xxu 



PREFACE. 



tlcal Philofophy with fpeculatlve, and produced not only great phi- 

 lofophers, but men eminent in arms and in government : Nor do 

 I believe that there ever exifted fuch a race of men as came out of 

 that School ; for though the heroes who fought at Troy were men 

 of fuperior natural powers both of mind and body, they were not 

 philofophers, as the fcholars of Pythagoras were. Out of this 

 School came Tim.^us the Locrian, who was not only a great philo- 

 fopher, as is evident from what is yet preferved of his writings, I 

 mean his treatife Be An'ima Mimdi^ but was an eminent ftatefman, 

 as we are informed by Plato ; alfo Archytas the Tarentine, of whom 

 we are told by Diogenes Laertius in his Life, that he feven times 

 commanded the army of his country, though it was a law among 

 the Tarentines that no man fhould bear that office but once ; and 

 that in all thefe feveral commands he never was worfted by the ene- 

 my, but once by the envy of his counti-ymen he was obliged to ab- 

 dicate the command, the confequence of which was, that the whole 

 army were taken prifoners. How great a man he was in Philofo- 

 phy, that great work of his, which is yet preferved to us Trep^ tou 

 Travro,-, or Concerning the Univerftty of Things^ containing, as I have 

 fliewn elfewhere *, the principles of all Science and Demonftration 

 manifeft. And, befides that great work of his, which Simplicius, 

 the commentator upon Ariftotle's Categories, has preferved to us al- 

 moft entire, we have feveral moft valuable fragments of his upon 

 Moral Philofophy, colleded by Gale in his Opufcula Mythological 

 and what fhould make him a great favourite of our modern philofo- 

 phers, he was the inventor of the Science of Mechanics f . Befides 

 thefe, out of this School, as out of the Trojan horfe, iiliied the 

 greateft lawgivers that, I believe, ever were in the world, fuch as 

 Charendas, Seleucus, Timaratus, and others mentioned by Jambli- 



chus 

 ♦ Origin of Language, Vol. I. p. 72, 73, of the Second Edit, 

 t Diogen. Laertius hi Vita Archytcv. 



