Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/278

256 256 HISTORY OF THE Greece itself was called the Italic ;* the most obscure region of the Greek philosophy, as we have no accounts of individual writings, and scarcely even of individual writers, belonging to it. Nevertheless, the personal history of Pythagoras, the most conspicuous name among the Italic philosophers, is not so obscure as to compel us to resort to the hypothesis of an antehistorical Pythagoras, from whom a sort of Pytha- gorean religion, together with the primitive constitution of the Italian cities, was derived, and who had been celebrated in very early legends as the instructor of Numa and the author of an ancient civilization and philosophy in Italy.f The Greeks who first make mention of Pytha- goras (viz. Heraclitus and Xenophanes) do not speak of him as a fabulous person. Heraclitus, in particular, mentions him as a rival whose method of seeking wisdom differed from his own. There are, moreover, good grounds for believing the general tradition of antiquity, that Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, was not a native of the country in which he acquired such extraordinary honour, but of the Ionic island of Samos, and that he migrated to Italy when Samos fell under the tyrannical dominion of Polycrates; which migration is placed, with much probability, in Olymp. 62. 4. e. c. 529. { Considering the dif- ferent characters and dispositions of the Hellenic races, it was natural that philosophy, which seeks to give independence to the mind, and to free it from prejudices and traditions, should always receive its first im- pulse from Ionians. The notion of gaining wisdom by one's own efforts was exclusively Ionic ; the Dorians laid greater stress on the tra- ditions of their fathers, and their hereditary religion and morality, than on their own speculations. It is probable that Pythagoras, before he left the Ionic Samos, and came to Italy, was not very different from such men as Thales and Anaximander. He had doubtless an inquiring mind, and habits of careful observation ; and he probably combined with mathematical studies (which made their first steps among the Ionians) a knowledge of natural history and of other subjects, which he increased by travelling^ Thus Heraclitus not only includes him among persons of much knowledge, |j but says of him as follows : " Py- thagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, has made more inquiries than any other man ; he has acquired wisdom, knowledge, and mischievous re- ing to which it only comprehends the later Bruttii and Calabria. Otherwise the Eleatics could not be distinguished from the Italic school. 233. Eng. transl. last ed.] J That the ancient chronologists in Cicero de Re Publ. II. 15, fixed 01. 62. 4, as the year of the arrival of Pythagoras in Italy, is proved by the context. 01. 62. 1, is given as the first year of the reign of Polycrates. Comp. Ch. XIII. § 11. § That Pythagoras acquired his wisdom in Egypt cannot be safely inferred from Isocrat. Busir. § 30 ; the Busiris being a mere rhetorical and sophistical exercise, in which little regard would be paid to historical truth. [| See above, § 7.
 * This appellative is an instance of the limited sense of the name Italia, accord-
 * Niebuhr's hypothesis. ' See his Hist, of Rome, vol. i. p. 165. 244. ed. 2. [p. 158.