[harvey] PYTHAGORAS AND HIS PHILOSOPHY 2S1 



East until Islam came into conflict with it, when, on the field of 

 Nahavand (631 A.D.), the Arabians under Omar gained a decisive 

 victory over the Guèbres (Giaours, infidels, from the Arabic Gaur, 

 unbeliever) killing 30,000 and driving 100,000 to death by drowning. 

 A part fled to an island in the Persian gulf, thence to India, where, 

 a.: Parsees, about 100,000 are to be found, still Aryan in type. Of 

 the metaphysical tenets of Zoroaster only one needs mention here: 

 " Immortality will come to the living at the last " (Yast xix, 389, 393, 

 •395).^ Gibbon^s account of the Paulicians, ohap. 44, may be read in 

 this connection, and some will see in the Mithraitic impulse the origin 

 of the Knights .Tiempla/rs, of the Protestant Keformaition, and of the 

 devil worship which ohseunely persists in Europe still. 



In these sketches, those features only have been outlined which 

 bear upon Pythagorean doctrine and practices, and it is now time to 

 examine what they were. 



The general account which seems most suitable for quotation is 

 that of Ovid. Few passages in the whole range of Latin poetry are 

 more beautiful than those describing the popularly received cosmogony 

 of his day, with which he begins his Metamorphoseon. It is curiously 

 different from modern views, for while we always speak (and far too 

 boastingly) of human progress, Ovid divides the time since creation 

 into golden, silver, brass and iron ages, and calls the oldest far the 

 noblest. Then he recounts the myths of the Greeks, in such a way that 

 they tell their due lessons in ethics, elegantly but forcibly, and at the 

 close of the work he completes the song which began with Chaos and 

 the origin of things with an account of their nature as explained by 

 Pythagoras : — 



" In Crotona," he says, " once lived a man, by birth a Samian, who left 

 " that island and its rulers because he disliked their despotic form of 

 " Government. High as the Heavens are, his mental powers held fellowship 

 " with the Gods who dwell therein, and by reflecting he perceived what to 



" the natural eye is hidden He taught his silent and admiring 



" listeners the origin of this mighty world, the reason why things are and 

 " what their nature. He explained his conception of the Deity, told whence 

 " come the storms of snow, what was the cause of lightning, whether Jupiter 

 " or the winds were thundering in the cloud-burst, what made the earth- 

 " quake, what laws governed stellar motions; in fine, all the mysteries of 

 " the unknown. He was the first to forbid the use of flesh for food, in 

 " words like these . . . . ' Cease, mortals, to defile your frame with food 



' Akin to the Assyrian cosmogony, but without its subordinate divinities, 

 was that of the early Hebrews, given in Genesis I and II, and in Job, 

 XXXVIII and XXXIX. The Avestan Amshaspands seem related to the 

 Jewish Archangels, but the Jewish celestial hierarchy appears only to have 

 been properly staged after the Captivity. 



