Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/296

282 rest. It cannot be said that this position is plausible. Boeckh saw there was no ground for supposing that there ever was more than a single work, and he drew the conclusion that we must accept all the remains as genuine or reject all as spurious. As, however, many scholars still maintain the genuineness of most of the fragments, we cannot ignore them altogether. Arguments based on their doctrine would, it is true, present the appearance of a vicious circle at this stage, but there are two serious objections to the fragments, which may be mentioned at once.

In the first place, we must ask whether it is likely that Philolaos should have written in Doric? Ionic was the dialect of science and philosophy till the time of the Peloponnesian War, and there is no reason to suppose the early Pythagoreans used any other. Pythagoras was himself an Ionian, and it is not likely that in his time the Achaian states in which he founded his Order had adopted the Dorian dialect. Alkmaion of Kroton seems to have written in Ionic. Diels says that Philolaos and then Archytas were the first Pythagoreans to use the dialect of their homes; but Philolaos can hardly be said to have had a home, and it is hard to see why an Achaian refugee at Thebes should