EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ITALY 



apocryphal, but doubtless, also, it expresses the truth 

 as to the fervid joy with which the philosopher must 

 have contemplated the results of his creative imagina- 

 tion. 



No line alleged to have been written by Pythagoras 

 has come down to us. We are told that he refrained 

 from publishing his doctrines, except by word of 

 mouth. "The Lucanians and the Peucetians, and the 

 Messapians and the Romans," we are assured, " flocked 

 around him, coming with eagerness to hear his dis- 

 courses; no fewer than six hundred came to him 

 every night ; and if any one of them had ever been per- 

 mitted to see the master, they wrote of it to their friends 

 as if they had gained some great advantage." Never- 

 theless, we are assured that until the time of Philolaus 

 no doctrines of Pythagoras were ever published, to 

 which statement it is added that "when the three cele- 

 brated books were published, Plato wrote to have them 

 purchased for him for a hundred minas." 2 But if such 

 books existed, they are lost to the modern world, and 

 we are obliged to accept the assertions of relatively 

 late writers as to the theories of the great Cro- 

 tonian. 



Perhaps we cannot do better than quote at length 

 from an important summary of the remaining doctrines 

 of Pythagoras, which Diogenes himself quoted from 

 the work of a predecessor. 3 Despite its somewhat 

 inchoate character, this summary is a most remarkable 

 one, as a brief analysis of its contents will show. It 

 should be explained that Alexander (whose work is 

 now lost) is said to have found these dogmas set down 

 in the commentaries of Pythagoras. If this assertion 



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