Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/413

 MIXED CHARACTER OF PYTHAGORAS. 395 ijhiefly the religious missionary and schoolmaster, with little of the politician. His efficiency in the latter character, originally subordinate, first becomes prominent in those glowing fancies which the later Pythagoreans communicated to Aristoxenus and Dikaearchus. The primitive Pythagoras inspired by the gods to reveal a new mode of life, 1 the Pythagorean life, and to promise divine favor to a select and docile few, as the recom- pense of strict ritual obedience, of austere self-control, and of laborious training, bodily as well as mental. To speak with con- fidence of the details of his training, ethical or scientific, and of the doctrines which he promulgated, is impossible ; for neither be himself nor any of his disciples anterior to Philolaus who was separated from him by about one intervening generation left any memorials in writing. 2 Numbers and lines, studied ? Aiyt'/rrov, nal /ia$j?rfo rH>v If pew yevo/tsvoc, r'rjv re u/J.qv $iAooo<>>iav Trpurof elf roiif "E/1/.^vaf KOfj.iffe, Kal ~a irepl ruf -dvala^ Kal ~u<; uyia-eiaf h> rote iepolg Ki$avaTpov TIJV uh/iuv iairoiidaae. Compare Aristotcl. Magn. Moralia, i, 1, about Pythagoras as an ethical teacher. Demokritus, born about 460 B.C., wrote a treatise (now lost) re- specting Pythagoras, whom he greatly admired : as far as we can judge, it would seem that he too must have considered Pythagoras as an ethical teacher (Diogen. LaCrt. xi, 88; Mullach, Democriti Fragmenta. lib. ii, p 113; Cicero de Orator, iii, 15). 1 Jamblichus, Vit. Pyth. c. 64, 115, 151, 199 : see also the idea ascribed to Pythagoras, of divine inspirations coming on men (im-voia napa TOW tiai/ioviov). Aristoxenus apud Stobaeum, Eclog. Physic, p. 206: Diogen La6rt. viii, 32. Meiners establishes it as probable that the stories respecting the miracu- lous powers and properties of Pythagoras got into circulation either during his lifetime, or at least not long after his death ( Geschichte der "Wissens- chaften, b. iii, vol. i, pp. 504, 505). commentary on them, by Boeckh (Philolaus des Pythagoreers Leben, Ber- lin,1819). That Philolaus was the first who composed a work on Pythag- orean science, and thus made it known beyond the limits of the brother- hood among others to Plato appears well established (Boeckh, Philo- laus, p. 22; Diogen. LaCrt. viii, 15-55 ; Jamblichus, c. 119). Simmias and Kebos, fellow-disciples of Plato under Sokrates, had held intercourse with Philolaus at Thebes (Plato, Phrcdon, p. 61), perhaps about 420 B.C. The Pythagorean brotherhood had then been dispersed in various parts of Greece, though the attachment of its members to each other seems to haya continued long afterwards.
 * Respecting Philolaus, see the valuable collection of his fragments, and