Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/415

 DOCTRINES OF PYTHAGOKAb. 333 observances, and probably a certain measure of telf-denial em- bodied in the Pythagorean life ; but on the other hand, it seems equally certain that the members of the order cannot have been all subjected to the same diet, or training, or studies. For Milo the Krotoniate was among them, 1 the strongest man and the un- paralleled wrestler of his age, who cannot possibly have dis- pensed with animal food and ample diet (even setting aside the tales about his voracious appetite), and is not likely to have bent his attention on speculative study. Probably Pythagoras did not enforce the same bodily or mental discipline on all, or at least knew when to grant dispensations. The order, as it first stood under him, consisted of men dill'erent both in temperament and aptitude, but bound together by common religious observances) and hopes, common reverence for the master, and mutual attach- ment as well as pride in each other's success ; and it must thus be distinguished from the Pythagoreans of the fourth century B.C., who had no communion with wrestlers, and comprised only ascetic, studious men, generally recluse, though in some cases rising to political distinction. The succession of these Pythagoreans, never very numerous, seems to have continued until about 300 B.C., and then nearly died out ; being superseded by other schemes of philosophy more suited to cultivated Greeks of the age after Sokrates. But dur- ing the time of Cicero, two centuries afterwards, the orientalizing tendency then beginning to spread over the Grecian and Ro- man world, and becoming gradually stronger and stronger caused the Pythagorean philosophy to be again revived. It was revived too, with little or none of its scientific tendencies, but with more than its primitive religious and imaginative fanaticism, f/6rj ~yup TTOT' }'<!> ysvofiqv novpo; re Koprj re, (Diogen. L. viii, 77 ; Sturz. ad Erapedokl. Frag. p. 466.) Pythagoras is said to have affirmed that he had been not only Enphorbus in the Grecian army before Troy, but also a tradesman, a courtezan, etc., and various other human characters, before his actual existence ; he did not, however, extend trie same intercommunion to plants, in any case. The abstinence from animal food was an Orphic precept as well se Pythagorean (Aristophan. Ran. 1032). 1 Strabo, vi, p. 263 ; Diogen. L. viii, 40