A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



purple-robed victor to Italy if, indeed, we be not over- 

 credulous in accepting the tradition and learn of tri- 

 umphs of a different kind that have placed the name of 

 Pythagoras high on the list of the fathers of Grecian 

 thought. To Italy? Yes, to the western limits of 

 the Greek world. Here it was, beyond the confines of 

 actual Greek territory, that Hellenic thought found its 

 second home, its first home being, as we have seen, in 

 Asia Minor. Pythagoras, indeed, to whom we have 

 just been introduced, was born on the island of Samos, 

 which lies near the coast of Asia Minor, but he prob- 

 ably migrated at an early day to Crotona, in Italy. 

 There he lived, taught, and developed his philosophy 

 until rather late in life, when, having incurred the dis- 

 pleasure of his fellow-citizens, he suffered the not 

 unusual penalty of banishment. 



Of the three other great Italic leaders of thought of 

 the early period, Xenophanes came rather late in life to 

 Elea and founded the famous Eleatic School, of which 

 Parmenides became the most distinguished ornament. 

 These two were lonians, and they lived in the sixth 

 century before our era. Empedocles, the Sicilian, 

 was of Doric origin. He lived about the middle of the 

 fifth century B.C., at a time, therefore, when Athens 

 had attained a position of chief glory among the Greek 

 states ; but there is no evidence that Empedocles ever 

 visited that city, though it was rumored that he return- 

 ed to the Peloponnesus to die. The other great Italic 

 philosophers just named, living, as we have seen, in 

 the previous century, can scarcely have thought of 

 Athens as a centre of Greek thought. Indeed, the very 

 fact that these men lived in Italy made that peninsula, 



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