Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/99

Rh doctrine of transmigration. Herakleitos, in the next generation, speaks of his having carried scientific investigation (ἱστορίη) further than any one, though he made use of it for purposes of imposture. Later, though still within the century, Herodotos speaks of him as "not the weakest scientific man (σοφιστής) among the Hellenes," and he says he had been told by the Greeks of the Hellespont that the legendary Scythian Salmoxis had been a slave of Pythagoras at Samos. He does not believe that; for he knew Salmoxis lived many years before Pythagoras. The story, however, is evidence that Pythagoras was well known in the fifth century, both as a scientific man and as a preacher of immortality. That takes us some way.

Plato was deeply interested in Pythagoreanism, but he is curiously reserved about Pythagoras. He only mentions him once by name in all his writings, and all we are told then is that he won the affections of his followers in an unusual degree (διαφερόντως ἠγαπήθη) by teaching them a "way of life," which was still called Pythagorean. Even the Pythagoreans are only once mentioned by name, in the passage where Sokrates is made to say that they regard music and astronomy as sister sciences. On the other hand, Plato tells us a good deal about men whom we know from other sources to have been Pythagoreans, but he avoids the name. For all he says, we should only have been able to guess that Echekrates and Philolaos belonged to the school. Usually Pythagorean views are given anonymously, as those of "ingenious persons" (κομψοί τινες) or the like, and we are not even told expressly that Timaios the Lokrian, into whose mouth Plato has placed an unmistakably Pythagorean cosmology, belonged to the society. We are left to infer it from the fact that he comes from Italy. Aristotle imitates his master's reserve in this matter. The