When we come to the Lives of Pythagoras, by Porphyry, Iamblichos, and Diogenes Laertios,[1] we find ourselves once more in the region of the miraculous. They are based on authorities of a very suspicious character,[2] and the result is a mass of incredible fiction. It would be quite wrong, however, to ignore the miraculous elements in the legend of Pythagoras; for some of the most striking miracles are quoted from Aristotle's work on the Pythagoreans[3] and from the Tripod of Andron of Ephesos,[4] both of which belong to the fourth century B.C., and cannot have been influenced by Neopythagorean fancies. The fact is that the oldest and the latest accounts agree in representing Pythagoras as a wonder-worker; but, for some reason, an attempt was made in the fourth century to save his memory from that imputation. This helps to account for the cautious references of Plato and Aristotle, but its full significance will only appear later.
38.Life of Pythagoras. We may be said to know for certain that Pythagoras passed his early manhood at Samos, and was the son of Mnesarchos;[5] and he "flourished," we are told, in the reign
- ↑ Porphyry's Life of Pythagoras is the only considerable extract from his History of Philosophy that has survived. The Life by Iamblichos has been edited by Nauck (1884).
- ↑ Iamblichos made a compilation from the arithmetician Nikomachos of Gerasa and the romance of Apollonios of Tyana. Porphyry used Nikomachos and Antonius Diogenes, who wrote a work called Marvels from beyond Thule, which is parodied in Lucian's Vera Historia.
- ↑ It is Aristotle who told how Pythagoras killed a deadly snake by biting it, how he was seen at Kroton and Metapontion at the same time, how he exhibited his golden thigh at Olympia, and how he was addressed by a voice from heaven when crossing the river Kasas. It was also Aristotle who preserved the valuable piece of information that the Krotoniates identified Pythagoras with Apollo Hyperboreios, and that the Pythagoreans had a division of the λογικὸν ζῷον into τὸ μὲν . . . θεός, τὸ δὲ ἄνθρωπος, τὸ δὲ οἷον Πυθαγόρας. For these and other statements of the same kind, see Diels, Vors. 4, 7. It looks as if Aristotle took special pains to emphasise this aspect of Pythagoras out of opposition to the later Pythagoreans who tried to ignore it.
- ↑ Andron wrote a work on the Seven Wise Men, and the title refers to the well-known story (p. 44, n. 3).
- ↑ Cf. Herod. iv. 95, and Herakleitos, fr. 17 (R. P. 31 a). Timaios, however, gave his father's name as Demaratos. Herodotos represents him as living at Samos. Aristoxenos said his family came from one of
