Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/408

 &JO HISTORY OF GREECE. to the attainability of certain knowledge, 1 which the nature of Lis philosophy was well calculated to suggest, and in which tha sillograph Timon of the third century B.C., who seems to hava spoken of Xenophanes better than of most of the other philoso- phers, powerfully sympathized. The cosmogony of Pherekydes of Syrus, contemporary of Anaximander and among the teachers of Pythagoras, seems, according to the fragments preserved, a combination of the old legendary fancies with Orphic mysticism, 2 and probably exercised little influence over the subsequent course of Grecian philosophy. By what has been said of Thales, Anaximander, and Xenoph- anes, it will be seen that the sixth century B.C. witnessed the opening of several of those roads of intellectual speculation which the later philosophers pursued farther, or at least from which they branched off. Before the year 500 B.C. many inter- esting questions were thus brought into discussion, which Solon, who died about 558 B.C., had never heard of, just as he may probably never have seen the map of Anaximander. But neither of these two distinguished men Anaximander or Xenophanes was anything more than a speculative inquirer. The third emi- nent name of this century, of whom I am now about to speak, Pythagoras, combined in his character disparate elements which require rather a longer development. Pythagoras was founder of a brotherhood, originally brought together by a religious influence, and with observances approach- ing to monastic peculiarity, working in a direction at once religious, political, and scientific, and exercising for some time a real political ascendency, but afterwards banished from govern- ment and state affairs into a sectarian privacy with scientific pursuits, not without, however, still producing some statesmen individually distinguished. Amidst the multitude of false and apocryphal statements which circulated in antiquity respecting this celebrated man, we find a few important facts reasonably attested and deserving credence. He was a native of Samos, 3 1 Xenophanes, Fr. xiv, ed. Mullach ; Sextus Empiric, adv. Mathematicos, rii, 49-110 ; and Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. i, 224; Plutarch adv. Coloten, p. 1114 '. Dompare Karsten ad Parmenidis Fragmenta, p. 146.
 * See Brandis, Handbuch der Griech. Rom. Philosophic, ch. xxii
 * Hcrodot. iv, 95. The phue of his nativity is certain from HerodotBS