VI 

 THE EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ITALY 



DIOGENES LAERTIUS tells a story about a 

 youth who, clad in a purple toga, entered the 

 arena at the Olympian games and asked to compete 

 with the other youths in boxing. He was derisively 

 denied admission, presumably because he was beyond 

 the legitimate age for juvenile contestants. Nothing" 

 daunted, the youth entered the lists of men, and turned 

 the laugh on his critics by coming off victor. The 

 youth who performed this feat was named Pythagoras. 

 He was the same man, if we may credit the story, who 

 afterwards migrated to Italy and became the founder 

 of the famous Crotonian School of Philosophy; the 

 man who developed the religion of the Orphic mys- 

 teries; who conceived the idea of the music of the 

 spheres; who promulgated the doctrine of metem- 

 psychosis; who first, perhaps, of all men clearly con- 

 ceived the notion that this world on which we live is 

 a ball which moves in space and which may be habit- 

 able on every side. 



A strange development that for a stripling pugilist. 

 But we must not forget that in the Greek world ath- 

 letics held a peculiar place. The chief winner of 

 Olympian games gave his name to an epoch (the en- 

 suing Olympiad of four years), and was honored al- 

 most before all others in the land. A sound mind in a 



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