5^6 JYTHAGOREAN WRITINGS- 



drawn from the ftyle and general contents of the piece 

 itfelf. The ftyle is artlefs, and entirely free from all 

 dialectic and rhetorical ornament of later times ; at the 

 fame time, replete with allulions to the more myftical 

 terms and ideas of the Pythagoreans. The main fub- 

 ject turns on the pythagoric ideas of the numeral rela- 

 tions and numeral harmony of all things, of misfhapen 

 matter difpofed into form by God ; in a word, merely 

 on fuch doctrines as have been unanimoufly afcribed to 

 Pythagoras by all antiquity. 



' This argument, indeed, affords no more than a high 

 degree of probability ; lince it is not altogether hn- 

 poffible that fome artful impoftor may have been able 

 exactly to imitate the pythagoric language. But the 

 other pufhes this probability into certainty, as it refts 

 folely on the depofitions of fuch antient witneffes as are 

 of unqueftionable veracity. That Plato drew from the 

 fources of pythagorifm all antiquity affirms without ex- 

 ception. But, that he received inftruction from 

 Timaeus of Locri, is likewife afferted by feveral 

 authors of great reputation. Cicero affirms in two 

 places, that Plato Was inftructed in the whole pytha- 

 goric fyftem by Archytas, Echicrates, Timaeus, and 

 Acrion, the pythagoreans * ; to this teftimony we may 

 die more fafely truft, as it was delivered before the 

 rife of the new platonic enthufiafm, before the confu- 

 lion and impofture introduced by the eclectics, as 

 they were called, by a philofopher who thought 

 neither with the platonics nor with the Pythago- 

 reans. 



* Cic.de Fin. lib* v. c. 7. Tufc. ...Quae ft. lib, i. c. 17. 



Thus 



