fish who swims the sea,
XIII. His writings on Natural Philosophy and his Purifications extend
to five thousand verses; and his Medical Poem to six hundred; and his
Tragedies we have spoken of previously.
LIFE OF EPICHARMUS.
I. Epicharmus was a native of Cos, the son of Helothales; he also was
a pupil of Pythagoras. When he was three months old he was brought to
Megara, in Sicily, and from thence he came to Syracuse, as he himself
tells us in his writings. And on his statue there is the following
inscription.
As the bright sun excels the other stars,
As the sea far exceeds the river streams:
So does sage Epicharmus men surpass,
Whom hospitable Syracuse has crowned.
II. He has left behind him Commentaries in which he treats of natural
philosophy, and delivers apophthegms, and discusses medicine. He has
also added brief notes to many of his commentaries, in which he declares
plainly that he is the author of the works.
III. He died at the age of ninety years.
LIFE OF ARCHYTAS.
I. Archytas was a native of Tarentum, and the son of Mnesagoras; or, as
Aristoxenus relates, of Histiæus.
II. He also was a Pythagorean; and he it was who saved Plato’s life
by means of a letter, when he was in danger of being put to death by
Dionysius.
III. He was a man held in very general esteem on account of his universal
virtue; and he was seven times appointed general of his countrymen, when
no one else had ever held the office for more than one year, as the law
forbade it to be held for a longer period.
IV. Plato wrote his letters to him; as he had begun the correspondence by
writing himself to Plato, which he did in the following manner:—
ARCHYTAS TO PLATO, GREETING.
“I am very glad that you have recovered from your delicate state of
health; for you yourself have sent me word of your recovery, and Lamiscus
gives the same account. I have been much occupied with some commentaries,
and have been among the Lucanians, and have met with the descendants of
Ocellus. I have now in my possession, and I send to you the treatises on
Law, and Kingly Power, and Piety, and the Creation of the Universe. As
for the rest, I have not been able to find them, but whenever I do find
any, I will send them to you.”
Thus wrote Archytas. And Plato sent him an answer in the following terms:—
PLATO TO ARCHYTAS, GREETING.
“I was exceedingly glad to receive the Commentaries which came from you,
and I have admired their author in the greatest possible degree; and he
seems to us to be a man worthy of his ancient ancestors. For they are
said to have been originally natives of Myra; and to have been among the
Trojans, whom Laomedon took with him, gallant men, as the story handed
down by tradition attests. As for my Commentaries which you ask me for,
they are not yet completed, but such as they are I send them to you. And
on the propriety of taking care of such things we are both agreed, so
that I have no need to impress anything on you on that head. Farewell.”
These then are the letters which these philosophers wrote to one another.
V. There were four people of the name of Archytas. The first, this man
of whom we are speaking. The second was a Mytilenean, a musician. The
third wrote a treatise on Agriculture. The fourth was an epigrammatic
poet. Some writers also make mention of a fifth, who was an architect;
and there is a book on mechanics extant which is attributed to him; which
begins in this way:—
“This is what I heard from Teucer, the Carthaginian.”
And concerning the musician, the following story is told: That once he
was reproached for not making himself heard, and he replied, “My organ
contends on my behalf, and speaks.”
VI. Aristoxenus says, that this Pythagorean was never once defeated while
acting as general. But that as he was attacked by envy, he once gave up
his command, and his army was immediately taken prisoner.
VII. He was the first person who applied mathematical principles to
mechanics, and reduced them to a system; and the first also who gave a
methodical impulse to descriptive geometry in seeking, in the sections of
a demicylinder for a proportional mean, which should enable him to find
the double of a given cube. He was also the first person who ever gave
the geometrical measure of a cube, as Plato mentions in his Republic.
LIFE OF ALCMÆON.
I. Alcmæon was a citizen of Crotona; he also was a pupil of Pythagoras.
And the chief part of his writings are on medical subjects; but he also
at times discusses points of natural philosophy, and asserts that the
greater part of human affairs have two sides. He appears to have been the
first person who wrote a treatise on Natural Philosophy, as Phavorinus
affirms, in his Universal History; and he used to argue that the moon had
the same nature for ever which she had at that moment.
II. He was the son of Pirithus, as he himself states at the beginning of
his treatise, where he says, “Alcmæon, of Crotona, the son of Pirithus,
says this to Brontinus, and Leon, and Bathyllus. About things invisible,
and things mortal, the Gods alone have a certain knowledge; but men may
form conjectures.…” And so on.
He used also to say that the soul was immortal, and that it was in a
state of perpetual motion in the same way as the sun.
LIFE OF HIPPASUS.
I. Hippasus was a citizen of Metapontum, and a pupil of Pythagoras.
II. He used to say that the time of the changes of the world was
definite, and that the universe also was finite, and in a state of
perpetual motion.
III. Demetrius, in his treatise on People of the same Name, says that he
left no writings behind him.
IV. There were two people of the name of Hippasus; this man, and another
who wrote an account of the Constitution of the Lacedæmonians, in five
books. And he was himself a Lacedæmonian.
LIFE OF PHILOLAUS.
I. Philolaus was a native of Crotona, and a pupil of Pythagoras, it was
from him that Plato wrote to Dion to take care and purchase the books of
Pythagoras.
II. And he died under suspicion of having designed to seize on the
tyranny; and we have written an epigram on him:—
I say that all men ought above all things
To guard against suspicion. For, though innocent,
Still if you are suspected, you’re unfortunate.
And thus his native city of Crotona
Slew Philolaus; for the jealous citizens
Thought that his house betrayed a tyrant’s purpose.
III. His theory was, that everything was produced by harmony and
necessity. And he was the first person who affirmed that the earth moved
in a circle; though some attribute the assertion of this principle to
Icetas of Syracuse.
IV. He wrote one book, which Hermippus reports, on the authority of some
unknown writer, that Plato the philosopher purchased when he was in
Sicily (having come thither to the court of Dionysius), of the relations
of Philolaus, for forty Alexandrian minæ of silver; and that from this
book he copied his Timæus. But others say that Plato received it as a
present, after having obtained his liberty for a young man, one of the
disciples of Philolaus, who had been arrested by Dionysius. Demetrius,
in his treatise on people of the same name, says that he was the first
of the Pythagoreans who wrote a treatise on Natural Philosophy; and it
begins thus:—
“But nature in the world has been composed of bodies infinite and finite,
and so is the whole world and all that is in it.”
LIFE OF EUDOXUS.
I. Eudoxus was the son of Æschines, and a native of Cnidus. He was an
astronomer, a geometrician, a physician, and a lawgiver. In geometry he
was a pupil of Archytas, and in medicine of Philistion, the Sicilian,
as Callimachus relates in his Tablets; and Sotion, in his Successions,
asserts that he was likewise a pupil of Plato; for that, when he was
twenty-three years of age, and in very narrow circumstances, he came to
Athens with Theomedon the physician, by whom he was chiefly supported,
being attracted by the reputation of the Socratic school. Some say that
his attachment to Theomedon was cemented by nearer ties. And when he
had arrived at Piræus, he went up to the city every day, and when he
had heard the Sophists lecture he returned. And having spent two months
there, he returned home again; and being again aided by the contributions
of his friends, he set sail for Egypt, with Chrysippus the physician,
bearing letters of introduction from Agesilaus to Nectanabis, and that he
recommended him to the priests.
II. And having remained there a year and four months, he shaved his
eyebrows after the manner of the Egyptian priests, and composed, as it is
said, the treatise called the Octaeteris. From thence he went to Cyzicus,
and to the Propontis, in both of which places he lived as a Sophist; he
also went to the court of Mausolus. And then, in this manner, he returned
again to Athens, having a great many disciples with him, for the sake,
as some say, of annoying Plato, because he had originally discarded him
from his school. Some say, that when Plato gave an entertainment on one
occasion, Eudoxus, as the guests were very numerous, introduced the
fashion of sitting in a semicircle.
Nicomachus, the son of Aristotle, affirms that he used to say, that
pleasure was the good.
III. He was received in his own country with great honours, as the
decree that was passed respecting him shows. He was also accounted
very illustrious among the Greeks, having given laws to his own fellow
citizens, as Hermippus tells us in the fourth book of his account of
the Seven Wise Men; and having also written treatises on Astronomy and
Geometry, and several other considerable works.
He had three daughters, Actis, Philtis, and Delphis. And Eratosthenes
asserts, in his books addressed to Baton, that he also composed dialogues
entitled Dialogues of Dogs; others say that these were written by some
Egyptians, in their own language, and that Eudoxus translated them, and
published them in Greece. One of his pupils was Chrysippus, of Cnidos,
son of Erineus, who learnt of him all that he knew about the Gods,
and the world, and the heavenly bodies; and who learnt medicine from
Philistion the Sicilian. He also left some very admirable Reminiscences.
IV. He had a son of the name of Aristagoras, who was the teacher of
Chrysippus, the son of Aëthlius; he was the author of a work on Remedies
for the Eyes, as speculations on natural philosophy had come very much
under his notice.
V. There were three people of the name of Eudoxus. The first, this man
of whom we are speaking; the second, a Rhodian, who wrote histories; the
third, a Siciliot, a son of Agathocles, a comic poet, who gained three
victories at the Dionysia in the city, and five at the Lenæa,[119] as
Apollodorus tells us in his Chronicles. We also find another, who was a
physician of Cnidos, who is mentioned by this Eudoxus, in his Circuit of
the World, where he says that he used to warn people to keep constantly
exercising their limbs in every kind of exercise, and their senses too.
VI. The same author says, that the Cnidean Eudoxus flourished about the
hundred and third olympiad; and that he was the inventor of the theory
of crooked lines. And he died in his fifty-third year. But when he was
in Egypt with Conuphis, of Heliopolis, Apis licked his garment; and so
the priests said that he would be short-lived, but very illustrious, as
it is reported by Phavorinus in his Commentaries. And we have written an
epigram on him, that runs thus:—
’Tis said, that while at Memphis wise Eudoxus
Learnt his own fate from th’ holy fair-horned bull;
He said indeed no word, bulls do not speak
Nor had kind nature e’er calf Apis gifted
With an articulately speaking mouth.
But standing on one side he lick’d his cloak,
Showing by this most plainly—in brief time
You shall put off your life. So death came soon,
When he had just seen three and fifty times
The Pleiads rise to warn the mariners.
And instead of Eudoxus, they used to call him Endoxus,[120] on account
of the brilliancy of his reputation. And since we have gone through
the illustrious Pythagoreans, we must now speak of the Promiscuous
philosophers, as they call them. And we will first of all speak of
Heraclitus.
[107] See Herod. iv. 93.
[108] This resembles the account which Ovid puts into the mouth of
Pythagoras, in the last book of his Metamorphoses, where he makes him
say:—
Morte carent animæ, semperque priore relicta
Sede, novis domibus habitant vivuntque receptæ;
Ipse ego, nam memini, Trojani tempora belli,
Panthorides Euphorbus eram, cui pectore quondam
Hæsit in adverso gravis hasta minoris Atridæ:
Agnovi Clypeum lævæ gestamina nostræ
Nuper Abanteïs templo Junonis in Argis.
Which may be translated:—
Death has no pow’r th’ immortal soul to slay;
That, when its present body turns to clay,
Seeks a fresh home, and with unminish’d might
Inspires another frame with life and light.
So I myself, (well I the past recall)
When the fierce Greeks begirt Troy’s holy wall,
Was brave Euphorbus; and in conflict drear,
Poured forth my blood beneath Atrides’ spear:
The shield this arm did bear I lately saw
In Juno’s shrine, a trophy of that war.
[109] This passage has been interpreted in more ways than one. Casaubon
thinks with great probability that there is a hiatus in the text. I have
endeavoured to extract a meaning out of what remains. Compare Samuel ii.
16, 23. “And the counsel of Ahitophel, which he counselled in those days,
was as if a man had enquired at the oracle of God; so was all the counsel
of Ahitophel both with David and with Absalom.”
[110] Zaleucus was the celebrated lawgiver of the Epizephyrian Locrians,
and is said to have been originally a slave employed by a shepherd, and
to have been set free and appointed lawgiver by the direction of an
oracle, in consequence of his announcing some excellent laws, which he
represented Minerva as having communicated to him in a dream. Diogenes,
is wrong however, in calling him a disciple of Pythagoras (see Bentley on
Phalaris), as he lived about a hundred years before his time; his true
date being 660 B.C. The code of Zaleucus is stated to have been the first
collection of written laws that the Greeks possessed. Their character
was that of great severity. They have not come down to us. His death is
said to have occurred thus. Among his laws was one forbidding any citizen
to enter the senate house in arms, under the penalty of death. But in
a sudden emergency, Zaleucus himself, in a moment of forgetfulness,
transgressed his own law: on which he slew himself, declaring that he
would vindicate his law. (Eustath. ad. Il. i. p. 60). Diodorus, however,
tells the same story of Charondas.
[111] Charondas was a lawgiver of Catana, who legislated for his own city
and the other towns of Chalcidian origin in Magna Grecia, such as Zancle,
Naxos, Leontini, Eubœa, Mylæ, Himera, Callipolis, and Rhegium. His laws
have not been preserved to us, with the exception of a few judgments.
They were probably in verse, for Athenæus says that they were sung in
Athens at banquets. Aristotle tells us that they were adapted to an
aristocracy. It is much doubted whether it is really true that he was a
disciple of Pythagoras, though we are not sure of his exact time, so that
we cannot pronounce it as impossible as in the preceding case. He must
have lived before the time of Anaxilaus, tyrant of Rhegium, who reigned
from B.C. 494 to B.C. 476, because he abolished the laws of Charondas,
which had previously been in force in that city. Diodorus gives a code of
laws which he states that Charondas gave to the city of Thurii, which was
not founded till B.C. 443, when he must certainly have been dead a long
time. There is one law of his preserved by Stobæus, which is probably
authentic, since it is found in a fragment of Theophrastus; enacting that
all buying and selling shall be transacted by ready money only.
[112] This doctrine is alluded to doubtfully by Virgil, Georg. i. 247.
Illic, ut perhibent, aut intempesta silet nox
Semper, et obductâ densantur nocte tenebræ;
Aut redit a nobis Aurora, diemque reducit;
Nosque ubi primus equis oriens afflavit anhelis,
Illic sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper.
Thus translated by Dryden, l. 338:—
There, as they say, perpetual night is found,
In silence brooding o’er th’ unhappy ground.
Or when Aurora leaves our northern sphere,
She lights the downward heav’n and rises there;
And when on us she breathes the living light
Red Vesper kindles there the tapers of the night.
[113] νοῦς appears, in a division like this, to be the deliberative part
of the mind; φρὴν, the rational part of the intellect: θυμὸς, that part
with which the passions are concerned.
[114] There is a great variety of suggestions as to the proper reading
here. There is evidently some corruption in the text.
[115] From παύω, to cause to cease, ἀνία, sorrow.
[116] It is impossible to give the force of this epigram in any other
language. It is a pun on Ἄκρων, Ἀκράγας and ἄκρος. The last word meaning
not only _high_, _lofty_, but also _eminent_, _very skilful_. The plain
English would be:—“The lofty height of a most eminent country conceals
Acron, a skilful physician of Acragas, the son of a skilful father.” The
variation would be:—“A high tomb on a very high summit, conceals,” &c.
[117] This story is mentioned by Horace:—
Siculique poetæ,
Narrabo interitum; deus immortalis haberi,
Dum cupit Empedocles ardentem frigidus Ætnam,
Insiluit. A. P. 466.
[118] This is slightly parodied from Homer. Od. xi. 278. Pope’s Version,
337.
[119] There were three festivals of Bacchus at Athens at which dramatic
contests took place, the Διονύσια κατ’ ἄγρους, or, “in the fields;” the
Ληναῖα or τὰ ἐν Λίμναις, or “the marshes,” a part of the city near the
Acropolis, in which was situated the Λήναιον, an enclosure dedicated to
Bacchus; and the τὰ ἐν ἄστει, “in the city,” or τὰ μέγαλα Διονύσια. The
comic contests usually took place at the second or Lenæan festivals.
Sometimes also at the Great Dionysia.
[120] ἔνδοξος, glorious.
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