Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/297

Rh write in Doric. Nor did Archytas write in the Laconian dialect of Taras, but in what may be called "common Doric," and he is a generation later than Philolaos, which makes a great difference. In the time of Philolaos and later, Ionic was still used even by the citizens of Dorian states for scientific purposes. The Syracusan historian Antiochos wrote in Ionic, and so did the medical writers of Dorian Kos and Knidos. The forged work of Pythagoras, which some ascribed to Lysis, was in Ionic; and so was the book on the Akousmata attributed to Androkydes, which shows that, even in Alexandrian times, it was believed that Ionic was the proper dialect for Pythagorean writings.

In the second place, there can be no doubt that one of the fragments refers to the five regular solids, four of which are identified with the elements of Empedokles. Now Plato tells us in the Republic that stereometry had not been adequately investigated at the time that dialogue is supposed to take place, and we have express testimony that the five "Platonic figures," as they were called, were discovered in the Academy. In the Scholia to Euclid we read that the Pythagoreans only knew the cube, the pyramid (tetrahedron), and the dodecahedron, while the octahedron and