Ionic philosophers. - Pythagoras. - Kroton and Sybaris

Cte AMI DR) A HISTORY OF GREECE; FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE CLOSE OF THE GENERATION CONTEMPORARY WITH ALEXANDER THE GREAT. By GEORGE GROTE, F.RS,, D.C.L. OXFORD AND LL.D. CAMBRIDGE; VICE-CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON ; PRESIDENT OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON ; FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. CHAPTER XXXVII. IONIC PHILOSOPHERS.—-PYTHAGORAS.—KROTON AND SYBARIS. Phalaris despot of Agrigentum 65 | The Eleatic school, Parmenidés a Thalês .. . eee an ee 66 and Zeno, , springi Springing from XenoIonic philosophers—not a school | phanés — their dialectics — their or succession = .. .. +...» 67, great influence on Grecian specuStep in philosophy commenced by t lation ,, ., ., … 75 Vast problems with scanty means 76 Be ee .. ve 4 ib | Pherekydés of solution .. oss se +. ne cause of the vein a scepticism gh Grecian phi- TP) Lots alés J' te ee ue 68 ou ! History of Pythagoras ., ce ee t .. … His character and doctrines oe .. | Pythagoras more a missionary and schoolmaster than a politician— en 69 | 77 his political efficiency. exagger- — primeval clement of water ated by later witnesses .. .. 80 act the uid .. se en +. 70 | His ethical training—probably not pee Onzand ‘the Many 71 applied to all the members of his e Many order .. .. ., .. ,. .. BI are Permanent and the VariDecline and subsequent renovation Cou es + ee + +. 72 of the Pythagorean order .. 82 Xenophanés— his doctrine the oppo| Pythagoras not merely a borrower site of that of Anaximander EL si nn 73 Page He passes from Samos to mind.— Kroton. . State of Kroton—oligarchical government — excellent nastic training and medical sc. … ib Rapid and wonderful effects said to have been produced by the 86 exhortations of Bytha oras He forms a powerful club or society, consisting of three hundred men taken from the wealthy but an original and ascendent | sect, in which character it continues .. . War between Sybaris and Kroton. Page 95 Defeat of the Sybarites, and destruction of their city, partly through the aid of the Spartan Dorians en ee ee re ve 96 Sensation excited in the Hellenic world by the destruction of Sybaris. Gradual decline of the Greek power in Italy... . 97 classes at Kroton .. .. .. .. 87 Contradictory statements and arguments respecting the presence of Political influence of Pythagoras— Dorieus ee ee ee ee 98 was an indirect result of the constitution of the order .. .. .. 89 Herodotus does not mention the | Pythagoreans when he alludes Causes which led to the subverto the war between Sybaris and sion of the Pythagorean order .. 91 t__Kroton., .. Violences which accompanied its 99 subversion .. .. .. +: .. 93 . Charondas, lawgiver of Katana, ! Naxos, Zanklé, Rhégium, &c... 100 The Pythagorean order is reduced to a religious and philosophical

CHAPTER XXXVII. IONIC PHILOSOPHERS.—PYTHAGORAS.—KROTON AND SYBARIS, THE history of the powerful Grecian cities in Italy and Sicily, between the accession of Peisistratus and the battle of Marathon, is for the most part unknown to despot of us. Phalaris, despot of Agrigentum in Sicily, made Agrigentum, for himself an unenviable name during this obscure interval. His reign seems to coincide in time with the earlier part of the rule of Peisistratus (about 560-540 B.C.), and the few and vague statements, which we find respecting it,! merely show us that it was a period of extortion and cruelty, even beyond the ordinary licence of Grecian despots. The reality of the hollow bull of brass, which Phalaris was accustomed to heat in order to shut up his victims in it and burn them, appears to be better authenticated than the nature of the story would lead us to presume. For it is not only noticed by Pindar, but even the actual instrument of this torture—the brazen bull itself*—which had been taken away from Agrigentum as a trophy by the Carthaginians when they captured the town, was restored by the Romans, on the subjugation of t The letters of Bentley against Boyle, mæus is noway sufficient to make us discussing the pretended Epistles of doubt the authenticity of the story. Phalaris—full of acuteness and learn- Ebert (ZimeAlwy), part ii. p. 41-84. ing though beyond measure excursive— Königsberg, 1829) collects all the autho. are quite cient to teach us that rities about the bull of Phalaris. He little can be safely asserted about Pha- believes the matter of fact substantially. laris. His date is very imperfectly as- Aristotle (Rhetoric, ii. 20) tells a story certained. Compare Bentley, p. 82, 83, of the fable whereby Stésichorus the and Seyfert, Akragas und sein Gebiet, poet dissuaded the inhabitants of Himera B. 60: the latter assigns the reign of rom granting a guard to Phalaris: halaris to the years 570-554 B.C. It Conon (Narrat. 42 ap. Photium) reis surprising to see Seyfert citing the counts the same story with the name of letters of ane udo- halaris as an Hiero substituted for that of Phalaris. authority, after the exposure of Bentley. But it is not likely that either the one 3 Pindar Pyth. 1 ad fin. with the or the other could ever have been in Scholia, p. 310, ed. Boeckh; Polyb. such relations with the citizens of Hixii. 25; Diodor. xiii. 99; Cicero cont. mera, Compare Polybius, vii. 7, 2. Verr. iv. 33. The contradiction of TiVOL. IV.

Carthage, to its original domicile. Phalaris is said to have acquired the supreme command by undertaking the task of building a great temple’ to Zeus Polieus on the citadel rock ; a pretence, whereby he was enabled to assemble and arm a number of workmen and devoted partisans, whom he employed, at the festival of the Thesmophoria, to put down the authorities. He afterwards disarmed the citizens by a stratagem, and committed cruelties which rendered him so abhorred, that a sudden rising of the people, headed by Télemachus (ancestor of the subsequent despot Théron), overthrew and slew him. A severe revenge was taken on his partisans after his fall.? During the interval between 540-500 B.C., events of much importance occurred among the Italian Greeks—especially at Kroton and Sybaris—events, unhappily, very imperfectly ‘handed down. Between these two periods fall both the war between Sybaris and Kroton, and the career and ascendency of Pythagoras. In connexion with this latter name, it will be requisite to say a few words respecting the other Grecian philosophers of the sixth century B.C. | I have, in a former chapter, noticed and characterized those distinguished persons called the Seven Wise Men of Thalés. Greece, whose celebrity falls in the first half of this century—men not so much marked by scientific genius as by practical sagacity and foresight in the appreciation of worldly affairs, and enjoying a high degree of political respect from their fellow-citizens. One of them, however, the Milesian Thalés, claims our notice, not only on this ground, but also as the earliest known name in the long line of Greek scientific investigators. His life, nearly contemporary with that of Solon, belongs seemingly to the interval about 640-550 B.C. : the stories mentioned in Herodotus (perhaps borrowed in part from the Milesian Hekatæus) are sufficient to show that his reputation, for wisdom as well as for science, continued to be very great, even a century after his death, among his fellow-citizens. And he marks an important epoch in the progress of the Greek mind, as having been the first man to depart both in letter and spirit from the Hesiodic Theogony, 1 Polyæn. v. 1,1; Cicero de Officiis, ii. 7. ? Plutarch, Philosophand. cum Principibus, c. 3, p. 778.

introducing the conception of substances with their transformations and sequences, in place of that string of persons and quasi-human attributes which had animated the old legendary world. He is the father of what is called the Ionic philosophy, which is considered as lasting from his time down to that of Sokratés. Writers ancient as well as modern have professed to trace a succession of philosophers, each one the pupil of the preceding, between these two extreme epochs, But the appellation is in truth undefined and even incorrect, since nothing entitled to the name of a school, or sect, or succession (like that of the Pythagoreans, to be noticed presently) can be made out. There is indeed a tonic philocertain general analogy in the philosophical vein !rhers—net of Thalês, Hippo, Anaximenés, and Diogenés of succession. Apollonia, whereby they all stand distinguished from Xenophanés of Elea, and his successors the Eleatic dialecticians , Parmenidés and Zéno; but there are also material differences between their respective doctrines—no two of them holding the same. And if we look to Anaximander (the person next in order of time to Thalés), as well as to Herakleitus, we find them departing in a great degree even from that character which all the rest have in common, though both the one and the other are usually enrolled in the list of Ionic philosophers. Of the old legendary and polytheistic conception of nature, which Thalés partially discarded, we may remark genin that it is a state of the human mind in which the Pubsnty, problems suggesting themselves to be solved, and by Thalés the machinery for solving them, bear a fair proportion one to the other. If the problems be vast, indeterminate, confused, and derived rather from the hopes, fears, love, hatred, astonishment, &c., of men, than from any genuine desire of knowledge—so also does the received belief supply invisible agents in unlimited number and with every variety of power and inclination. The means of explanation are thus multiplied and diversified as readily as the phenomena to be explained. Though no event or state which has not yet occurred can be predicted, there is little difficulty in rendering a plausible account of every thing which has occurred in the past—of any and all things alike. Cosmogony, and the prior ages of the world, were conceived as a sort of personal

history with intermarriages, filiation, quarrels, and other adventures, of these invisible agents; among whom some one or more were assumed as unbegotten and self-existent— the latter assumption being a difficulty common to all systems of cosmogony, and from which even this flexible and expansive hypothesis is not exempt. Now when Thalés disengaged Grecian philosophy from the old mode of explanation, he did not at the same time disengage it from the old problems and matters propounded for inquiry. These he retained, and transmitted to his successors, as vaguc and vast as they were at first conceived; and so they remained, though with some transformations and modifications, together with many new questions equally insoluble, substantially present to the Greeks throughout their whole history, as the legitimate problems for philosophical investigation. But these problems, adapted only to the old elastic system of polytheistic explanation and omnipresent personal agency, became utterly disproportioned to any impersonal hypotheses such as those of Thalés and the philosophers after him—whether assumed physical laws, or plausible moral and metaphysical dogmas, open to argumentative attack, and of course requiring the Vast pro- like defence, To treat the visible world as a whole, blems wi . . . . scanty and inquire when and how it began, as well as into solution. all its past changes—to discuss the first origin of men, animals, plants, the sun, the stars, &c.—to assign some comprehensive reason, why motion or change in general took place in the universe—to investigate the destinies of the human race, and to lay down some systematic relation between them and the gods—all these were topics admitting of being conceived in many different ways, and set forth with eloquent plausibility; but not reducible to any solution resting on scientific evidence or commanding steady adherence under a free scrutiny.! At the time when the power of scientific investigation was scanty and helpless, the problems proposed were thus such 1 The less these problems are adapted | Ent mpoovsm, mit’ eis dBéeous for rational solution, the more nobly do Tred fees dop kabopûr $ioews they present themselves in the language of a great poet: see as a specimen, Euripidês, Fragment 101, ed Dindorf. *OABuos Gares rijs ioropias _ *Ecxe pabnow, pire mourir Kéopov äyipw, mi Te ovvéaTy Kai dry kai ömus. Tois Sè rowvros "Bever nere ov8éror’ mooieaicxpov

as to lie out of the reach of science in its largest compass. Gradually indeed subjects more special and limited, and upon which experience or deductions from experience could be brought to bear, were added to the list of gugsita, and examined with profit and instruction. But the old problems, with new ones alike unfathomable, were never eliminated, and always occupied a prominent place in the philosophical world. Now it was this disproportion, between questions to be solved and means of solution, which gave rise to that conspicuous characteristic of Grecian philosophy—the antagonist force of suspensive scepticism, passing in some minds into a broad negation of the attainability of general truth— which it nourished from its beginning to its end; commencing as early as Xenophanés, continuing to manifest itself seven centuries afterwards in AEnesidemus and Sextus Empiricus, and including in the interval between these two extremes some of the most powerful intellects in Greece. The present is not the time for considering these Sceptics, who bear an unpopular name, and have not often been fairly appreciated; the more so, as it often suited the purpose of men themselves more than half sceptical, like Sokratês and Plato, One cause ot the vein of to denounce professed scepticism with indignation. scepticism . hich But it is essential to bring them into notice at the through first spring of Grecian philosophy under Thalés, philosophy. because the circumstances were then laid which so soon afterwards developed them. Though the celebrity of Thalés in antiquity was great and universal, scarcely any distinct facts were known respecting him: it is certain that he left nothing in writing. Extensive travels in Egypt and Asia are ascribed to him, and as a general fact these travels are doubtless true, since no other means of acquiring knowledge were then open. At a time when the brother of the Lesbian Alkæus was serving in the Babylonian army, we may well conceive than an inquisitive Milesian would make his way to that wonderful city wherein stood the temple-observatory of the Chaldzan priesthood. How great his reputation was in his lifetime, the admiration expressed by his younger contemporary Xenophanés assures us; and Herakleitus, in the next generation, a severe judge of all other philosophers, spoke of him with similar esteem. To him were traced by the Grecian inquirers of the fourth

century B.C., the first beginnings of geometry, astronomy, and physiology in its large and really appropriate sense, the scientific study of nature : for the Greek word denoting nature (búovs) first comes into comprehensive use about this time (as I have remarked in an earlier chapter!) with its derivatives physics and physiology, as distinguished from the theology of the old poets. Little stress can be laid on those elementary propositions in geometry which are specified as discovered, or as first demonstrated, by Thalés—still less upon the solar eclipse respecting which (according to Herodotus) he deterThalês— | mined beforehand the year of occurrence? But the elementof main doctrine of his physiology (using that word in Buis or its larger Greek sense) is distinctly attested. He stripped Oceanus and Tethys, primeval parents of the gods in the Homeric theogony, of their personality and laid down water, or fluid substance, as the single original element from which everything came and into which everything returned.” The doctrine of one eternal element, remaining always the ‘same in its essence, but indefinitely variable in its manifestations to sense, was thus first introduced to the discussion of the Grecian public: We have no means of knowing the reasons by which Thalés supported this opinion, nor could even Aristotle do more than conjecture what they might have been; but one of the statements urged on behalf of it—that the earth itself rested on water ‘—we may safely refer to the Milesian himself, for it would hardly have been advanced at a later age. Moreover Thalés is reported to have held, that everything was living and full of gods; and that the magnet, especially, was a living thing. Thus the gods, as far as we can pretend to follow opinions so very faintly transmitted, are conceived as active powers, and causes of changeful manifestation, attached to the primæval substance ;° the universe being assimilated to an organized body or system. Respecting Hippo—who reproduced the theory of Thalés 1 Vol. i. ch. xvi. 8 Aristotel. Metaphys. i. 3; Plutarch, 2 Diogen. Laért. i, 23; Herodot, i. | Placit. Philos. i. 3, p. 875. ds £ ö8aros 75 ; Apuleius, Florid. iv. p. 144, Bip. | pnol xdvra elvaı, Kai els Boop xdvra àvaProclus, in his Commentary on Fu Aveo dat. clid, specifies several propositions said + Aristotel. uf supra, and De Ccelo, to have been discove by Thalés | ii. 13. (Brandis, Handbuch der Gr. Philos, ch. ® Aristotel. De Animä, i. 2-5 ; Cicero, xxviii. p. 11). De Legg. ii. 11 ; Diogen. Laërt. i. 24.

CHar. XXXVII, with some degree of generalization, substituting, in place of water, moisture, or something common to air and water '— we do not know whether he belonged to the sixth or ax the fifth century BC. : but both Anaximander, Xeno- "ander. phanés, and Pherekydés belong to the latter half of the sixth century. Anaximander the son of Praxiadés was a native of Milétus—Xenophanés, a native of Kolophön: the former among the earliest expositors of doctrine in prose,’ while the latter committed his opinions to the old medium of verse, Anaximander seems to have taken up the philosophical problem, while he materially altered the hypothesis, of his predecessor Thalés. Instead of the primeval fluid of the latter, he supposed a primeval principle, without any actual determining qualities whatever, but including all qualities potentially, and manifesting them in an infinite variety from its continually self-changing nature—a principle, which was nothing in itself, yet had the capacity of producing any and all manifestations, however contrary to each other *—a primæval something, whose essence it was to be eternally productive of different phænomena—a sort of mathematical point, which counts for nothing in itself, but is vigorous in generating lines to any extent that may be desired. In this manner Anaximander professed to give a comprehensive explanation of change in general, or Generation or Destruction 1 Aristotel. De Anima, i. 2; Alex- jects this &xeipoy to an elaborate discusander Aphrodis. in Aristotel. Metaphys. i. : $ Apollodorus, in the second century B.C., had before him some brief expository treatises of Anaximander (Diogen. sion, in which he says very little more about Anaximander, who appears to have assumed it without anticipating discussion or objections, |Whether Anaximander called his dweipoy di- Laërt. ii. 2) : Iep) Pboews, Fs Meplodoy, vine, or god, as Tennemann (Gesch. d. Philos. i. 2, p. 67) and Panzerbieter Tlepl Tv "Ax\ay®y nal Zpaïpay Kal ÉAAG rwd. Suidas, v. "Avatluayëpos, Themistius, Orat. xxv. p. 317: @0dfinoe æpôros dy loper EAAdywy Abyov dfeveyely wepì bÚoews ovyyeypaupevor. ® Trenzus, ii. 19 (14), ap. Brandis, Handbuch der Geschichte der Griech. Rom. Philos. ch. xxxv. p. 133: * Anaximander hoc quod immensum est, omnium initium subjecit, seminaliter habens in semetipso omnium genesin, ex quo immensos mundos constare ait.” Aristotel. Physic. Auscult. iii. 4, p. 203 Bek. obre uárnv abrb.oldy re elvat (Tb Éweipov), ofre BAAny dxdpxew adrÿ Sivas, wrAhy ds Apxhv. Aristotle subaffirm (ad Diogenis Apolloniat. Fragment. c. 13, p. 16), I think doubtful : this is rather an inference which Aristotle elicits from his language. Yet in another passage, which is difficult to reconcile, Aristotle ascribes to Anaximander, the water-doctrine of Thalés (Aristotel. de Xenophane, p. 975 (Bek). Anaximander seems to have followed speculations analogous to that of Thalés in explaining the first production of the human race (Plutarch. Placit. Philos. v. 19, p. 908), and in other matters (ibid. iii. 16, p. 896).

—how it happened that one sensible thing began and another ceased to exist—according to the vague problems which these early inquirers were in the habit of setting to themselves. — He avoided that which the first philosophers especially dreaded, the affirmation that generation could take place out of Nothing; yet the primæval Something which he supposed was only distinguished fronr Nothing by possessing this power of generation. In his theory he passed from the province of physics into that of metaphysics. He first introduced into Grecian philosophy that important word which signifies a Beginning or a Principle? and first opened that metaphysical discussion, which was carried on in various ways Problem of throughout the whole period of Grecian philosophy, ihe fine and as to the One and the Many—the Continuous and the Perma: the Variable—that which exists eternally, as distinVariable. guished from that which comes and passes away in ever-changing manifestations. His physiology or explanation of Nature thus conducted the mind into a different route from that suggested by the hypothesis of Thalés, which was built upon physical considerations, and was therefore calculated to suggest and stimulate observations of physical phenomena for the purpose of verifying or confuting it—while the hypothesis of Anaximander admitted only of being discussed dialectically, or by reasonings expressed in general language; reasonings, sometimes indeed referring to experience for the purpose of illustration, but seldom resting on it—and never looking out for it as a necessary support. The physical explanation of nature, however, once introduced by Thalés, although deserted by Anaximander, was taken up by Anaximenés and others afterwards, and reproduced with many divergences of doctrine—yet always more or less entangled and perplexed with metaphysical additions, since the two departments were never clearly parted throughout all Grecian philosophy. Of these subsequent physical philosophers I shall speak hereafter: at present I confine myself to the thinkers of the sixth century B.C., among whom Anaximander stands pro1 Aristotel. De Generat. et Destruct. | pare Physic. Auscultat. i. 4, p. 187, Bek. c. 3, p. 317, Bek. è udAiora poBovpevo: ? Simplicius in Aristotel. Physic. fol. SieréAecar oi mparro: PiAocopfigavtes, Td | 6, 32. xpwros aùròs 'Apxhy dx underds ylveodaı mpoürdpxovros : com- ' 7d imoreluevov. dvoudoas

minent, not as the follower of Thalés, but as the author of an hypothesis both new and tending in a different direction. It was not merely as the author of this hypothesis, however, that Anaximander enlarged the Greek mind and roused the powers of thought: we find him also mentioned as distinguished in astronomy and geometry. He is said to have been the first to establish a sun-dial in Greece, to construct a sphere, and to explain the obliquity of the ecliptic ;* how far such alleged authorship really belongs to him, we cannot be certain—but there is one step of immense importance which he is clearly affirmed to have made. He was the first to compose a treatise on the geography of the land and sea within his cognizance, and to construct a chart or map founded thereupon—seemingly a tablet of brass. Such a novelty, wondrous even to the rude and ignorant, was calculated to stimulate powerfully inquisitive minds, and from it may be dated the commencement of Grecian rational geography—not the least valuable among the contributions of this people to the stock of human knowledge. Xenophanés of Kolophon, somewhat younger than Anaximander, and nearly contemporary with Pythagoras Xenophanés (seemingly from about 570-480 B.C.), migrated from trine the Kolophon? to Zanklé and Katana in Sicily and Elea thatof in Italy, soon after the time when Ionia became mander. subject to the Persians (540-530 BC.). He was the founder of what is called the Eleatic school of philosophers—a real school, since it appears that Parmenidés, Zeno, and Melissus, pursued and developed, in a great degree, the train of speculation which had been begun by Xenophanés—doubtless with additions and variations of their own, but especially with a dialectic power which belongs to the age of Periklés, and is unknown in the sixth century B.c. He was the author of more than one poem of considerable length, one on the foundation of Kolophon and another on that of Elea ; besides his poem on Nature, wherein his philosophical doctrines were set forth? His manner appears to have been controversial and full of asperity towards antagonists. But what is most ? Diogen. Laërt. ii. 81, 2. He agreed | * Diogen. Laërt. ix. 18. with Thalês in maintaining that the | 3% Diogen. Laërt. ix. 22; Stobæus, earth was stationary (Aristotel. de Ccelo, | Eclog. Phys. i. p. 294. ii. 13, p. 295, ed. Bekk.).

remarkable is the plain-spoken manner in which he declared himself against the popular religion, and in which he denounced as abominable the descriptions of the gods given by Homer and Hesiod.’ He is. said to have controverted the doctrines both of Thalés and Pythagoras: this is probable enough; but he seems to have taken his start from the philosophy of Anaximander—not however to adopt it, but to reverse it— and to set forth an opinion which we may call its contrary. Nature, in the conception of Anaximander, consisted of a Something having no other attribute except the unlimited power of generating and cancelling phænomenal changes: in this doctrine the Something or Substratum existed only in and for those changes, and could not be said to exist at all in any other sense: the Permanent was thus merged and lost in the Variable—the One in the Many. Xenophanés laid down the exact opposite: he conceived Nature as one unchangeable and indivisible Whole, spherical, animated, endued with reason, and penetrated by or indeed identical with God. He denied the objective reality of all change, or generation, or destruction, which he seems to have considered as only changes or modifications in the percipient, and perhaps different in one percipient and another. That which exists (he maintained) could not have been generated, nor could it ever be destroyed : there was neither real generation nor real destruction of anything; but that which men took for such was the change in their own feelings and ideas. He thus recognised the Permanent without the Variable?—the One without the Many. And his treatment of the received religious creed was in harmony with such physical or metaphysical hypothesis; for while he held the whole of nature to 1 Sextus Empiricus, adv. Mathem. Adyer 1d wav del Buowv. Compare Timon ap. Sext. Empiric. Pyrrh. Hypotyp. % Aristot. Metaphys. i. 5, p. 986, Bek. i. 224, 225. Boyudrige 38 è Zevopdyrns Bevopdyns dt xparos rovray Evloas, wapà tas Tüv bAAwy dvOphxay xpoAñyes, ovbey Siecaphvicer, obdt rijs pboews Tob- ty elvas 7d wav, wal rbv Gedy auupuñ tots Twv (Tod nara tov Adyoy dvds ral Tod ac elvas dt odapoeıdn nal àwaln Kal ix. 193. xarà thy BAny) oùBerépas Eoıne Oryeir, GAA’ els Toy BAov obpavdv axoBadyas 7d àuerdBAnrov nal Aoyırdv (Aristot. de Xenoph. c. 3, p. 977, Bek.). 'Aöbvaróy ty elval poor rdv bedr. gnow (5 Hevopdyns) elvai, el Ts doris, Plutarch. ap. Eusebium Preeparat. yeverOa, &c. Evangel. i. 8. Eevopdyns yè 6 KoAopérios One may reasonably doubt whether Slay uev rivabBdy wewopevpévos Kal mapnA- all the arguments ascribed to XenoAaxviay mdvras Tovs xpoeipnuévous, obre hanês in the short but obscure treatise yeveow obre pOopay dwodelwes, GAA’ elvas ast quoted really belong to him.

be God, without parts or change, he at the same time pronounced the popular gods to be entities of subjective fancy, imagined by men after their own model: if oxen or lions were to become religious (he added), they would in like manner provide for themselves gods after their respective shapes and characters! This hypothesis, which ty rieatic seemed to set aside altogether the study of the school, Par, sensible world as a source of knowledge, was ex- Zen, spring pounded briefly, and, as it should seem, obscurely Xspophanês and rudely, by Xenophanés; at least we may infer Wei, thus much from the slighting epithet applied to him infuence| ‘by Aristotle? But his successors, Parmenidés and speculation. Zeno, in the succeeding century, expanded it considerably, supported it with extraordinary acuteness of dialectics, and even superadded a second part, in which the phenomena of sense—though considered only as appearances, not partaking in the reality of the One Ens—were yet explained by a new physical hypothesis; so that they will be found to exercise great influence over the speculations both of Plato and Aristotle. We discover in Xenophanés, moreover, a vein of scepticism, and a mournful despair as to the attainability of certain knowledge,’ which the nature of his philosophy was well-calculated to suggest, and in which the sillograph Timon of the third century B.C., who seems to have spoken of Xenophanés better than of most of the other philosophers, powerfully sympathised. The cosmogony of Pherekydés of Syrus, contemporary of Anaximander and among the teachers of Pytha- Pherekydés, goras, seems, according to the fragments preserved, a combination of the old legendary fancies with Orphic mysticism,‘ and probably exercised little influence over the subsequent course of Grecian philosophy. By what has been said of Thalés, Anaximander, and Xenophanés, it will be seen that the sixth century B.C. witnessed the opening of several of those roads of intellectual speculation which the + Clemens Alexand. Stromat. v. p. | vii. 49-110; and Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. 601, vii. p. 711. 224; Plutarch adv Colétén. i 4: . 3 Aristot. Metaphysic. i. 5, p. 986, | compare Karsten ad Parmenidis FragBek. puxpdy perd egos. menta, Pp.146. 3 Xenophanês, Fr. xiv. ed. Mullach 4 See Brandis, Handbuch der Griech. Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathematicos, Rom. Philosophie, ch. xxii.

later philosophers pursued farther, or at least from which they branched off. Before the year 500 B.C. many interesting 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 Xenophanés—was anything more than a speculative inquirer. The third eminent name of this century, of whom Iam 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 approaching 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 government and state affairs into a sectarian privacy with scientific pursuits, not without however still producing some statesmen individually distinguished. Amidst the multude of false and apocryphal statements which circulated in antiquity respecting this celebrated man, we find a few important facts reasonably attested and deserving credence. Historyor He was a native of Samos, son of an opulent Pythagoras. merchant named Mnésarchus,—or, according to some of his later and more fervent admirers, of Apollo: born as far as we can make out, about the fiftieth Olympiad, or 580 BC. On the many marvels recounted respecting his youth it is unnecessary to dwell. Among them may be numbered his wide-reaching travels, said to have been prolonged for nearly thirty years, to visit the Arabians, the Syrians, the Phenicians, the Chaldzans, the Indians, and the Gallic Druids. But there is reason to believe that he really visited Egypt*—perhaps also Phenicia and Babylon, ! Herodot. iv. 95. The place of his tainly is a remarkable illustration how nativity is certain from Herodotus, but much confusion prevailed among literary even this fact was differently stated by | men of antiquity about the dates of other authors, who called him a Tyrr- | events even of the sixth century B.c. henian of Lemnos or Imbros (Porphyry, | Ovid follows this story without hesitaVit. Pythag. c. 1-10), a Syrian, a Phli- | tion: see Metamorph. xv. 60, with asian, &c. Burmann’s note. Cicero (De Repub. ii. 15: compare ? Cicero de Fin. v. 29; Diogen. Livy, i. 18) censures the chronological | Laért. viii. 3; Strabo, xiv. p. 638; blunder of those who made Pythagoras | Alexander Polyhistor ap. Cyril. cont. the preceptor of Numa; which cer- Julian. iv. p. 128, ed. Spanh. (For the

then Chaldæan and independent. 77 At the time when he saw Egypt, between 560-540 B.C., about one century earlier than Herodotus, it was under Amasis, the last of its own kings, with its peculiar native character yet unimpaired by foreign conquest, and only slightly modified by the admission during the preceding century of Grecian mercenary troops and traders. The spectacle of Egyptian habits, the conversation of the priests, and the initiation into various mysteries or secret rites and stories not accessible to the general public, may very naturally have impressed the mind of Pythagoras, and given him that turn for mystic observance, asceticism, and peculiarity of diet and clothing, which manifested itself from the same cause among several of his contemporaries, but which was not a common phenomenon in the primitive Greek religion. Besides visiting Egypt, Pythagoras is also said to have profited by the teaching of Thalés, of Anaximander, and of Pherekydés of Syros:! amidst the towns of Ionia he would moreover have an opportunity of conversing with many Greek navigators who had visited foreign countries, especially Italy and Sicily. His mind seems to have been acted upon and impelled by this combined stimulus,—partly towards an imaginative and religious vein of speculation, with a life of mystic observance,—partly towards that active exercise, both of mind and body, which the genius of an Hellenic community so naturally tended to suggest. Of the personal doctrines or opinions of Pythagoras, whom we must distinguish from Philolaus and the subse- _ a quent Pythagoreans, we have little certain knowledge, racter and though doubtless the first germ of their geometry, "°° arithmetic, astronomy, &c., must have proceeded from him. But that he believed in the metempsychosis or transmigration of the souls of deceased men into other men as well as into animals, we know, not only by other evidence, but also by the testimony of his contemporary, the philosopher Xenophanés of Elea. Pythagoras, seeing a dog beaten and hearing him howl, desired the striker to desist, saying—“ It is the soul of vast reach of his supposed travels, see | ix. 35. Porphyry, Vit. Pythag. 11; Jamblic. ! The connexion of Pythagoras with 14, segg. Pherekydés is noticed by Aristoxenus, The same extensive journeys are as- | ap. Diogen. Laért. i. 118, viii. 2; Cicero cribed to Démokritus, Diogen. Laërt. ! de Divinat. i. 13.

a friend of mine, whom I recognised by his voice.” PART II. This— together with the general testimony of Hérakleitus, that Pythagoras was a man of extensive research and acquired instruction, but artful for mischief and destitute of sound judgement—is all that we know about him from contemporaries. Herodotus, two generations afterwards, while he conceives the Pythagoreans as a peculiar religious order, intimates that both Orpheus and Pythagoras had derived the doctrine of the metempsychosis from Egypt, but had pretended to it as their own without acknowledgement. Pythagoras combines the character of a sophist (a man of large observation, and clever, ascendent, inventive mind—the original sense of the word Sophist, prior to the polemics of the Platonic school, and the only sense known to Herodotus)? with that of an inspired teacher, prophet, and worker of miracles, —approaching to and sometimes even confounded with the gods,—and employing all these gifts to found a new special order of brethren bound together by religious rites and observances peculiar to 1 Xenophanés, Fragm. 7, ed. Schnei- pdved re Kal ‘Exaraioy, dewin ; Diogen, Laért. viii. 36: comDr. Thirlwall conceives Xenophanês pare Aulus Gellius, iv. 11 (we must re- as having intended in thepassage above mark that this or a like doctrine is not cited to treat the doctrine of the meuliar to Pythagoreans, but believed tempsychosis ‘with deserved ridicule” By the poet Pindar, Olymp. ii. 68, and (Hist. of Greece, ch. xii. vol. ii. p. 162). Fragment, Thren. x., as well as by the Religious opinions are so apt to ap philosopher Pherekydês, Porphyrius de : ridiculous to those who do not believe Antro Nympharum, c. 31). them, that such a suspicion is not unKai word pu orvperi avra, pi wis” dre oni y ave, Sach. rte var Péeré arr ier. Consult also Sextus Empiricus, viii. 286, as to the xowevla between gods, men, and animals, believed both by Pythagoras and Empedoklés. That Herodotus (ii. 123) alludes to Orpheus and Pythagoras, though refraining designedly from mentioning names, there can hardly be any doubt: compare ii. 81 ; also Aristotle, de Anima, i. 3, 23. The testimony of Hérakleitus is contained in Diogenes Laértius, viii. 6, ix. I. ‘HpaxAeîros yoûr à pucixds povovovyì natural; yet I think, if Xenophanés had been so disposed, he would have found more ridiculous examples among the many which this doctrine might suggest. Indeed it seems hardly possible to Peking the metempsychosis in a more touching or respectable point of view than that which Fe lines of his poem set forth. The particular animal selected is that one between whom and man the sympathy is most marked and reciprocal, while the doctrine is made to enforce a practical lesson against cruelty. ? Herodot. i. 29, ii. 49, iv. 95. 'EAAfvav ob TÔ àobeveordrp oopiorf Tlvéaxéxpaye ral poor Tvôayópns Mvnodpxov yópp. Hippokratés distinguishes the ioropinv Kornoev àvôpdxor cra xdv- copiotàs from the inrpès, though both Toy, Kal éxActduevos Tabras Tas ovyypa- of them had handled the subject of gas, éroifoaro éavroù coplny, ro À v- medicine—the special from the general maëlnr, kaxorexvinv. Again, Mo- habits of investigation. (Hippokratés, Avpabin vdov où BiÖdore: ‘Hoiodor yap Tlepl äpxalns inrpixñs, c. 20, vol. i. p. dy (date ral Tivôayépnr, addıs Bè Hevo- 620, Littré.)

themselves. In his prominent vocation, analogous to that of Epimenidês, Orpheus, or Melampus, he appears as the revealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples above the level of mankind, and to recommend them to the favour of the gods; the Pythagorean life, like the Orphic life,! being intended as the exclusive prerogative of the brotherhood —- approached only by probation and initiatory ceremonies, which were adapted to select enthusiasts rather than to an indiscriminate crowd—and exacting entire mental devotion to the master? In these lofty pretensions the Agrigentine Empedoklés seems to have greatly copied him, though with some varieties, about half a century afterwards? While Aristotle tells us that the Krotoniates identified Pythagoras with the Hyperborean Apollo, the satirical Timon pronounced him to have been “a juggler of solemn speech, engaged in fishing for men.”* This is the same character, looked at from the different points of view of the believer and the unbeliever. There is however no reason for regarding Pythagoras as an impostor, because experience seems to show, that while in certain ages it is not difficult for a man to persuade others that he is inspired, it is still less difficult for him to contract the same belief himself. Looking at the general type of Pythagoras, as conceived by witnesses in and nearest to his own age—Xenophanés, Herakleitus, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Isokrat&s® we find in him 1 See Lobeck’s learned and valuable from ii. 81-123, and iv.95. Pythagoras, treatise, Aglaophamus, hica, lib. ii. | as well as Melampus, was said to have PP- 247, 698, 900; also Plato, Legg. | pretended to divination and prophecy vi. 782, and Euripid. Hippol. 946. (Cicero, Divinat. i. 3, 46; Porphyr. * Plato's conception of Pythagoras | Vit. Pyth. c. 29: compare Krische, De (Republ. x. p. 600) depicts him as some- | Societate a Pythagorâ in urbe Crotonithing not unlike St. Benedict, or St. , atarum condita Commentatio, ch. v. p. Francis, (or St. Elias, as some Carme- | 72. Gottingen, 1831). lites have tried to make out : see Kuster. ? Brandis, Handbuch der Geschichte ad Jamblich. c. 3)—’AAAà 8h, el wh 3nuo- | der Griechisch. Rom. Philosophie, part alg, Bia rule iryepòr wadelas abrds (av i. sect. xlvii. B 191. Abyeraı"Ounpos yevéoOas, ol dxeivov Iyyd- * Ælian, V. H. ii. 26; Jamblichus, tod Ildaydanr re yónros awoxAivayt’ ii Bótar war dm) ovvovoig nal Tois borépois 68» | Vit. Pyth. c. 31, 140; Porphryry, Vit. ewa Biov zapdBooar ‘Ounpichy’ Sowep' Pyth. c. 20; Diodorus, F lib. x. Ilvdaydpas abrés Te Giapepérres dal vol. iv. p. 56, Wess. :— Timon ap. robry tryarh@n, kal ol Sorepov tri xal | Diogen. Laërt. viii. 36; and Plutarch, - vor pata sc Tpowhy dwovondforres Numa, c. 8. Blov Biapayeïs Soxotow € v| roîs &AAoıs. 7 Op dw’ àrbpurer, ceuryyopées bapıoriv. The description of Melampus given * Isokratés, Busiris, p. 402, ed. in Herodot. ii. 49, very much up |; Auger. IIudaydpas 6 Zduuos, àhidpevos the idea of Pythagoras, as derived els Afyurrov, xal ua0nrhs rav iepéwr

chiefly the religious missionary and schoolmaster, with little of the politician. His efficiency in the latter character, Pythagoras originally subordinate, first becomes prominent in missionary and school those glowing fancies which the later Pythagoreans a politician communicated to Aristoxenus and Dikzarchus. The —his litical efficiency primitive Pythagoras is inspired by the gods to rebye veal a new mode of life!—the Pythagorean life— witnesses. and to promise divine favour to a select and docile few as the recompense of strict ritual obedience, of austere more a master . . © self-control, and of laborious training, bodily as well as mental. To speak with confidence of the details of his training, ethical or scientific, and of the doctrines which he promulgated, is impossible ; for neither he himself nor any of his disciples anterior to Philolaus (who was separated from him by about one intervening generation) left any memorials in writing? Numbers and lines, studied partly in their own mutual relations, partly under various symbolising fancies, presented themselves to him as the primary constituent elements of the universe, and as a sort of magical key to phenomena, physical as well as moral. Such mathematical tendencies in his teaching, expanded by Pythagoreans his successors, and coinciding partly also (as has been before stated) with the studies of Anaximander and Thalés, acquired more and more development, so as to become one of the most yevduevos, Thy Te EAAnY pihoooplav rp&- | circulation either during his lifetime, or tos els “EAAnvas exduice, Kal rd wep) Tas at least not long after his death (GeOvolas nal Tas âyurelas ev Tois iepoîs schichte der Wissenschaften, B. iii. vol. dxıbavdorepov Tav dAAwy dorosbare. L pp. 504 505). . Respecting Philolaus, see the Compare Aristotel. Magn. Moralia, i. I, about Pythagoras as an ethical valuable collection of his fragments, teacher. Démokritus, born about 460 and commentary on them, by Boeckh B.C., wrote a treatise (now lost) respect- (Philolaus des Pythagoreers de Orator. iii. 15). Diogen. Laért. viii. Leben, ing Pythagoras, whom he greatly ad- Berlin, 1819). That Philolaus was the mired : as far as we can judge, it would first who composed a work on Pythaseem that he too must have considered gorean science, and thus made it known Pythagoras as an ethical teacher (Dio- beyond the limits of the brotherhood— gen. Laért. ix. 38; Mullach, Demo- among others to Plato—appears wellcriti Fragmenta, lib. ii. p. 113; Cicero established (Boeckh, Philolaus, p. 22; 15-55; Jambli- 1 Jamblichus, Vit. Pyth. c. 64, 115, chus, c. 119). Simmias and Kebés, 151, 199: see also the idea ascribed to fellow-disciples of Plato under Sokratés, Pythagoras, of divineinspirations coming had held intercourse with Philolaus at on men (éxixvow wapà rod Basuovlov). Aristoxenus apud Stobæum, Eclog. Physic. p. 206 ; Diogen. Laért. viii. 32. Meiners renders it probable that the stories respecting the miraculous powers and properties of Pythagoras got into Thebes (Plato, Phaedon, 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 have continued long afterwards.

glorious and profitable manifestations of Grecian intellect. Living as Pythagoras did at a time when the stock of experience was scanty, the licence of hypothesis unbounded, and the process of deduction without rule or verifying test—he was thus fortunate enough to strike into that track of geometry and arithmetic, in which, from data of experience few, simple, and obvious, an immense field of deductive and verifiable investigation may be travelled over. We must at the same time remark, however, that in his mind this track, which now seems so straightforward and well-defined, was clouded by strange fancies which it is not easy to understand, and from which it was but partially cleared by his successors. Of his spiritual training much is said, though not upon very good authority: we hear of his memorial discipline, his monastic self-scrutiny, his employment of music to soothe disorderly passions,’ his long novitiate of silence, his knowledge of physiognomy which enabled him to detect even His ethical without trial unworthy subjects, his peculiar diet, and probably his rigid care for sobriety as well as for bodily vigour. to all the He is also said to have inculcated abstinence from his order. animal food; a feeling so naturally connected with the doctrine of the metempsychosis, that we may well believe him to have entertained it, as Empedoklés also did after him? It is certain that there were peculiar observances, and probably a certain measure of self-denial, embodied in the Pythagorean life. Yet 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? the strongest man and the unparalleled 1 Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. p. 384, ad fin. Quintilian. Instit. Oratt. ix. 4. 3 Empedoklês, ap. Aristot. Rhetoric. re xöpn re, durrvpos ix@vs. (Diogen. L. viii. 77; Sturz. ad Empei. 14, 2; Sextus Empiric. ix. 127; Plu- dokl. Frag. p. 466.) Pythagoras is said tarch, De Esu Carnium, p. 993, 996, to have affirmed that he had been not 997; where he puts oras and only Euphorbus in the Grecian army Empedoklês together, as having both before Troy, but also a tradesman, a held the doctrine of the metempsychosis, courtezan, &c., and various other human and both prohibited the eating of animal characters, before his actual existence; food. Empedoklés supposed that plants he did not however extend the same had souls, and that the souls of human intercommunion to plants, in any case. The abstinence from animal food was beings passed after death into plants as well as into animals. ‘I have been an Orphic precept as well as a Pythamyself heretofore (said he) a boy, a gorean (Aristophan. Ran. 1032). ® Strabo, vi. p. 263; Diog. L. xiii. girl, a shrub, a bird, and a fish of the 40. VOL. IV.

wrestler of his age—who cannot possibly have dispensed 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 different both in temperament and aptitude, but bound together by common religious observances and hopes, common reverence for the master, and mutual attachment as well as pride in each other's success. 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 Sokratés. But during the time of Cicero, two centuries afterwards, the orientalising tendency—then beginning to spread over the Grecian and Roman 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 imaDecline and ginative fanaticism—Apollonius of Tyana constisubsequent tuting himself a living copy of Pythagoras. And Pythagorean thus, while the scientific elements developed by the order. disciples of Pythagoras had become disjoined from all peculiarity of sect, and passed into the general studious world—the original vein of mystic and ascetic fancy belonging to the master, without any of that practical efficiency of body and mind which had marked his first followers, was taken up anew into the Pagan world, along with the disfigured doctrines of Plato. Neo-Pythagorism, passing gradually into NeoPlatonism, outlasted the other more positive and masculine systems of Pagan philosophy, as the contemporary and rival of Christianity. A large proportion of the false statements concerning Pythagoras come from these Neo-Pythagoreans, who were not deterred by the want of memorials from illustrating, with ample latitude of fancy, the ideal character of the master.

That an inquisitive man like Pythagoras, at a time when there were hardly any books to study, would visit foreign countries, and converse with all the Grecian philosophical inquirers within his reach, is a matter which we should presume even if no one attested it; and our witnesses pythagoras: carry us very little beyond this general presumption. 2%mey What doctrines he borrowed or from whom, we are brino unable to discover. But in. fact his whole life and “senden proceedings bear the stamp of an original mind, rese: from and not of a borrower—a mind impressed both with Kroton. Hellenic and with non-Hellenic habits and religion, yet capable of combining the two in a manner peculiar to himself; and above all endued with those talents for religious and personal ascendency over others, which told for much more than the intrinsic merit of his ideas. We are informed that after extensive travels and inquiries he returned to Samos, at the age of about forty. He then found his native island under the despotism of Polykratés, which rendered it an unsuitable place either for free sentiments or for marked individuals. Unable to attract hearers, or found any school or brotherhood, in his native island, he determined to expatriate; and ‘we may presume that at this period (about 535-530 B.C.) the recent subjugation of Ionia by the Persians was not without influence on his determination. The trade between the Asiatic and the Italian Greeks—and even the intimacy between Milétus and Knidus on the one side, and Sybaris and Tarentum on the other—had been great and of long standing, so that there was more than one motive to determine him to the coast of Italy; in which direction also his contemporary Xenophanés, the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, emigrated seemingly about the same time— from Kolophon to Zanklé, Katana and Elea.' Kroton and Sybaris were at this time in their fullest prosperity—among the first and most prosperous cities grate of of the Hellenic name. To the former of the two Bray) Pythagoras directed his course. A Council of One Seysmment —excellent Thousand persons, taken from among the heirs and lag and representatives of the principal proprietors at its first medi foundation, was here invested with the supreme authority: 1 Diogen. Laërt. ix. 18.

in what manner the executive offices were filled, we have no information. Besides a great extent of power, and a numerous population, the large mass of whom had no share in the political franchise, Kroton stood at this time distinguished for two things—the general excellence of the bodily habit of the citizens, attested in part by the number of conquerors furnished to the Olympic games—and the superiority of its physicians or surgeons." These two points were in fact greatly connected with each other; for the therapeutics of the day consisted not so much of active remedies as of careful diet and regimen; while the trainer, who dictated the life of an athlete during his long and fatiguing preparation for an Olympic contest—and the professional superintendent of the youths who frequented the public gymnasia—followed out the same general views, and acted upon the same basis of knowledge, as the physician who prescribed for a state of positive bad health. Of medical education, properly so called, 1 Herodot. iii. 131; Strabo, vi. p. uns, ds éteèpe rhy dug) rods kduvoyras 261 ; Menander de Encomiis, p. 96, ed. Slarray Kai Tpophy, À reîvos d dm’ Apxäs Heeren. ’A0nvalovs éxl àyaruaroro:ta toîoi mao àyôpéroior Tpophr, f vir te Kad Cerypapikf, «al Kporwvidras Em xpeöneda, &E exelyns rijs Ayplns ral OnpicbBeos eüpéy Te nal wapacrevdoas dialrys : larpikfì, peya pporfica, &c. The Krotoniate Alkmæon, a younger compare another passage not less illuscontemporary of Pythagoras (Aristotel. trative in the treatise of Hippokratés Metaph. i. 5), is among the earliest Tlepl dialrns dEéwr, c. 3, vol. il. p. 3 P 245» names mentioned as philosophizing upon ed. Littré. hysical and medical subjects. See Following the same generalidea, that Brandis, Handbuch der Geschichte der the theory and practice of the physician Philos. sect. Ixxxiii. p. 508, and Aristotel. is a farther development and variety of De Generat. Animal. iii. 2, p. 752, that of the gymnastic trainer, I transcribe some observations from the exBekker. The medical art in Egypt, at the cellent Remarques Rétrospectives of time when Pythagoras visited that M. Littré, at the end of the fourth country, was sufficiently far advanced volume of his edition of Hippokratés to excite the attention of an inquisitive (p. 662). After having observed (p. 659) that traveller—the branches of it minutely subdivided and strict rules laid down physiology may be considered as divided for practice (Herodot. ii. 84; Aristotel. into two parts—one relating to the Politic. iii. 10, 4). 3 See the analogy of the two strikingly brought out in the treatise of Hippokrates Tepì dpxalns inrpixijs, c. 3, 4, 7, vol. i. p. 580-584, ed. Littré. mechanism of the functions; the other, to the effects produced upon the human body by the different influences which act upon it and the media by which it is surrounded: and after having ob“Ett ‘your Kal viv of T@v yvpvaolwy Kal served that on the first of these two donnolov exipersuevor alel mı xpooetev- branches, the ancients could never plokovoi, nal thy abrény d8dv (nrdovres make progress, from their ignorance of 8, ri Bor nal wvv émixparhoe re adr bov anatomy—he goes on to state, that udriota, nal ioxvpbrepos abrds éwbroù respecting the second branch they tora: (p. 580); again, p. 584: TI odv acquired a large amount of knowpalverai érepoiov Bravondeis à naAeb- ledge :— pevos Inrpds nal duorcynuévws Xeiporéx“Sur la physiologie des influences

especially of anatomy, there was then little or nothing. The physician acquired his knowledge from observation of men sick as well as healthy, and from a careful notice of the way in which the human body was acted upon by surrounding agents and circumstances: and this same knowledge was not less necessary for the trainer; so that the same place which contained the best men in the latter class was also likely to be distinguished in the former. It is not improbable that such celebrity of Kroton may have been one of the reasons which determined Pythagoras to go thither. For among the precepts ascribed to him, precise rules as to diet and bodily regulation occupy a prominent place. The medical or surgical celebrity of Dêmokêdês (son-in-law of the Pythagorean Milo) to whom allusion has been made in a former chapter, is contemporaneous with the presence of Pythagoras at Kroton ; and the medical men of Magna Grecia maintained themselves in credit, as rivals of the schools of the Asklepiads at Kés and Knidus, throughout all the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. extérieures, la Gréce du temps d’Hippocrate et après lui fut le théâtre d’expériences en grand les plus importantes et les plus instructives. Toute la populeur profession; et Hippocrate, qui dans les Aphorismes, invoque l'exemple des athlètes, nous parle dans le Traité des Articulations des personnes maigres, lation (la population libre, s’entend) qui n’ayant pas été amaigris par un étoit soumise à un système régulier procédé régulier de l’art, ont les chairs d'éducation physique (N.B. this is a muqueuses. Les anciens médecins salittle too strongly stated) : dans quelques voient, comme on le voit, procurer cités, à Lacédémone par exemple, les l’amaigrissement conformément à l'art, femmes n’en étoient pas exemptées. Ce et reconnoître à ses effets un amaigrissesystème se composoit d'exercices et ment irrégulier: toutes choses auxd’une alimentation que combinérent quelles nos, médecins sont étrangers, et Yempirisme d’abord, puis une théorie ont on ne retrouve l’analogue que plus savante: il concernoit (comme parmi les entraîneurs Anglois. Au reste dit Hippocrate lui-méme, en ne parlant, cet ensemble de connoissances empiil est vrai, que de la partie alimentaire), riques et théoriques doit être mis au il concernoit et les malades pour leur rang des pertes fâcheuses qui ont accomrétablissement, et les gens bien portans pagné la longue et turbulente transition pour la conservation de leur santé, et du monde ancien au monde moderne. es personnes livrées aux exercices gm Les admirables institutions destinées et affermir nastiques pour l'accroissement de leurs dans l'antiquité à développer forces. On savoit au juste ce qu'il le corps, ont disparu: l'hygiène pubfalloit pour conserver seulement le corps lique est destituée à cet égard de toute en bon état ou pour traiter un malade— direction scientifique et générale, et pour former un militaire ou pour faire demeure abandonnée complètement au un athléte—et en particulier, un lutteur, hasard.” un coureur, un sauteur, un pugiliste, See also the remarks of Plato respectUne classe d’hommes, les maîtres des ing Herodikus, De Republicâ, iii. p. nases, étoient exclusivement adonnés 406; Aristotel. Politic. ii. 11, 6, iv. I, Pa culture de cet art, auquel les méde- | I. viii. 4, 1. cins participoient dans Jes limites de ;

The biographers of Pythagoras tell us that his arrival Rapid and there, his preaching and his conduct, produced an tenia effect almost electric upon the minds of the people, creste With an extensive reform, public as well as private. thexhorta- Political discontent was repressed, incontinence disPythagoras appeared, luxury became discredited, and the women hastened to exchange their golden ornaments for the simplest attire. No less than two thousand persons were converted at his first preaching. So effective were his discourses to the youth, that the Supreme Council of One Thousand invited him into their assembly, solicited his advice, and even offered to constitute him their Prytanis or president, while his wife and daughter were placed at the head of the religious processions of females.! His influence was not confined to Kroton. Other towns in Italy and Sicily—Sybaris, Metapontum, Rhégium, Katana, Himera, &c., all felt the benefit of his exhortations, which extricated some of them even from slavery. Such are the tales of which the biographers of Pythagoras are full :? and we see that even the disciples of Aristotle, about the year 300 B.c.—Aristoxenus, Dikæarchus, Herakleidés of Pontus, &c.—are hardly less charged with them than the Neo-Pythagoreans of three or four centuries later. They doubtless heard these tales from their contemporary Pythagoreans,® the last members of a declining sect, ! Valerius Maxim. iii. 15, xv. 1;' various branches carried off the acute Jamblichus, Vit. Pyth. c. 45; Timæus, ' and aspiring young men of that time. ragm. 78, ed. Didot, i Meiners, in his Geschichte der Wisorphyry, Vit. Pythag. c. 21-54; senschaften (vol. i. Jamblich. 33-35, 166. b. iii. p. 191 seg.) ” | has given a carcful analysis of the ® The compilations of Porphyry and, various authors from whom the two Jamblichus on the life of Pythagoras, | biographers have borrowed, and a copied from a great variety of authors, ' comparative estimate of their trustill doubtless contain some truth amidst | worthiness. It is an excellent piece of their confused heap of statements, many historical criticism, though the author incredible, and nearly all unauthen- exaggerates both the merits and the ticated. But it is very difficult to single | influence of the first Eythagoreans: out what these portions of truth really Kiessling in the notes to his edition of are. Even Aristoxenus and Dikear- | Jamblichus has given some extracts from chus, the best authors from whom these it, but by no means enough to dispense biographers quote, lived near two with the perusal of the original. I centuries after the death of Pythagoras, : think Meiners allows too much credit, and do not appear to have had any | on the whole, to Aristoxenus (see p. early memorials to consult, nor any | 214) and makes too little deduction for better informants than the contempo- : the various stories difficult to be believed, rary Pythagoreans—the last of an ex- , of which Aristoxenus is given as the piring sect, and probably among the source: of course the latter could not least eminent for intellect, since the phi- furnish better matter than he heard losophers of the Sokratic vein in its from his own witnesses. Where the

among whom the attributes of the primitive founder passed for godlike, but who had no memorials, no historical judgement, and no means of forming a true conception of Kroton as it stood in 530 B.c.! To trace these tales to a true foundation is impossible. But we may reasonably believe that the success of Pythagoras, as a person favoured by the gods and patentee of divine secrets, was very great—that he procured to himself both the reverence of the multitude, and the peculiar attachment and obedience of many devoted adherents, chiefly belonging to the wealthy and powerful classes—that a select body of these adherents, three hundred in number, bound themselves by a sort of vow both to Pythagoras and to each other, adopting a peculiar diet, ritual, and observances, as a token of union—though without anything like community of property, which some have ascribed to them. Such a band of men, standing high in the city for wealth and station, and bound together by this intimate tie, Heformsa came by almost unconscious tendency to mingle dub or soage .,. . . . . ciety, conpolitical ambition with religious and scientific pur- sisting of . er . three hunsuits. Political clubs with sworn members, under dred men taken from one form or another, were a constant phænomenon the wealthy classes at in the Grecian cities? Now the Pythagorean order Kroton. judgement of Meiners is more severe, less formally laid down in Jamblichus, it is also better borne out, especially ; Adhortatio ad Philosophiam, as the respecting Porphyry himself, and his fourth Symbolum, p. 324, ed. Kiessling. scholar Jamblichus These later Pytha- Mepl Oeêr pndty Bavpastdy Amorei, unde gorean philosophers seem to have set, wep! Oclor Boyudrav. Reasoning from up as a formal canon of credibility, that their principles, this was a consistent which many religious men of antiquity corollary to lay down; but it helps us acted upon from a mere unconscious . to estimate their value as selectors and sentiment and fear of giving offence to | discriminators of accounts respecting the gods— That it was not right to dis- | Pythagoras. The extravagant complibelieve any story recounted respecting | ments paid by the Emperor Julian in the gods, and wherein the divine agency his letters to Jamblichus will not suffice was introduced: no one could tell but | to establish the authority of the latter what it might be true: to deny its truth | as a critic and witness: see the Epistolæ was to set bounds to the divine omni- | 34, 40, 41, in Heyler’s edit. of Julian’s potence. Accordingly they made no| letters. difficulty in believing what was re-; ! Aulus Gell. N.A. iv. rr. Apollon. counted about Aristæus, Abaris, and | (ap. Jamblich. c. 262) alludes to rà other eminent subjects of mythes (Jam- | dropyhuara ray Kporwmaréy: what the blichus, Vit. Pyth. c. 138-148) mal roëré | date of these may be, we do not know, ye wdvres of Ilvôayópeuor Sums Éxovor | but there is no reason to believe them miorevtinas, olov wept ’Apioralov xa) | anterior to Aristoxenus. "ABdpıdos rà pu0oroyobpeva ral Boa 4AAa | 2 Thucyd. viii. 54. rds tuvwpoolas, rosta Aéyerm . . .. ray ToLovTwr Sè | alwep drbyxavor xpérepor odoa dv TH rar Soxoivray qvÔikv dxopynpovebovory, | wöAcı ex) dires nal dpxais, axdoas éreA&s obdtv axicrodyres Bri eis rd Oetov dvydynrat By | Ody, &c. Also not | On this important passage, in which

at its first formation was the most efficient of all clubs; since it presented an intimacy of attachment among its members, as well as a feeling of haughty exclusiveness against the public without, such as no other fraternity could parallel! The devoted attachment of Pythagoreans towards each other is not less emphatically set forth than their contempt for every one else: in fact these two attributes of the order seem the best ascertained as well as the most permanent of all. Moreover, we may be sure that the peculiar observances of the order passed for exemplary virtues in the eyes of its members, and exalted ambition into a duty, by making them sincerely believe that they were the only persons fit to govern. It is no matter of surprise, then, to learn that the Pythagoreans gradually drew to themselves great ascendency in the government of Kroton. And as similar clubs, not less influential, were formed at Metapontum and other places, so the Pythagorean order spread its net, and dictated the course of affairs over a large portion of Magna Grecia. Such ascendency of the Pythagoreans must have procured for the master himself some real, and still more supposed, influence over the march of government at Kroton and elsewhere, of a nature not then possessed by any of his contemporaries throughout Greece.? Yet his influence was probably exercised in the background, through the medium of the brotherhood who reverenced him: for it is hardly conformable to Greek manners that a stranger of his character should guide personally and avowedly the political affairs of any Grecian city. Nor are we to believe that Pythagoras came originally to Thucydidés notes the political clubs of of the two Pythagoreans Damon and Athens as sworn societies, numerous, Phintias appears to be very well attested: notorious, and efficient—I shall speak Aristoxenus heard it from the lips of the farther in a future stage of the history. younger Dionysius the despot, whose Dr. Arnold has a good note on the sentence had elicited such manifestation assage. of friendship (Porphyry, Vit. Pyth. c. 1 Justin, xx. 4 ““Sed trecenti ex 59-62; Cicero, De Officiis, iii. 10; and juvenibus cum sodalitü juris sacramento Davis ad Cicero. Tusc. Disp. v. 22). quodam nexi, separatam a ceteris civi* Plutarch, Philosophand. cum Prinbus vitam exercerent, quasi coetum cipib. c. i. p. 777. &v 8 dpxovros àröpòs clandestine conjurationis haberent, wal wodrtixod Kal xpaxtixod ra0dynra: civitatem in se converterunt.” (6 gsAdcogos) «al Tovrov Ayanıhan KaCompare Diogen. Laért. viii. 3; Aoxgyablas, woAAobs Bi évòs &péAncer, Apollonius ap. Jamblich. c. 254; Por- ds Mudaydpas rots xpwrevove: ray ‘Iraphyry, Vit. Pyth. c. 33. Away ovyyevbpevos. The story of the devoted attachments

Kroton with the express design of creating for himself an ascendent political position—still less that he came political for the purpose of realizing a great preconceived poli- Biens of. tical idea, and transforming Kroton into a model-city zz in of pure Dorism, as has been supposed by some {the con eminent modern authors. Such schemes might indeed the order. be ascribed to him by Pythagoreans of the Platonic age, when large ideas of political amelioration were rife in the minds of speculative men—by men disposed to forego the authorship of their own opinions, and preferring to accredit them as traditions handed down from a founder who had left no memorials. But it requires better evidence than theirs to make us believe that any real Greek born in 580 B.C. actually conceived such plans. We cannot construe the scheme of Pythagoras as going farther than the formation of a private, select, order of brethren, embracing his religious fancies, ethical tone, and germs of scientific idea—and manifesting adhesion by those observances which Herodotus and Plato call the Pythagorean orgies and mode of life. And his private order became politically powerful, because he was skilful or fortunate enough to enlist a sufficient number of wealthy Krotoniates, possessing individual influence which they strengthened immensely by thus regimenting themselves in intimate union. The Pythagorean orgies or religious ceremonies were not inconsistent with public activity, bodily as well as mental. Probably the rich men of the order may have been rendered even more active, by being fortified against the temptations of a life of indulgence. The character of the order as it first stood, different from that to which it was afterwards reduced, was indeed religious and exclusive, but also active and domineering ; not despising any of those bodily accomplishments which increased the efficiency of the Grecian citizen, and which so particularly harmonised with the pre-existing tendencies of Kroton! Niebuhr and 1 I transcribe here the summary given by Krische, at the close of his Dissertation on the Pythagorean order, p. 101. ** Societatis scopus fuit mere politicus, ut lapsam optimatium potestatem non alter, alter ad literas spectans. Discipulos suos bonos probosque homines reddere voluit Pythagoras, et ut civitatem moderantes potestate sud non abuterentur ad plebem opprimendam; modo in pristinum restitueret, sed firma- et ut plebs, intelligens suis commodis ret amplificaretque: cum summo hoc consuli, conditione su contenta esset. scopo duo conjuncti fuerunt ; moralis Quoniam vero bonum sapiensque mode-

O. Müller have even supposed that the select Three Hundred Pythagoreans constituted a sort of smaller senate at that city ‘—an hypothesis no way probable; we may rather conceive them as a powerful private club, exercising ascendency in the interior of the senate, and governing through the medium of the constituted authorities. Nor can we receive without great allowance the assertion of Varro,? who, assimilating Pythagoras to Plato, tells us that he confined his instructions on matters of government to chosen disciples, who had gone through a complete training, and had reached the perfection of wisdom and virtue. It seems more probable that the political Pythagoreans were those who were most qualified for action, and least for speculation; and that the general of the order possessed that skill in turning to account ramen nisi a prudente literisque exculto Dorian or Spartan habits, and call viro exspectari (non) licet, philosophiæ the Pythagorean philosophy the expresstudium necessarium duxit Samius iis, sion of Grecian Dorism, as opposed to (Philolaus, p. 39-42) and O. Müller 30; Krische, p. 77. qui ad civitatis clavum tenendum se the Ionians and the Ionic p Hlosophy. logy accingerent.” This is the general view I confess that I perceive no (coinciding substantially with that of between the two, either in action or tion. The Spartans stand comO. Müller—Dorians, iii. 9, 16) given by sj an author who has gone through the pletely distinct from other Dorians; evidences with care and learning. It and even the Spartan habits of life, differs on some important points from though they present some points of the idea which I conceive of the primi- resemblance with the bodily training tive master and his contemporary of the Pythagoreans, exhibit still more brethren. It leaves out the religious important points of difference, in respect ascendency, which I imagine to have to religious peculiarity and mysticism, stood first among the means as well as as well as to the scientific element among the premeditated of embodied with it. The Pythagorean Pythagoras, while it sets forth a reforma- philosophy, and the Eleatic philosophy, tory political scheme as directly con- were both equally opposed to the Ionic ; templated by him, of which there is no yet neither of them is in any way conproof. Though the political ascendency nected with Dorian tendencies. Neither of the early Pythagoreans is the most Elea nor Kroton were Doric cities: prominent feature in their early history, moreover Xenophanés as well as Pythait is not to be considered as the mani- goras were both Ionians. festation of any peculiar or settled The general assertions respecting political idea—it is rather a result of Ionic mobility and inconstancy, contheir position and means of union. trasted with Doric constancy and Ritter observes (in my opinion more steadiness, will not be found borne out justly), ‘‘ We must not believe that the by a study of facts, The Dorism of mysteries of the Pythagorean order were Pythagoras appears to me a complete of a simply political character : the most fancy. O. Müller even turns Kroton probable accounts warrant us in con- into a Dorian city, contrary to all evisidering that its central point was a lence. i mystic religious teaching” (Geschicht. 1 Niebuhr, Römisch. Gesch. i. p. der Philosophie, b. iv. ch. i. vol. i. p. 165, 2nd edit.; O. Müller, Hist. of 365-368): compare Hoeck, Kreta, vol. Dorians, iii. 9, 16: Krische is opposed ili.ae 223. to this idea, sect. v. p. 84. rische (p. 32) as well as Boeckh * Varro ap. Augustin. de Ordine, ii. assimilate the Pythagorean life to the

the aptitudes of individuals, which two centuries ago was so conspicuous in the Jesuits; to whom in various ways, the Pythagoreans bear considerable resemblance. All that we can be said to know about their political principles is, that they were exclusive and aristocratical, adverse to the control and interference of the people; a circumstance no way disadvantageous to them, since they coincided in this respect with the existing government of the city—had not their own conduct brought additional odium on the old aristocracy, and raised up an aggravated democratical opposition carried to the most deplorable lengths of violence. All the information which we possess, apocryphal as it is, respecting this memorable club is derived from its warm admirers. Yet even their statements are enough to explain how it came to provoke deadly and extensive enmity. A stranger coming to teach new religious dogmas and obser| .vances, with a tincture of science and some new causes ethical ideas and phrases, though he would obtain which led to some zealous votaries, would also bring upon himself joie a certain measure of antipathy. Extreme strictness Order. of observances, combined with the art of touching skilfully the springs of religious terror in others, would indeed do much both to fortify and to exalt him. But when it was discovered that science, philosophy, and even the mystic revelations of religion, whatever they were, remained confined to the private talk and practice of the disciples, and were thus thrown into the background, while all that was seen and felt without was the political predominance of an ambitious fraternity—we need not wonder that Pythagorism in all its parts became odious to a large portion of the community. Moreover we find the order represented not merely as constituting a devoted and exclusive political party, but also as manifesting an ostentatious self-conceit throughout their personal demeanour '— 1 Apollonius ap. Jamblichum, V. | Aéyy, obr dr àpiôuÿ. P. c. 254, 255, 256, 257. iryenöves 8è| That this Apollonius, cited both by &ydvorro ris Biapopàs ol rats ovyyerelaıs : Jamblichus and by Porphyry, is wal raîs olkesórnour è ara ra- Beotnadres Tüv Ilvdayopeler. Afrioy 8 Av, Eri rà pty worrd abrobs ebrei ray lonius of Tyana, has been rendered probable by Meiners (Geschich. der Wissenschaft. v. i. p. 239-245) : compare xparropévey, &c.: compare also the . Welcker, Prolegomena ad Theognid. p. lines descriptive of Pythagoras, c. 259. xlv. xlvi. When we read the life of Apollonius Toùs pay éralpous Îyer lrovs paxdpeooi Beoîor Tods 8 &AAIUS fpyeir’ ob7’ ev. by Philostratus, we see that the former

refusing the hand of fellowship to all except the brethren, and disgusting especially their own familiar friends and kinsmen. So far as we know Grecian philosophy, this is the only instance in which it was distinctly abused for political and party objects. The early days of the Pythagorean order stand distinguished for such perversion, which fortunately for the progress of philosophy, never presented itself afterwards in Greece! Even at Athens, however, we shall hereafter see that Sokratés, though standing really aloof from all party intrigue, incurred much of his unpopularity from supposed political conjunction with Kritias and Alkibiadés,? to which indeed the orator Æschinés distinctly ascribes his condemnation, speaking about sixty years after the event. Had Sokratés been known as the founder of a band holding together intimately for ambitious purposes, the result would have been eminently pernicious to philosophy, and probably much sooner pernicious to himself. It was this cause which brought about the complete and violent destruction of the Pythagorean order. Their ascendency had provoked such wide-spread discontent, that their enemies became emboldened to employ extreme force against them. Kylon and Ninon—the former of whom is said to have sought admittance into the order, but to have been rejected on account of his bad character—took the lead in pronounced opposition to the Pythagoreans; whose unpopularity extended itself farther to the Senate of One Thousand, through the medium of which their ascendency had been exercised. Propositions were made for rendering the government more democratical, and for constituting a new senate, taken by lot from all the people, before which the magistrates should go through their trial of accountability after office: an opportunity being chosen in which the Senate of One Thousand had was himself extremely communicative: other occasion seen in Greece” (Introhe might be the rather disposed there- duction to his Translation of Plato, p. fore to think that the seclusion and 12). See also Theopompus, Fr. 68, reserve of Pythagoras was a defect, and to ascribe to it much of the mischief which afterwards overtook the order. 1 Schleiermacher observes that ‘‘ Philosophy among the Pythagoreans was connected with political objects, and ed. Didot, apud Athenæum, v. p. 213, their school with a practical brotherly Eva Tay Tpidrovra. partnership, such as was never on any and Euripidès, Medêa, 294. 2 Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 12; Æschines. cont. Timarch. c. 34. dues, & ’Aönvaioı, Zunpdrn roy copiorhy àxekrelvare, Br: Kpirlay épdyn wewaideuxes,

given signal offence by refusing to divide among the people the recently conquered territory of Sybaris.! In spite Violences which acof the opposition of the Pythagoreans, this change of companied its subvergovernment was carried through. Ninon and Kylon, sion. their principal enemies, made use of it to exasperate the people still farther against the order, until they provoked actual popular violence against it. The Pythagoreans were attacked when assembled in their meeting-house near the temple of Apollo, or, as some said, in the house of Milo. The building was set on fire, and many of the members perished ;? none but the younger and more vigorous escaping. Similar disturbances, and the like violent suppression of the order, with destruction of several among the leading citizens, are said to have taken place in other cities of Magna Græcia— Tarentum, Metapontum, Kaulonia And we are told that these cities remained for some time in a state of great disquietude and commotion, from which they were only rescued by the friendly mediation of the Peloponnesian Achzans, the original founders of Sybaris and Kroton—assisted indeed by mediators from other parts of Greece. The cities were at length pacified, and induced to adopt an amicable congress, with common religious festivals, at a temple founded expressly for the purpose and dedicated to Zeus Homarius® Thus perished the original Pythagorean order. Respecting Pythagoras himself, there were conflicting accounts; some representing that he was burnt in the temple with his disciples ;* others, that he had died a short time previously; others again 1 This is stated in Jamblichus, c. 255; all accounts agree. On all other points yet it is difficult to believe; for if the there is great discrepancy, especially fact had been so, the destruction of the respecting the names and date of the © Pythagoreans would naturally have pro- Fythagoreans who escaped: Boeckh duced an allotment and permanent (Philolaus, R 9 seg.) and Brandis occupation of the Sybaritan territory— (Handbuch der Gesch. d. Philos. ch. which certainly did not take place, kxiii. p. 432) try to reconcile these since Sybaris remained without resident discrepancies. rs until the foundation of Thurii. Aristophanés introduces Strepsiadés, * Jamblichus, c. 255-259; Porphyry, at the close of the Nubes, as setting fire c. 54-57; Diogen. Laërt. viii. 39; to the meeting-house ($porriorhpior) of Diodor. x. Fragm. vol. iv. p. 56, Wess. Sokratés and his disciple: possibly the 3 Polyb. ii. 39; Plutarch, De Genio Pythagorean conflagration may have Socratis, c. 13, p. 583; Aristoxenus, suggested this. ap. Jamblich. c. 250. That the enemies “Pythagoras Samius suspicione of the order attacked it by setting fire dominatûs injustä vivus in fano concreto the house in which the members were matus est” (Arnobius adv. Gentes, lib. assembled, is the circumstance in which i. p. 23, ed. Elmenhorst).

affirmed, that he was alive at the time, but absent, and that he died not long afterwards in exile, after forty days of voluntary abstinence from food. His tomb was still shown at Metapontum in the days of Cicero! As an active brotherhood, the Pythagoreans never revived; but the disThe Pythagorean order persed members came together as a sect, for common is reduced to areligious and philosoreligious observances and common pursuit of science. . . . phical sect, They were re-admitted, after some interval, into the character« Cities of Magna Grecia,? from which they had been ous: originally expelled, but to which the sect is always considered as particularly belonging—though individual members of it are found besides at Thebes and in other cities of Greece. Indeed some of these later Pythagoreans sometimes even acquired great political influence, as we see in the case of the Tarentine Archytas, the contemporary of Plato. It has already been stated that the period when Pythagoras arrived at Kroton may be fixed somewhere between B.C. 540-530. His arrival is said to have occurred at a time of great depression in the minds of the Krotoniates. They had recently been defeated by the united Lokrians and Rhegians, vastly inferior to themselves in number, at the river Sagra; which humiliation is said to have rendered them docile to the training of the Samian missionary.’ As the birth of the Py1 Cicero, De Finib. v. 2 (who seems altogether, as far as we are able to to have copied from Dikæarchus; see judge. An individual Pythagorean like Fuhr. ad Dikæarchi Fragment. p. 55); Arc might obtain influence, but Justin, xx. 4; Diogen. Laért. viii. 40; this is not e influence of the order. Jamblichus, V. P. c. 249. Nor ought O. Miiller to talk about the O. Müller says (Dorians, iii. 9, 16), Italian Greeks giving up the Doric custhat “ the influence of the Pythagorean toms and adopting an Achzan governleague upon the administration of the ment. There is nothing to prove that Italian states was of the most beneficial Kroton ever had Doric customs. kind, which continued for many genera* Aristotel. de Ccelo, ii. 13. of wept tions after the dissolution of the league Thy ’Irarlay, xarobpevo: 84 Tlvdayopeioı. * itself.” “Italici philosophi quondam nominati ” The first of these two assertions (Cicero, De Senectute, c. 21). ® Heyne places the date of the battle cannot be made out, and depends only on the statements of later encomiasts, of Sagra about 560 B.c.; but this is who even supply materials to contradict very uncertain. See his Opuscula, vol. their own general view. The judge- ii. Prolus. ii. p. 53, and Prolus. x. p. 184 ment of Welcker respecting the influence See also Justin. xx. 3, and Strabo, vi. of the Pythagoreans, much less favour. 261-263. It will be seen that the able, is at the same time more probable fatter conceives the battle of the Sagra (Preefat. ad Theognid. p. xlv.). as having happened after the destrucThe second of the two assertions ap- tion of Sybaris by the Krotoniates; for to me quite incorrect; the influhe states twice, that the Krotoniates lost ence of the Pythagorean order on the so many citizens at the Sagra, that the government of Magna Grecia ceased city did not long survive so terrible a

thagorean order is thus connected with the defeat of the Krotoniates at the Sagra, so its extinction is also connected with their victory over the Sybarites at the river Traeis or Trionto, about twenty years afterwards. Of the history of these two great Achzan cities we unfortunately know very little. Though both were powerful, yet down to the period of 510 B.c., Sybaris seems to have been decidedly the greatest. Of its dominion as well as of its much-denounced luxury I have spoken in a former chapter. It was at that time that the war broke out between w,, te. them, which ended in the destruction of Sybaris. It freenSyis certain that the Sybaritans were aggressors in the Kroton. war; but by what causes it had been preceded in their own town, or what provocation they had received, we make out very indistinctly. There had been a political revolution at Sybaris (we are told) not long before, in which a popular leader named Télys had headed a rising against the oligarchical government, and induced the people to banish five hundred of the leading rich men, as well as to confiscate their properties, He had acquired the sovereignty and become despot of Sybaris.? It appears too, that he, or his rule at Sybaris, was much abhorred at Kroton ; since the Krotoniate Philippus, a man of splendid muscular form and an Olympic victor, was exiled for having engaged himself to marry the daughter of Têlys® According to the narrative given by the later Pythagoreans, those exiles, whom Télys had driven from Sybaris, took refuge at Kroton, casting themselves as suppliants on the altars for protection: it may well be, indeed, that they were in part Pythagoreans of Sybaris. A body of powerful exiles, harboured in a town so close at hand, inspired alarm, and Télys demanded that they should be delivered up, threatening war in case of refusal. This demand excited conblow: he cannot therefore have sup that the complete triumph of the Krotoniates over the great Sybaris was gained afterwards, : 1 See above chap. xxii. 2 Diodor. xii. 9. Herodotus calls subversion of the dominion of Têlys, cannot be reconciled either with Herodotus or Diodorus (Athenzus, xii. p. 522). Dr. Thirlwall supposes the deposition of Télys to have occurred between the defeat at the Traeis and the capture Télys in one place BaiAña, in another of Sybaris; but this is inconsistent with rúpayvov of Sybaris (v. 44): this is not the statement of Herakleidés, and not at variance with the story of Diodorus, countenanced by any other evidence. The story given by Athenseus, out of 3 Herodot, v. 47. Herakleidés Ponticus, respecting the

sternation at Kroton, since the military strength of Sybaris was decidedly superior. The surrender of the exiles was much debated, and almost decreed, by the Krotoniates, until at length the persuasion of Pythagoras himself is said to have determined them to risk any hazard sooner than incur the dishonour of betraying suppliants. On the demand of the Sybarites being refused, Têlys marched against Kroton at the head of a force which is reckoned at 300,000 men.! He marched, too, in defiance of the strongest religious warnings against the enterprise; for the sacrifices, offered on his behalf by the Iamid prophet Kallias of Elis, were so decisively unfavourable, that the prophet himself fled in terror to Kroton Near the river Traeis or Trionto, Télys was met by the forces of Kroton, consisting (we are informed) of 100,000 men, and commanded by the great athlete and Pythagorean Milo ; who was clothed (we are told) in the costume and armed with the club of Heraklês. They were farther reinforced by a valuable ally, the Spartan Dorieus (younger brother of king Kleomenés), Defeat of the then coasting along the Gulf of Tarentum, with a Sybarites, body of colonists, intending to found a settlement tion of their in Sicily. A bloody battle was fought, in which through te the Sybarites were totally worsted, with prodigious Spartan Slaughter; while the victors, fiercely provoked and Dorlans, giving no quarter, followed up the pursuit so warmly that they took the city, dispersed its inhabitants, and crushed its whole power in the short space of seventy days. The Sybarites fled in great part to Laos and Skidros,‘ their settlements planted on the Mediterranean coast, across the Calabrian peninsula. So eager were the Krotoniates to render the site of Sybaris untenable, that they turned the course of the river Krathis so as to overwhelm and destroy it: the dry bed in which the river had originally flowed was still visible in the time of Herodotus, who was among the settlers in 1 Diodor. xii. 9 ; Strabo, vi. p. 263;| * Herodot. v. 45; Diodor. xii. 9, Jamblichus, Vit. Pythag. c. 260 ; Skymn. | 10; Strabo, vi. p. 263. Strabo menChi. v. 340. tions expressly the turning of the river 2 Herodot. v. 44. for the Purpose of overwhelm: the ® Diodor. xii. 9, 10; Strabo, vi. | city pres yap Thy wédkw "iron p. 263. tov woraudy kal karérAvoar. It is to 4 Herodot. vi. 21: Strabo, vi. p. | this changein the channel of the river ‚that I refer the expression in Hero-

the town of Thurii afterwards founded nearly adjoining, It appears however that the Krotoniates for a long time kept the site of Sybaris deserted, refusing even to allot the territory among the body of their own citizens: from which circumstances (as has been before noticed) the commotion against the Pythagorean order is said to have arisen. They may perhaps have been afraid of the name and recollections of the city. No large or permanent establishment was ever formed there until Thurii was established by Athens about sixty-five years afterwards. Nevertheless the name of the Sybarites did not perish : they maintained themselves at Laos, Skidros, and elsewhere—and afterwards formed the privileged Oldcitizens among the colonists of Thurii ; but misbehaved themselves in that capacity, and were mostly either slain or expelled. Even after that, however, the name of Sybaris still remained on a reduced scale in some portion of the territory: Herodotus recounts what he was told by the Sybarites, and we find subsequent indications of them even as late as Theokritus. The conquest and destruction of the original Sybaris— perhaps in 510 B.C. the greatest of all Grecian cities Sensation — appears to have excited a strong sympathy in the theHellenic Hellenic world. In Milétus especially, with which the the destrucdestruc: it had maintained intimate union, the grief was so is, Gradual a vehement, that all the Milesians shaved their heads the Greek in token of mourning.’ The event, happening just Fay. © at the time of the expulsion of Hippias from Athens, must have made a sensible revolution in the relations of the Greek cities on the Italian coast with the rustic population of dotus—réuevés re nal yndy dóvra wa p à rdv Enpdy Kpadıv. It was natural that the old deserted bed of the river should be called “ the dry Krathis”: whereas, if we sup that there was only one channel, the expression has no appropriate meaning. For I do not think that any one can be well satisfied with the explanation of Bahr—‘‘ Vocatur Crathis hoc loco Enpès siccus, ut qui hieme fluit, æstatis vero tempore exsiccatus est: quod adhuc in multis Italiæ inferioris fluviis observant.” I doubt whether this be true, as a matter of fact, respecting the river Krathis (see VOL. IV. my preceding volume, ch. xxii.); but even if the fact were true, the ephithet in Bahr’s sense has no especial significance for the purpose contemplated by Herodotus, who merely wishes to describe the site of the temple erected by Dorieus. “Near the Krathis,” or “near the dry Krathis,” would be equivalent expressions, if we adopted Bahr’s construction; whereas to say “near the deserted channel of the Krathis,” would be a good local designation. t Herodot. vi. 21.

the interior. The Krotoniates might destroy Sybaris and disperse its inhabitants, but they could not succeed to its wide dominion over dependent territory: and the extinction of this great aggregate power, stretching across the peninsula from sea to sea, lessened the means of resistance against the Oscan movements from the inland. From this time forward, the cities of Magna Grecia, as well as those of Ionia, tend to decline in consequence; while Athens, on the other hand, becomes both more conspicuous and more powerful. At the invasion of Greece by Xerxés, thirty years after this conquest of Sybaris, Sparta and Athens send to ask for aid both from Sicily and Korkyra, but not from Magna Grecia. It is much to be regretted that we do not possess fuller information respecting such important changes among the Greco-Italian cities. Yet we may remark that even Herodotus—himself a citizen of Thurii and dwelling on the spot not more than eighty years after the capture of Sybaris— evidently found no written memorials to consult, and could obtain from verbal conversation nothing better than statements both meagre and contradictory. The material circumstance, for example, of the aid rendered by the Spartan Dorieus and his colonists, though positively asserted by the Sybarites, was as positively denied by the Krotoniates, who Contradic. alleged that they had accomplished the conquest ontradic. . torystate- by themselves and with their own unaided forces. ments and arguments There can be little hesitation in crediting the affirmathe presence tive assertion of the Sybarites, who showed to Heroof Dores dotus a temple and precinct erected by the Spartan prince in testimony of his share in the victory, on the banks of the dry deserted channel out of which the Krathis had been turned, and in honour of the Krathian Athéné.! This of itself forms a proof, coupled with the positive assertion of the Sybarites, sufficient for the case; but they produced another indirect argument to confirm it, which deserves notice. Dorieus had attacked Sybaris while he was passing along the coast of Italy to go and found a colony in Sicily, under the express mandate and encouragement of the oracle. After tarrying awhile at Sybaris, he pursued his journey to the south-western portion of Sicily, where he and nearly all his companions * Herodot. v. 45.

perished in a battle with the Carthaginians and Egestæans— though the oracle had promised him that he should acquire and occupy permanently the neighbouring territory near Mount Eryx. Now the Sybarites deduced from this fatal disaster of Dorieus and his expedition, combined with the favourable promise of the oracle beforehand, a confident proof of the correctness of their own statement that he had fought at Sybaris. For if he had gone straight to the territory marked out by the oracle (they argued) without turning aside for any other object, the prophecy on which his hopes were founded would have been unquestionably realised, and he would have succeeded. But the ruinous disappointment which actually overtook him was at once explained, and the truth of prophecy vindicated, when it was recollected that he had turned aside to help the Krotoniates against Sybaris, and thus set at nought the conditions prescribed to him. Upon this argument (Herodotus tells us) the Sybarites of his day especially insisted And while we note their pious and literal faith in the communications of an inspired prophet, we must at the same time observe how perfectly that faith supplied the place of historical premises—how scanty their stock was of such legitimate evidence—and how little they had yet learnt to appreciate its value. Itis to be remarked that Herodotus,in1 his brief mention of the fatal war between Sybaris and Kroton, does not make the least allusion to Pythagoras or his brotherhood. The least which we can infer from such silence is, that the Herodotus part which they playedin reference to the war, and does not their general ascendency in Magna Grecia, was in Pythagore| reality less conspicuous and overruling than the aliudesto Pythagorean historians set forth. Even making between, such allowance, however, the absence of all allusion Kroton. in Herodotus, to the commotions which accompanied the subversion of the Pythagoreans, is a circumstance not easily explicable. Nor can I pass over a perplexing statement in Polybius, which seems to show that he too must have conceived the history of Sybaris in a way different from that in 1 Herodot. v. 45. Toöro dhabroî EE undiv, dw’ § dè dordan érolee, Ampiéos toy Odyaroy papripiorpéyioror «Die y ’Epuxivno xépnr «al éAdr movedwras (LuBapîra:), Sr: mapà rà pepay- | xdreoxe, odd' dy adrés re al arparln revuéra wotkey Giepôdpp. El yap 3h uh | diep

which it is commonly represented. PART II. He tells us, that after much suffering in Magna Grecia from the troubles which followed the expulsion of the Pythagoreans, the cities were induced by Achzan mediation to come to an accommodation and even to establish something like a permanent league, with a common temple and sacrifices. Now the three cities which he specifies as having been the first to do this are, Kroton, Sybaris, and Kaulonia.! But according to the sequence of events and the fatal war (just.described) between Kroton and Sybaris, the latter city must have been at that time in ruins ; little, if at all, inhabited. I cannot but infer from this statement of Polybius, that he followed different authorities respecting the earlier history of Magna Grecia in the beginning of the fifth century B.C. | Indeed the early history of these cities gives us little more Charondas, than a few isolated facts and names. of Katana, to their legislators, Zaleukus and Charondas, nothing lawgiver axos, Zankié, &.” . . . . With regard . . is made out except their existence—and even that fact some ancient critics contested. Of Zaleukus, whom chronologists place in 664 B.c., I have already spoken ; the date of Charondas cannot be assigned, but we may perhaps presume that it was at some time between 600-500 B.C. He was a citizen of middling station, born in the Chalkidic colony of Katana in Sicily,? and he framed laws not only for his own city, but for the other Chalkidic cities in Sicily and Italy—Leontini, Naxos, Zanklé, and Rhégium. The laws and the solemn preamble ascribed to him by Diodorus and Stobæus, belong to a later day,’ and we are 1 Polyb. ii. 39. Heyne thinks that | I think he is ‘undoubtedly right: but the agreement here mentioned by Poly- without determining the date more bius took place Olymp. 80, 3 ; or indeed exactly (Opuscul. vol. ii. ; Prolus. ix. p. after the re-population of the Sybaritan 160), Charondas must certainly have territory by the foundation of Thurii been earlier than Anaxilas of Rhégium (Opuscula, vol. ii, ; Prolus. x. p. 189). and the great Sicilian despots; which But there seems great difficulty in imagin- will place him higher than 500 B.c. : but ing that the state of violent commotion I do not know that any more precise — which (according to Polybius) was mark of time can be found. only appeased by this ment— can ® Diodorus, xii. 35: Stobæus, Serm. possibly have lasted so long as half a xliv. 20-40 ; Cicero de Legg. ii. 6. See century; the received date of the over- K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech. throw of the Pythagoreans being about Staatsalterthümer, ch. 89; Heyne, 04, B.C. Opuscul. vol. ii. p. 72-164. Brandis 3 Aristot. Politic. ii. 9, 6, iv. 9, 10. (Geschichte der Rom. Philosophie, ch. Heyne puts Charondas much earlier xxvi. p. 102) seems to conceive these than the foundation of Thurii, in which prologues as genuine.

obliged to content ourselves with collecting the brief hints of Aristotle, who tells us that the laws of Charondas descended to great minuteness of distinction and specification, especially in graduating the fine for offences according to the property of the guilty person fined '—but that there was nothing in his laws strictly original and peculiar, except that he was the first to introduce the solemn indictment against perjured witnesses before justice. The perjured witness in Grecian ideas, was looked upon as having committed a crime half religious, half civil. The indictment raised against him, known by a peculiar name, partook of both characters, approaching in some respects to the procedure against a murderer. Such distinct form of indictment against perjured testimony—with its appropriate name? which we shall find maintained at Athens throughout the best known days of Attic law—was first enacted by Charondas. The mistakes and confusion made by that political trick (of indirectly elimiancient writers respecting these law- nating the poor from public duties) givers—even by writers earlier than which Aristotle had been just adverting Aristotle (Politic. ii. 9, 5)—are such as to—but merely means that Charondas we have no means of clearing up. . had been nice and minute in graduating Seneca (Epist. 90) calls both Zaleukus pecuniary penalties generally, having and Charondas disciples of Pythagoras; reference to the wealth or poverty of that the former was so, is not to be the person sentenced. 3 Ipôros yap dwoinoe Thv exloxnyiy believed ; but it is not wholly impossible that the latter may have been so, or at (Aristot. Politic. ii. 9, 8). See Harpo- 3° Boy pdv obddv dori Adv al Bina TÔv 1. exlaxnyw rf 8 AnpıBelg trav vépov dort verted to in the text, and seems to least a contemporary of the earliest kration, v. ‘Exeoxfwaro, and Pollux, viii. 33; Démosthenés cont. Stephanum, Pythagoreans. 1 Aristotel Politic. ii.9, 8. XapéyBou ii. c. 5; cont: Euerg. et Mnésibul. c. wevdo y" xparos yap éxolnce Thy it The word éxloxnyis carries with the solemnity of meaning adyAapupérepos al tay viv vopuoberay. have been used especially with reference To the fulness and precision predi- to an action or indictment against percated respecting Charondas in the latter | jured witnesses: which indictment was part of this passage, I refer the other, permitted to be brought with a less passage in Politic. iv. 10, 6, which is‘ degree of risk or cost to the accuser not to be construed as if it meant that : than most others in the Attic dikasteries Charondas had graduated fines on the ; (Démosth. cont. Euerg. et. Mn. 4. c.). rich and poor with a distinct view to