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Bat this doctrine of Pythagoras Is set forth more folly in Book xv. 
of Ovid's Metamorphoses: * 
* Here dwelt the man divine, whom Samos bore. 
But now self-banish’d from his native shore, 
Because he hated tyrants, nor could bear 
The chains, which none but servile souls will wear. 
He, tho’ from heav’n remote, to heav’n could move. 
With strength of mind, and tread th’ abyss above; 
And penetrate, with his interior light. 
Those upper depths, which Nature hid from sight: 
And what he had observ’d, and learnt from thence, 
Lov’d in familiar language to dispense. 
The crowd with silent admiration stand. 
And heard him, as they heard their God’s command; 
While he discours’d of Heav’n’s mysterious laws, 
The world’s original, and Nature’s cause; 
And what was God; and why the fleecy snows 
In silence fell, and rattling winds arose; 
What shook the stedfast earth, and whence begun 
The dance of radiant planets round the sun;f 
If thunder was the voice of angry Jove, 
Or clouds, with nitre pregnant, burst above: 
Of these, and things beyond the common reach. 
He spoke, and charm’d the audience with his speech. 
He first the taste of flesh from tables drove, 
And argu’d well, if arguments could move. 
O mortals! from your fellows’ blood abstain. 
Nor taint your bodies with a food profane: 
While corn and pulse by Nature are bestow’d. 
And planted orchards bend their willing load; 
While labour’d gardens wholesome herbs produce. 
And teeming vines atford their gen’rous juice; 
Nor tardier fruits of cruder kind are lost. 
But tam’d with fire, or mellow’d by the frost; 
While kine to pails distended udders bring. 
And bees their honey redolent of spring; 
While earth not only can your needs supply, 
But, lavish of her store, provides for luxury; 
A guiltless feast administers with ease, 
And without blood is prodigal to please. 
Wild beasts their maws with their slain brethren fill; 
And yet not all, for some refuse to kill; 
Sheep, goats, and oxen, and the nobler steed, 
On browse, and corn, and flow’ry meadows, feed, 
Bears, tygers, wolves, the lion’s angry brood, 
Whom Heav’n endu’d with principles of blood, 
He wisely sunder’d from the rest, to yell 
In forests, and in lonely caves to dwell; 
+ Pythagoras discovered, or first taught, the true system of astronomy, or what is called the modern Newtonian 
doctrine. 
