Greek Texts & Translations

There were four men of the name of Pythagoras living about the same time and at no great distance from one another : (1) of Croton, a man with tyrannical leanings ; (2) of Phlius, an athlete, some say a trainer ; (3) of Zacynthus ; (4) our subject, who discovered the secrets of philosophy [and taught them], and to whom was applied the phrase, "The Master said" (Ipse dixit), which passed into a proverb of ordinary life. 8.1.47 Some say there was also another Pythagoras, a sculptor of Rhegium, who is thought to have been the first to aim at rhythm and symmetry ; another a sculptor of Samos ; another a bad orator ; another a doctor who wrote on hernia and also compiled some things about Homer ; and yet another who, so we are told by Dionysius, wrote a history of the Dorian race. Eratosthenes says, according to what we learn from Favorinus in the eighth book of his Miscellaneous History, that the last-named was the first to box scientifically, in the 48th Olympiad, ^note keeping his hair long and wearing a purple robe ; and that when he was excluded with ridicule from the boys' contest, he went at once to the men's and won that ; 8.1.48 this is declared by Theaetetus's epigram ^note: Know'st one Pythagoras, long-haired Pythagoras,

The far-fam'd boxer of the Samians?

I am Pythagoras ; ask the Elians

What were my feats, thou'lt not believe the tale.

Favorinus says that our philosopher used definitions throughout the subject matter of mathematics ; their use was extended by Socrates and his disciples, and afterwards by Aristotle and the Stoics.

Further, we are told that he was the first to call the heaven the universe and the earth spherical, ^note though Theophrastus says it was Parmenides, and Zeno that it was Hesiod. 8.1.49 It is said that Cylon was a rival of Pythagoras, as Antilochus ^note was of Socrates.

Pythagoras the athlete was also the subject of another epigram as follows ^note:

Gone to box with other lads

Is the lad Pythagoras,

Gone to the games Olympian

Crates' son the Samian.

The philosopher also wrote the following letter :

Pythagoras to Anaximenes.

"Even you, O most excellent of men, were you no better born and famed than Pythagoras, would have risen and departed from Miletus. But now your ancestral glory has detained you as it had detained me were I Anaximenes's peer. But if you, the best men, abandon your cities, then will their good order perish, and the peril from the Medes will increase. 8.1.50 For always to scan the heavens is not well, but more seemly is it to be provident for one's mother country. For I too am not altogether in my discourses but am found no less in the wars which the Italians wage with one another."

Having now finished our account of Pythagoras, we have next to speak of the noteworthy Pythagoreans ; after them will come the philosophers whom some denominate "sporadic" [i.e. belonging to no particular school]; and then, in the next place, we will append the succession of all those worthy of notice as far as Epicurus, in the way that we promised. We have already treated of Theano and Telauges : so now we have first to speak of Empedocles, for some say he was a pupil of Pythagoras.