Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers

§ 7.157 Zeno of Citium and Antipater, in their treatises De anima, and Posidonius define the soul as a warm breath; for by this we become animate and this enables us to move. Cleanthes indeed holds that all souls continue to exist until the general conflagration; but Chrysippus says that only the souls of the wise do so. They count eight parts of the soul: the five senses, the generative power in us, our power of speech, and that of reasoning. They hold that we see when the light between the visual organ and the object stretches in the form of a cone: so Chrysippus in the second book of his Physics and Apollodorus. The apex of the cone in the air is at the eye, the base at the object seen. Thus the thing seen is reported to us by the medium of the air stretching out towards it, as if by a stick.

§ 7.158 We hear when the air between the sonant body and the organ of hearing suffers concussion, a vibration which spreads spherically and then forms waves and strikes upon the ears, just as the water in a reservoir forms wavy circles when a stone is thrown into it. Sleep is caused, they say, by the slackening of the tension in our senses, which affects the ruling part of the soul. They consider that the passions are caused by the variations of the vital breath. Semen is by them defined as that which is capable of generating offspring like the parent. And the human semen which is emitted by a human parent in a moist vehicle is mingled with parts of the soul, blended in the same ratio in which they are present in the parent.

§ 7.159 Chrysippus in the second book of his Physics declares it to be in substance identical with vital breath or spirit. This, he thinks, can be seen from the seeds cast into the earth, which, if kept till they are old, do not germinate, plainly because their fertility has evaporated. Sphaerus and his followers also maintain that semen derives its origin from the whole of the body; at all events every part of the body can be reproduced from it. That of the female is according to them sterile, being, as Sphaerus says, without tension, scanty, and watery. By ruling part of the soul is meant that which is most truly soul proper, in which arise presentations and impulses and from which issues rational speech. And it has its seat in the heart. Such is the summary of their Physics which I have deemed adequate, my aim being to preserve a due proportion in my work. But the points on which certain of the Stoics differed from the rest are the following.

§ 7.160 2. ARISTON Ariston the Bald, of Chios, who was also called the Siren, declared the end of action to be a life of perfect indifference to everything which is neither virtue nor vice; recognizing no distinction whatever in things indifferent, but treating them all alike. The wise man he compared to a good actor, who, if called upon to take the part of a Thersites or of an Agamemnon, will impersonate them both becomingly. He wished to discard both Logic and Physics, saying that Physics was beyond our reach and Logic did not concern us: all that did concern us was Ethics.

§ 7.161 Dialectical reasonings, he said, are like spiders' webs, which, though they seem to display some artistic workmanship, are yet of no use. He would not admit a plurality of virtues with Zeno, nor again with the Megarians one single virtue called by many names; but he treated virtue in accordance with the category of relative modes. Teaching this sort of philosophy, and lecturing in the Cynosarges, he acquired such influence as to be called the founder of a sect. At any rate Miltiades and Diphilus were denominated Aristoneans. He was a plausible speaker and suited the taste of the general public. Hence Timon's verse about him: One who from wily Ariston's line boasts his descent.

§ 7.162 After meeting Polemo, says Diocles of Magnesia, while Zeno was suffering from a protracted illness, he recanted his views. The Stoic doctrine to which he attached most importance was the wise man's refusal to hold mere opinions. And against this doctrine Persaeus was contending when he induced one of a pair of twins to deposit a certain sum with Ariston and afterwards got the other to reclaim it. Ariston being thus reduced to perplexity was refuted. He was at variance with Arcesilaus; and one day when he saw an abortion in the shape of a bull with a uterus, he said, “Alas, here Arcesilaus has had given into his hand an argument against the evidence of the senses.”

§ 7.163 When some Academic alleged that he had no certainty of anything, Ariston said, “Do you not even see your neighbour sitting by you?” and when the other answered “No,” he rejoined, Who can have blinded you? who robbed you of luminous eyesight? The books attributed to him are as follows: Exhortations, two books. Of Zeno's Doctrines. Dialogues. Lectures, six books. Dissertations on Philosophy, seven books. Dissertations on Love. Commonplaces on Vainglory. Notebooks, twenty-five volumes. Memorabilia, three books. Anecdotes, eleven books. Against the Rhetoricians. An Answer to the Counter-pleas of Alexinus. Against the Dialecticians, three books. Letters to Cleanthes, four books. Panaetius and Sosicrates consider the Letters to be alone genuine; all the other works named they attribute to Ariston the Peripatetic.

§ 7.164 The story goes that being bald he had a sunstroke and so came to his end. I have composed a trifling poem upon him in limping iambics as follows: Wherefore, Ariston, when old and bald did you let the sun roast your forehead? Thus seeking warmth more than was reasonable, you lit unwillingly upon the chill reality of Death. There was also another Ariston, a native of Iulis; a third, a musician of Athens; a fourth, a tragic poet; a fifth, of Halae, author of treatises on rhetoric; a sixth Ariston, a Peripatetic philosopher of Alexandria.

§ 7.165 3. HERILLUS Herillus of Carthage declared the end of action to be Knowledge, that is, so to live always as to make the scientific life the standard in all things and not to be misled by ignorance. Knowledge he defined as a habit of mind, not to be upset by argument, in the acceptance of presentations. Sometimes he used to say there was no single end of action, but it shifted according to varying circumstances and objects, as the same bronze might become a statue either of Alexander or of Socrates. He made a distinction between end-in-chief and subordinate end: even the unwise may aim at the latter, but only the wise seek the true end of life. Everything that lies between virtue and vice he pronounced indifferent. His writings, though they do not occupy much space, are full of vigour and contain some controversial passages in reply to Zeno.

§ 7.166 He is said to have had many admirers when a boy; and as Zeno wished to drive them away, he compelled Herillus to have his head shaved, which disgusted them. His books are the following: Of Training. Of the Passions. Concerning Opinion or Belief. The Legislator. The Obstetrician. The Challenger. The Teacher. The Reviser. The Controller. Hermes. Medea. Dialogues. Ethical Themes.

§ 7.167 4. DIONYSIUS Dionysius Dionysius, the Renegade, declared that pleasure was the end of action; this under the trying circumstance of an attack of ophthalmia. For so violent was his suffering that he could not bring himself to call pain a thing indifferent. He was the son of Theophantus and a native of Heraclea. At first, as Diocles relates, he was a pupil of his fellow-townsman, Heraclides, next of Alexinus and Menedemus, and lastly of Zeno. At the outset of his career he was fond of literature and tried his hand at all kinds of poetry; afterwards he took Aratus for his model, whom he strove to imitate. When he fell away from Zeno, he went over to the Cyrenaics, and used to frequent houses of ill fame and indulge in all other excesses without disguise. After living till he was nearly eighty years of age, he committed suicide by starving himself. The following works are attributed to him: Of Apathy, two books On Training, two books. Of Pleasure, four books. Of Wealth, Popularity and Revenge How to live amongst Men. Of Prosperity. Of Ancient Kings. Of those who are Praised. Of the Customs of Barbarians. These three, then, are the heterodox Stoics. The legitimate successor to Zeno, however, was Cleanthes: of whom we have now to speak.

§ 7.168 5. CLEANTHES Cleanthes, son of Phanias, was a native of Assos. This man, says Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers, was at first a pugilist. He arrived in Athens, as some people say, with four drachmas only, and meeting with Zeno he studied philosophy right nobly and adhered to the same doctrines throughout. He was renowned for his industry, being indeed driven by extreme poverty to work for a living. Thus, while by night he used to draw water in gardens, by day he exercised himself in arguments: hence the nickname Phreantles or Well-lifter was given him. He is said to have been brought into court to answer the inquiry how so sturdy a fellow as he made his living, and then to have been acquitted on producing as his witnesses the gardener in whose garden he drew water

§ 7.169 and the woman who sold the meal which he used to crush. The Areopagites were satisfied and voted him a donation of ten minas, which Zeno forbade him to accept. We are also told that Antigonus made him a present of three thousand drachmas. Once, as he was conducting some youths to a public spectacle, the wind blew his cloak aside and disclosed the fact that he wore no shirt, whereupon he was applauded by the Athenians, as is stated by Demetrius of Magnesia in his work on Men of the Same Name. This then also increased the admiration felt for him. There is another story that Antigonus when attending his lectures inquired of him why he drew water and received the reply, “Is drawing water all I do? What? Do I not dig? What? Do I not water the garden? or undertake any other labour for the love of philosophy?” For Zeno used to discipline him to this and bid him return him an obol from his wages.

§ 7.170 And one day he produced a handful of small coin before his acquaintance and said, “ Cleanthes could even maintain a second Cleanthes, if he liked, whereas those who possess the means to keep themselves yet seek to live at the expense of others, and that too though they have plenty of time to spare from their studies.” Hence Cleanthes was called a second Heracles. He had industry, but no natural aptitude for physics, and was extraordinarily slow. On which account Timon describes him thus: Who is this that like a bell-wether ranges over the ranks of men, a dullard, lover of verse, hailing from Assos, a mass of rock, unventuresome. And he used to put up with gibes from his fellow-pupils and did not mind being called the ass, telling them that he alone was strong enough to carry the load of Zeno.

§ 7.171 Once when he was reproached with cowardice, he replied, “That is why I so seldom go wrong.” Again, when extolling his own manner of life above that of the wealthy, he used to say that, while they were playing at ball, he was at work digging hard and barren ground. He would often find fault with himself too, and one day when Ariston heard him doing this and asked, “Who is it you are scolding so?” he, laughing, said, “An old man with grey hairs and no wits.” To some one who declared that Arcesilaus did not do what he ought, his reply was, “No more of this; do not censure him. For if by his words he does away with duty, he maintains it at all events by his deeds.” And Arcesilaus rejoined, “I am not to be won by flattery.” Whereupon Cleanthes said, “True, but my flattery consists in alleging that your theory is incompatible with your practice.”

§ 7.172 When some one inquired of him what lesson he ought to give his son, Cleanthes in reply quoted words from the Electra: Silence, silence, light be thy step. A Lacedaemonian having declared that toil was a good thing, he was overjoyed and said, Thou art of gentle blood, dear child. Hecaton reports in his Sayings his answer when a certain handsome youth said, “if someone who strikes the abdomen (gaster) gasterizes, then someone who strikes the thighs (mirous) mirizei (”smells"). “Cut the diamirismous (pun implying lascivious thigh-spreading), my boy. Not everything with a related sound has a related meaning.” Once in conversation with a youth he put the question, “Do you see?” and when the youth nodded assent, he went on, “Why, then, don't I see that you see?”

§ 7.173 He was present in the theatre when the poet Sositheus uttered the verse – Driven by Cleanthes' folly like dumb herds, and he remained unmoved in the same attitude. At which the audience were so astonished that they applauded him and drove Sositheus off the stage. Afterwards when the poet apologized for the insult, he accepted the apology, saying that, when Dionysus and Heracles were ridiculed by the poets without getting angry, it would be absurd for him to be annoyed at casual abuse. He used to say that the Peripatetics were in the same case as lyres which, although they give forth sweet sounds, never hear themselves. It is said that when he laid it down as Zeno's opinion that a man's character could be known from his looks, certain witty young men brought before him a rake with hands horny from toil in the country and requested him to state what the man's character was. Cleanthes was perplexed and ordered the man to go away; but when, as he was making off, he sneezed, “I have it,” cried Cleanthes, “he is effeminate.”

§ 7.174 To the solitary man who talked to himself he remarked, “You are not talking to a bad man.” When some one twitted him on his old age, his reply was, “I too am ready to depart; but when again I consider that I am in all points in good health and that I can still write and read, I am content to wait.” We are told that he wrote down Zeno's lectures on oyster-shells and the blade-bones of oxen through lack of money to buy paper. Such was he; and yet, although Zeno had many other eminent disciples, he was able to succeed him in the headship of the school. He has left some very fine writings, which are as follows: Of Time. Of Zeno's Natural Philosophy, two books. Interpretations of Heraclitus, four books. De Sensu. Of Art. A Reply to Democritus. A Reply to Aristarchus. A Reply to Herillus. Of Impulse, two books.

§ 7.175 Antiquities. Of the Gods. Of Giants. Of Marriage. On Homer. Of Duty, three books. Of Good Counsel. Of Gratitude. An Exhortation. Of the Virtues. Of Natural Ability. Of Gorgippus. Of Envy. Of Love. Of Freedom. The Art of Love. Of Honour. Of Fame. The Statesman. Of Deliberation. Of Laws. Of Litigation. Of Education. Of Logic, three books. Of the End. Of Beauty. Of Conduct. Of Knowledge. Of Kingship. Of Friendship. On the Banquet. On the Thesis that Virtue is the same in Man and in Woman. On the Wise Man turning Sophist. Of Usages. Lectures, two books. Of Pleasure. On Properties. On Insoluble Problems. Of Dialectic. Of Moods or Tropes. Of Predicates. This, then, is the list of his works.

§ 7.176 His end was as follows. He had severe inflammation of the gums, and by the advice of his doctors he abstained from food for two whole days. As it happened, this treatment succeeded, so that the doctors were for allowing him to resume his usual diet. To this, however, he would not consent, but declaring that he had already got too far on the road, he went on fasting the rest of his days until his death at the same age as Zeno according to some authorities, having spent nineteen years as Zeno's pupil. My lighter verse on him runs thus: I praise Cleanthes, but praise Hades more, Who could not bear to see him grown so old, So gave him rest at last among the dead, Who'd drawn such load of water while alive.

§ 7.177 6. SPHAERUS Amongst those who after the death of Zeno became pupils of Cleanthes was Sphaerus of Bosporus, as already mentioned. After making considerable progress in his studies, he went to Alexandria to the court of King Ptolemy Philopator. One day when a discussion had arisen on the question whether the wise man could stoop to hold opinion, and Sphaerus had maintained that this was impossible, the king, wishing to refute him, ordered some waxen pomegranates to be put on the table. Sphaerus was taken in and the king cried out, “You have given your assent to a presentation which is false.” But Sphaerus was ready with a neat answer. “I assented not to the proposition that they are pomegranates, but to another, that there are good grounds for thinking them to be pomegranates. Certainty of presentation and reasonable probability are two totally different things.” Mnesistratus having accused him of denying that Ptolemy was a king, his reply was, “Being of such quality as he is, Ptolemy is indeed a king.”

§ 7.178 The books that he wrote were as follows: Of the Cosmos, two books. Of Elements. Of Seed. Of Fortune. Of Minimal Parts. Against Atoms and Images. Of Organs of Sense. A Course of Five Lectures on Heraclitus. On the Right Arrangement of Ethical Doctrine. Of Duty. Of Impulse. Of the Passions, two books. Of Kingship. Of the Spartan Constitution. Of Lycurgus and Socrates, three books. Of Law. On Divination. Dialogues on Love. Of the School of Eretria. Of Similars. Of Terms. Of Habit. Of Contradictions, three books. Of Discourse. Of Wealth. Of Fame. Of Death. Handbook of Dialectic, two books. Of Predicates. Of Ambiguous Terms. Letters.

§ 7.179 7. CHRYSIPPUS Chrysippus, the son of Apollonius, came either from Soli or from Tarsus, as Alexander relates in his Successions. He was a pupil of Cleanthes. Before this he used to practise as a long-distance runner; but afterwards he came to hear Zeno, or, as Diocles and most people say, Cleanthes; and then, while Cleanthes was still living, withdrew from his school and attained exceptional eminence as a philosopher. He had good natural parts and showed the greatest acuteness in every branch of the subject; so much so that he differed on most points from Zeno, and from Cleanthes as well, to whom he often used to say that all he wanted was to be told what the doctrines were; he would find out the proofs for himself. Nevertheless, whenever he had contended against Cleanthes, he would afterwards feel remorse, so that he constantly came out with the lines: Blest in all else am I, save only where I touch Cleanthes: there I am ill-fortuned.

§ 7.180 So renowned was he for dialectic that most people thought, if the gods took to dialectic, they would adopt no other system than that of Chrysippus. He had abundance of matter, but in style he was not successful. In industry he surpassed every one, as the list of his writings shows; for there are more than 705 of them. He increased their number by arguing repeatedly on the same subject, setting down anything that occurred to him, making many corrections and citing numerous authorities. So much so that in one of his treatises he copied out nearly the whole of Euripides' Medea, and some one who had taken up the volume, being asked what he was reading, replied, “The Medea of Chrysippus.”

§ 7.181 Apollodorus of Athens in his Collection of Doctrines, wishing to show that what Epicurus wrote with force and originality unaided by quotations was far greater in amount than the books of Chrysippus, says, to quote his exact words, “If one were to strip the books of Chrysippus of all extraneous quotations, his pages would be left bare.” So much for Apollodorus. Of Chrysippus the old woman who sat beside him used to say, according to Diocles, that he wrote 500 lines a day. Hecato says that he came to the study of philosophy, because the property which he had inherited from his father had been confiscated to the king's treasury.

§ 7.182 In person he was insignificant, as is shown by the statue in the Ceramicus, which is almost hidden by an equestrian statue hard by; and this is why Carneades called him Crypsippus or Horse -hidden. Once when somebody reproached him for not going with the multitude to hear Ariston, he rejoined, “If I had followed the multitude, I should not have studied philosophy.” When some dialectician got up and attacked Cleanthes, proposing sophistical fallacies to him, Chrysippus called to him. “Cease to distract your elder from matters of importance; propound such quibbles to us juniors.” Again, when somebody who had a question to ask was steadily conversing with him in private, and then upon seeing a crowd approaching began to be more contentious, he said: Ah! brother mine, thine eye is growing wild: To madness fast thou'rt changing, sane but now.

§ 7.183 At wine-parties he used to behave quietly, though he was unsteady on his legs; which caused the woman-slave to say, “As for Chrysippus, only his legs get tipsy.” His opinion of himself was so high that when some one inquired, “To whom shall I entrust my son?” he replied, “To me: for, if I had dreamt of there being anyone better than myself, I should myself be studying with him.” Hence, it is said, the application to him of the line: He alone has understanding; the others flit shadow-like around; and But for Chrysippus, there had been no Stoa.

§ 7.184 At last, however, – so we are told by Sotion in his eighth book, – he joined Arcesilaus and Lacydes and studied philosophy under them in the Academy. And this explains his arguing at one time against, and at another in support of, ordinary experience, and his use of the method of the Academy when treating of magnitudes and numbers. On one occasion, as Hermippus relates, when he had his school in the Odeum, he was invited by his pupils to a sacrificial feast. There after he had taken a draught of sweet wine unmixed with water, he was seized with di7iness and departed this life five days afterwards, having reached the age of seventy-three years, in the 143rd Olympiad. This is the date given by Apollodorus in his Chronology. I have toyed with the subject in the following verses: Chrysippus turned giddy after gulping down a draught of Bacchus; he spared not the Stoa nor his country nor his own life, but fared straight to the house of Hades.

§ 7.185 Another account is that his death was caused by a violent fit of laughter; for after an ass had eaten up his figs, he cried out to the old woman, “Now give the ass a drink of pure wine to wash down the figs.” And thereupon he laughed so heartily that he died. He appears to have been a very arrogant man. At any rate, of all his many writings he dedicated none to any of the kings. And he was satisfied with one old woman's judgement, says Demetrius in his work called Men of the Same Name. When Ptolemy wrote to Cleanthes requesting him to come himself or else to send some one to his court, Sphaerus undertook the journey, while Chrysippus declined to go. On the other hand, he sent for his sister's sons, Aristocreon and Philocrates, and educated them. Demetrius above mentioned is also our authority for the statement that Chrysippus was the first who ventured to hold a lecture-class in the open air in the Lyceum.

§ 7.186 There was another Chrysippus, a native of Cnidus, a physician, to whom Erasistratus says that he was under great obligation. And another besides, a son of the former, court-physician to Ptolemy, who on a false charge was dragged about and castigated with the lash. And yet another was a pupil of Erasistratus, and another the author of a work on agriculture. To return to the philosopher. He used to propound arguments such as the following: “He who divulges the mysteries to the uninitiated is guilty of impiety. Now the hierophant certainly does reveal the mysteries to the uninitiated, ergo he is guilty of impiety.” Or again: “What is not in the city is not in the house either: now there is no well in the city, ergo there is none in the house either.” Yet another: “There is a certain head, and that head you have not. Now this being so, there is a head which you have not, therefore you are without a head.”

§ 7.187 Again: “If anyone is in Megara, he is not in Athens: now there is a man in Megara, therefore there is not a man in Athens.” Again: “If you say something, it passes through your lips: now you say wagon, consequently a wagon passes through your lips.” And further: “If you never lost something, you have it still; but you never lost horns, ergo you have horns.” Others attribute this to Eubulides. There are people who run Chrysippus down as having written much in a tone that is gross and indecent. For in his work On the ancient Natural Philosophers at line 600 or thereabouts he interprets the story of Hera and Zeus coarsely, with details which no one would soil his lips by repeating.

§ 7.188 Indeed, his interpretation of the story is condemned as most indecent. He may be commending physical doctrine; but the language used is more appropriate to street-walkers than to deities; and it is moreover not even mentioned by bibliographers, who wrote on the titles of books. What Chrysippus makes of it is not to be found in Polemo nor Hypsicrates, no, nor even in Antigonus. It is his own invention. Again, in his Republic he permits marriage with mothers and daughters and sons. He says the same in his work On Things for their own Sake not Desirable, right at the outset. In the third book of his treatise On Justice, at about line 1000, he permits eating of the corpses of the dead. And in the second book of his On the Means of Livelihood, where he professes to be considering a priori how the wise man is to get his living, occur the words:

§ 7.189 “And yet what reason is there that he should provide a living? For if it be to support life, life itself is after all a thing indifferent. If it be for pleasure, pleasure too is a thing indifferent. While if it be for virtue, virtue in itself is sufficient to constitute happiness. The modes of getting a livelihood are also ludicrous, as e.g. maintenance by a king; for he will have to be humoured: or by friends; for friendship will then be purchasable for money: or living by wisdom; for so wisdom will become mercenary.” These are the objections urged against him.

§ 7.190 As the reputation of his writings stands so high, I have decided to make a separate catalogue of them, arranged according to the class of subject treated. And they are as follows: I. Logic. Logical Theses. The Philosopher's Inquiries. Dialectical Definitions addressed to Metrodorus, six books. On the Terms used in Dialectic, addressed to Zeno, one book.

§ 7.190 Art of Dialectic, addressed to Aristagoras, one book. Probable Hypothetical Judgements, addressed to Dioscurides, four books. II. Logic dealing with the subject matter. First series: Of Judgements, one book. Of Judgements which are not Simple, one book. Of the Complex Judgement, addressed to Athenades, two books. Of Negative Judgements, addressed to Aristagoras, three books. Of Affirmative Judgements, addressed to Athenodorus, one book. Of Judgements expressed by means of Privation, addressed to Thearus, one book. Of Indefinite Judgements, addressed to Dion, three books. On the Variety of Indefinite Judgements, four books. On Temporal Judgements, two books. On Judgements in the Perfect Tense, two books. Second series: Of a True Disjunctive Judgement, addressed to Gorgippides, one book. Of a True Hypothetical Judgement, addressed to Gorgippides, four books.

§ 7.191 Choosing from Alternatives, addressed to Gorgippides, one book. A Contribution to the Subject of Consequents, one book. On the Argument which employs three Terms, also addressed to Gorgippides, one book. On Judgements of Possibility, addressed to Clitus, four books. A Reply to the Work of Philo on Meanings, one book. On the Question what are False Judgements, one book. Third series: Of Imperatives, two books. Of Asking Questions, two books. Of Inquiry, four books. Epitome of Interrogation and Inquiry, one book. Epitome of Reply, one book. Of Investigation, two books. Of Answering Questions, four books. Fourth series: Of Predicates, addressed to Metrodorus, ten books. Of Nominatives and Oblique Cases, addressed to Phylarchus, one book. Of Hypothetical Syllogisms, addressed to Apollonides, one book. A Work, addressed to Pasylus, on Predicates, four books.

§ 7.192 Fifth series: Of the Five Cases, one book. Of Enunciations classified according to subject matter, one book. Of Modification of Significance, addressed to Stesagoras, two books. Of Proper Nouns, two books. III. Logic, as concerned with words or phrases and the sentence. First series: Of Singular and Plural Expressions, six books. On Single Words, addressed to Sosigenes and Alexander, five books. Of Anomalous Words or Phrases, addressed to Dion, four books. Of the Sorites Argument as applied to Uttered Words, three books. On Solecisms, one book. On Solecistic Sentences, addressed to Dionysius, one book. Sentences violating Ordinary Usage, one book. Diction, addressed to Dionysius, one book. Second series: Of the Elements of Speech and on Words Spoken, five books. Of the Arrangement of Words Spoken, four books.

§ 7.193 Of the Arrangement and Elements of Sentences, addressed to Philip, three books. Of the Elements of Speech, addressed to Nicias, one book. Of the Relative Term, one book. Third series: Against Those who reject Division, two books. On Ambiguous Forms of Speech, addressed to Apollas, four books. On Figurative Ambiguities, one book. Of Ambiguity in the Moods of the Hypothetical Syllogism, two books. A Reply to the Work of Panthoides on Ambiguities, two books. Introduction to the Study of Ambiguities, five books. Epitome of the Work on Ambiguities, addressed to Epicrates, one book. Materials collected for the Introduction to the Study of Ambiguities, two books. IV. Logic as concerned with syllogisms and moods. First series: Handbook of Arguments and Moods, addressed to Dioscurides, five books.

§ 7.194 Of Syllogisms, three books. Of the Construction of Moods, addressed to Stesagoras, two books. Comparison of the Judgements expressed in the Moods, one book. Of Reciprocal and Hypothetical Syllogisms, one book. To Agathon, or Of the Problems that remain, one book. On the Question what Premisses are capable of demonstrating a given Conclusion with the Aid of one or more Subsidiary Premisses, one book. Of Inferences, addressed to Aristagoras, one book. How the same Syllogism may be drawn up in several Moods, one book. Reply to the Objections brought against drawing out the same Argument syllogistically and without a Syllogism, two books. Reply to the Objections against the Analyses of Syllogisms, three books. Reply to Philo's Work on Moods, addressed to Timostratus, one book. Collected Logical Writings, addressed to Timocrates and Philomathes: a Criticism of their Works on Moods and Syllogisms, one book.

§ 7.195 Second series: On Conclusive Arguments, addressed to Zeno, one book. On the Primary Indemonstrable Syllogisms, addressed to Zeno, one book. On the Analysis of Syllogisms, one book. Of Redundant Arguments, addressed to Pasylus, two books. Of the Rules for Syllogisms, one book. Of Introductory or Elementary Syllogisms, addressed to Zeno, one book. Of the Introductory Moods, addressed to Zeno, three books. Of the Syllogisms under False Figures, five books. Syllogistic Arguments by Resolution in Indemonstrable Arguments, one book. Inquiries into the Moods: addressed to Zeno and Philomathes, one book. (This appears to be spurious.) Third series: On Variable Arguments, addressed to Athenades, one book. (This also is spurious.)

§ 7.196 Variable Arguments concerning the Mean, three books. (Spurious.) A Reply to Ameinias' “Disjunctive Syllogisms,” one book. Fourth series: On Hypotheses, addressed to Meleager, three books. Hypothetical Syllogisms upon the Laws, again addressed to Meleager, one book. Hypothetical Syllogisms to serve as Introduction, two books. Hypothetical Syllogisms consisting of Theorems, two books. Solutions of the Hypothetical Arguments of Hedylus, two books. Solutions of the Hypothetical Arguments of Alexander, three books. (Spurious.) On Explanatory Symbols, addressed to Laodamas, one book. Fifth series: Introduction to the Lying Argument, addressed to Aristocreon, one book. Arguments of the Lying Type, to serve as Introduction, one book. Of the Lying Argument, addressed to Aristocreon, six books. Sixth series: Reply to those who hold that Propositions may be at once False and True, one book.

§ 7.197 To those who solve the Lying by dissecting it, addressed to Aristocreon, two books. Proofs showing that Indefinite Arguments ought not to be dissected, one book. Reply to Objections urged against those who condemn the Dissection of Indefinite Arguments, addressed to Pasylus, three books. Solution in the Style of the Ancients, addressed to Dioscurides, one book. On the Solution of the Mentiens, addressed to Aristocreon, three books. Solutions of the Hypothetical Arguments of Hedylus, addressed to Aristocreon and Apollas, one book. Seventh series: To those who maintain that the Premisses of the Mentiens are false, one book. Of the Sceptic who denies, addressed to Aristocreon, two books. Negative Arguments, to serve as Logical Exercises, one book. Of the Argument from Small Increments, addressed to Stesagoras, two books. Of the Arguments affecting Ordinary Suppositions and on those who are Inactive or Silent, addressed to Onetor, two books.

§ 7.198 Of the Fallacy of “the Veiled Person,” addressed to Aristobulus, two books. On the Pu7le of “the Man who escapes Detection,” addressed to Athenades, one book. Eighth series: Of the “Nobody” Pu7le, addressed to Menecrates, eight books. Of the Arguments derived from the Indeterminate and the Determined, addressed to Pasylus, two books. Of the “Nobody” Argument, addressed to Epicrates, one book. Ninth series: Of Sophisms, addressed to Heraclides and Pollis, two books. Of Dialectical Puzzles, addressed to Dioscurides, five books. Reply to the Method of Arcesilaus, dedicated to Sphaerus, one book. Tenth series: Attack upon Common Sense, addressed to Metrodorus, six books. Defence of Common Sense, addressed to Gorgippides, seven books. V. Under Logic. Thirty-nine investigations outside the range of the four above-mentioned main divisions dealing with isolated logical investigations not included in separate wholes of the subjects enumerated. The total of the logical writings is three hundred and eleven.

§ 7.199 [1] Ethics dealing with the classification of ethical conceptions. First series: Outline of Ethical Theory, addressed to Theoporos, one book. Ethical Theses, one book. Probable Premisses for Ethical Doctrines, addressed to Philomathes, three books. Definitions of the Good or Virtuous, addressed to Metrodorus, two books. Definitions of the Bad or Vicious, addressed to Metrodorus, two books. Definitions of the Morally Intermediate, addressed to Metrodorus, two books. Definitions of the Generic Notions [in Ethics], addressed to Metrodorus, seven books. Definitions concerned with other Branches of Science, addressed to Metrodorus, two books. Second series: Of Similes, addressed to Aristocles, three books. Of Definitions, addressed to Metrodorus, seven books. Third series: Of the Objections wrongly urged against the Definitions, addressed to Laodamas, seven books.

§ 7.200 Probabilities in Support of the Definitions, addressed to Dioscurides, two books. Of Species and Genera, addressed to Gorgippides, two books. Of Classifications, one book. Of Contraries, addressed to Dionysius, two books. Probable Arguments relative to the Classifications, Genera and Species, and the Treatment of Contraries, one book. Fourth series: Of Etymological Matters, addressed to Diocles, seven books. Points of Etymology, addressed to Diocles, four books. Fifth series: Of Proverbs, addressed to Zenodotus, two books. Of Poems, addressed to Philomathes, one book. On the Right Way of reading Poetry, two books. A Reply to Critics, addressed to Diodorus, one book.

§ 7.201 [2] Ethics dealing with the common view and the sciences and virtues thence arising. First series: Against the Touching up of Paintings, addressed to Timonax, one book. How it is we name each Thing and form a Conception of it, one book. Of Conceptions, addressed to Laodamas, two books. Of Opinion or Assumption, addressed to Pythonax, three books. Proofs that the Wise Man will not hold Opinions, one book. Of Apprehension, of Knowledge and of Ignorance, four books. Of Reason, two books. Of the Use of Reason, addressed to Leptines. Second series: That the Ancients rightly admitted Dialectic as well as Demonstration, addressed to Zeno, two books.

§ 7.202 Of Dialectic, addressed to Aristocreon, four books. Of the Objections urged against the Dialecticians, three books. Of Rhetoric, addressed to Dioscurides, four books. Third series: Of formed State, or Habit, of Mind, addressed to Cleon, three books. Of Art and the Inartistic, addressed to Aristocreon, four books. Of the Difference between the Virtues, addressed to Diodorus, four books. A Reply to Critics, addressed to Diodorus, one book. Of the Characters of the several Virtues, one book. Of Virtues, addressed to Pollis, two books. Ethics, dealing with things good and evil. First series: Of the Good or Morally Beautiful and Pleasure, addressed to Aristocreon, ten books. Proofs that Pleasure is not the End-in-chief of Action, four books. Proofs that Pleasure is not a Good, four books. Of the Arguments commonly used on Behalf of [ Pleasure ].

§ 8.1 BOOK 8: 1. PYTHAGORAS Pythagoras Having now completed our account of the philosophy of Ionia starting with Thales, as well as of its chief representatives, let us proceed to examine the philosophy of Italy, which was started by Pythagoras, son of the gem-engraver Mnesarchus, and according to Hermippus, a Samian, or, according to Aristoxenus, a Tyrrhenian from one of those islands which the Athenians held after clearing them of their Tyrrhenian inhabitants. Some indeed say that he was descended through Euthyphro, Hippasus and Marmacus from Cleonymus, who was exiled from Phlius, and that, as Marmacus lived in Samos, so Pythagoras was called a Samian.

§ 8.2 From Samos he went, it is said, to Lesbos with an introduction to Pherecydes from his uncle Zoilus. He had three silver flagons made and took them as presents to each of the priests of Egypt. He had brothers, of whom Eunomus was the elder and Tyrrhenus the second; he also had a slave, Zamolxis, who is worshipped, so says Herodotus, by the Getans, as Cronos. He was a pupil, as already stated, of Pherecydes of Syros, after whose death he went to Samos to be the pupil of Hermodamas, Creophylus's descendant, a man already advanced in years. While still young, so eager was he for knowledge, he left his own country and had himself initiated into all the mysteries and rites not only of Greece but also of foreign countries.

§ 8.3 Now he was in Egypt when Polycrates sent him a letter of introduction to Amasis; he learnt the Egyptian language, so we learn from Antiphon in his book On Men of Outstanding Merit, and he also journeyed among the Chaldaeans and Magi. Then while in Crete he went down into the cave of Ida with Epimenides; he also entered the Egyptian sanctuaries, and was told their secret lore concerning the gods. After that he returned to Samos to find his country under the tyranny of Polycrates; so he sailed away to Croton in Italy, and there he laid down a constitution for the Italian Greeks, and he and his followers were held in great estimation; for, being nearly three hundred in number, so well did they govern the state that its constitution was in effect a true aristocracy (government by the best).

§ 8.4 This is what Heraclides of Pontus tells us he used to say about himself: that he had once been Aethalides and was accounted to be Hermes' son, and Hermes told him he might choose any gift he liked except immortality; so he asked to retain through life and through death a memory of his experiences. Hence in life he could recall everything, and when he died he still kept the same memories. Afterwards in course of time his soul entered into Euphorbus and he was wounded by Menelaus. Now Euphorbus used to say that he had once been Aethalides and obtained this gift from Hermes, and then he told of the wanderings of his soul, how it migrated hither and thither, into how many plants and animals it had come, and all that it underwent in Hades, and all that the other souls there have to endure.

§ 8.5 When Euphorbus died, his soul passed into Hermotimus, and he also, wishing to authenticate the story, went up to the temple of Apollo at Branchidae, where he identified the shield which Menelaus, on his voyage home from Troy, had dedicated to Apollo, so he said: the shield being now so rotten through and through that the ivory facing only was left. When Hermotimus died, he became Pyrrhus, a fisherman of Delos, and again he remembered everything, how he was first Aethalides, then Euphorbus, then Hermotimus, and then Pyrrhus. But when Pyrrhus died, he became Pythagoras, and still remembered all the facts mentioned.

§ 8.6 There are some who insist, absurdly enough, that Pythagoras left no writings whatever. At all events Heraclitus, the physicist, almost shouts in our ear, “ Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, practised inquiry beyond all other men, and in this selection of his writings made himself a wisdom of his own, showing much learning but poor workmanship.” The occasion of this remark was the opening words of Pythagoras's treatise On Nature, namely, “Nay, I swear by the air I breathe, I swear by the water I drink, I will never suffer censure on account of this work.” Pythagoras in fact wrote three books. On Education, On Statesmanship, and On Nature.

§ 8.7 But the book which passes as the work of Pythagoras is by Lysis of Tarentum, a Pythagorean, who fled to Thebes and taught Epaminondas. Heraclides, the son of Serapion, in his Epitome of Sotion, says that he also wrote a poem On the Universe, and secondly the Sacred Poem which begins: Young men, come reverence in quietude All these my words; thirdly On the Soul, fourthly Of Piety, fifthly Helothales the Father of Epicharmus of Cos, sixthly Croton, and other works as well. The same authority says that the poem On the Mysteries was written by Hippasus to defame Pythagoras, and that many others written by Aston of Croton were ascribed to Pythagoras.

§ 8.8 Aristoxenus says that Pythagoras got most of his moral doctrines from the Delphic priestess Themistoclea. According to Ion of Chios in his Triagmi he ascribed some poems of his own making to Orpheus. They further attribute to him the Scopiads which begins thus: Be not shameless, before any man. Sosicrates in his Successions of Philosophers says that, when Leon the tyrant of Phlius asked him who he was, he said, “A philosopher,” and that he compared life to the Great Games, where some went to compete for the prize and others went with wares to sell, but the best as spectators; for similarly, in life, some grow up with servile natures, greedy for fame and gain, but the philosopher seeks for truth. Thus much for this part of the subject.

§ 8.9 The contents in general of the aforesaid three treatises of Pythagoras are as follows. He forbids us to pray for ourselves, because we do not know what will help us. Drinking he calls, in a word, a snare, and he discountenances all excess, saying that no one should go beyond due proportion either in drinking or in eating. Of sexual indulgence, too, he says, “Keep to the winter for sexual pleasures, in summer abstain; they are less harmful in autumn and spring, but they are always harmful and not conducive to health.” Asked once when a man should consort with a woman, he replied, “When you want to lose what strength you have.”

§ 8.10 He divides man's life into four quarters thus: “Twenty years a boy, twenty years a youth, twenty years a young man, twenty years an old man; and these four periods correspond to the four seasons, the boy to spring, the youth to summer, the young man to autumn, and the old man to winter,” meaning by youth one not yet grown up and by a young man a man of mature age. According to Timaeus, he was the first to say, “Friends have all things in common” and “Friendship is equality”; indeed, his disciples did put all their possessions into one common stock. For five whole years they had to keep silence, merely listening to his discourses without seeing him, until they passed an examination, and thenceforward they were admitted to his house and allowed to see him. They would never use coffins of cypress, because the sceptre of Zeus was made from it, so we are informed by Hermippus in his second book On Pythagoras.

§ 8.11 Indeed, his bearing is said to have been most dignified, and his disciples held the opinion about him that he was Apollo come down from the far north. There is a story that once, when he was disrobed, his thigh was seen to be of gold; and when he crossed the river Nessus, quite a number of people said they heard it welcome him. According to Timaeus in the tenth book of his History, he remarked that the consorts of men bore divine names, being called first Virgins, then Brides, and then Mothers. He it was who brought geometry to perfection, while it was Moeris who first discovered the beginnings of the elements of geometry: Anticlides in his second book On Alexander affirms this,

§ 8.12 and further that Pythagoras spent most of his time upon the arithmetical aspect of geometry; he also discovered the musical intervals on the monochord. Nor did he neglect even medicine. We are told by Apollodorus the calculator that he offered a sacrifice of oxen on finding that in a right-angled triangle the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the squares on the sides containing the right angle. And there is an epigram running as follows: What time Pythagoras that famed figure found, For which the noble offering he brought. He is also said to have been the first to diet athletes on meat, trying first with Eurymenes – so we learn from Favorinus in the third book of his Memorabilia – whereas in former times they had trained on dried figs, on butter, and even on wheatmeal, as we are told by the same Favorinus in the eighth book of his Miscellaneous History.

§ 8.13 Some say it was a certain trainer named Pythagoras who instituted this diet, and not our Pythagoras, who forbade even the killing, let alone the eating, of animals which share with us the privilege of having a soul. This was the excuse put forward; but his real reason for forbidding animal diet was to practise people and accustom them to simplicity of life, so that they could live on things easily procurable, spreading their tables with uncooked foods and drinking pure water only, for this was the way to a healthy body and a keen mind. Of course the only altar at which he worshipped was that of Apollo the Giver of Life, behind the Altar of Horns at Delos, for thereon were placed flour and meal and cakes, without the use of fire, and there was no animal victim, as we are told by Aristotle in his Constitution of Delos.

§ 8.14 He was the first, they say, to declare that the soul, bound now in this creature, now in that, thus goes on a round ordained of necessity. He too, according to Aristoxenus the musician, was the first to introduce weights and measures into Greece. It was he who first declared that the Evening and Morning Stars are the same, as Parmenides maintains. So greatly was he admired that his disciples used to be called “prophets to declare the voice of God,” besides which he himself says in a written work that “after two hundred and seven years in Hades he has returned to the land of the living.” Thus it was that they remained his staunch adherents, and men came to hear his words from afar, among them Lucanians, Peucetians, Messapians and Romans.

§ 8.15 Down to the time of Philolaus it was not possible to acquire knowledge of any Pythagorean doctrine, and Philolaus alone brought out those three celebrated books which Plato sent a hundred minas to purchase. Not less than six hundred persons went to his evening lectures; and those who were privileged to see him wrote to their friends congratulating themselves on a great piece of good fortune. Moreover, the Metapontines named his house the Temple of Demeter and his porch the Museum, so we learn from Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History. And the rest of the Pythagoreans used to say that not all his doctrines were for all men to hear, our authority for this being Aristoxenus in the tenth book of his Rules of Pedagogy,

§ 8.16 where we are also told that one of the school, Xenophilus by name, asked by some one how he could best educate his son, replied, “By making him the citizen of a well-governed state.” Throughout Italy Pythagoras made many into good men and true, men too of note like the lawgivers Zaleucus and Charondas; for he had a great gift for friendship, and especially, when he found his own watchwords adopted by anyone, he would immediately take to that man and make a friend of him.

§ 8.17 The following were his watchwords or precepts: don't stir the fire with a knife, don't step over the beam of a balance, don't sit down on your bushel, don't eat your heart, don't help a man off with a load but help him on, always roll your bed-clothes up, don't put God's image on the circle of a ring, don't leave the pan's imprint on the ashes, don't wipe up a mess with a torch, don't commit a nuisance towards the sun, don't walk the highway, don't shake hands too eagerly, don't have swallows under your own roof, don't keep birds with hooked claws, don't make water on nor stand upon your nail-and hair-trimmings, turn the sharp blade away, when you go abroad don't turn round at the frontier.

§ 8.18 This is what they meant. Don't stir the fire with a knife: don't stir the passions or the swelling pride of the great. Don't step over the beam of a balance: don't overstep the bounds of equity and justice. Don't sit down on your bushel: have the same care of to-day and the future, a bushel being the day's ration. By not eating your heart he meant not wasting your life in troubles and pains. By saying do not turn round when you go abroad, he meant to advise those who are departing this life not to set their hearts' desire on living nor to be too much attracted by the pleasures of this life. The explanations of the rest are similar and would take too long to set out.

§ 8.19 Above all, he forbade as food red mullet and blacktail, and he enjoined abstinence from the hearts of animals and from beans, and sometimes, according to Aristotle, even from paunch and gurnard. Some say that he contented himself with just some honey or a honeycomb or bread, never touching wine in the daytime, and with greens boiled or raw for dainties, and fish but rarely. His robe was white and spotless, his quilts of white wool, for linen had not yet reached those parts.

§ 8.20 He was never known to over-eat, to behave loosely, or to be drunk. He would avoid laughter and all pandering to tastes such as insulting jests and vulgar tales. He would punish neither slave nor free man in anger. Admonition he used to call “setting right.” He used to practise divination by sounds or voices and by auguries, never by burnt-offerings, beyond frankincense. The offerings he made were always inanimate; though some say that he would offer cocks, sucking goats and porkers, as they are called, but lambs never. However, Aristoxenus has it that he consented to the eating of all other animals, and only abstained from ploughing oxen and rams.

§ 8.21 The same authority, as we have seen, asserts that Pythagoras took his doctrines from the Delphic priestess Themistoclea. Hieronymus, however, says that, when he had descended into Hades, he saw the soul of Hesiod bound fast to a brazen pillar and gibbering, and the soul of Homer hung on a tree with serpents writhing about it, this being their punishment for what they had said about the gods; he also saw under torture those who would not remain faithful to their wives. This, says our authority, is why he was honoured by the people of Croton. Aristippus of Cyrene affirms in his work On the Physicists that he was named Pythagoras because he uttered the truth as infallibly as did the Pythian oracle.

§ 8.22 He is said to have advised his disciples as follows: Always to say on entering their own doors: Where did I trespass? What did I achieve? And unfulfilled what duties did I leave? Not to let victims be brought for sacrifice to the gods, and to worship only at the altar unstained with blood. Not to call the gods to witness, man's duty being rather to strive to make his own word carry conviction. To honour their elders, on the principle that precedence in time gives a greater title to respect; for as in the world sunrise comes before sunset, so in human life the beginning before the end, and in all organic life birth precedes death.

§ 8.23 And he further bade them to honour gods before demi-gods, heroes before men, and first among men their parents; and so to behave one to another as not to make friends into enemies, but to turn enemies into friends. To deem nothing their own. To support the law, to wage war on lawlessness. Never to kill or injure trees that are not wild, nor even any animal that does not injure man. That it is seemly and advisable neither to give way to unbridled laughter nor to wear sullen looks. To avoid excess of flesh, on a journey to let exertion and slackening alternate, to train the memory, in wrath to restrain hand and tongue,

§ 8.24 to respect all divination, to sing to the lyre and by hymns to show due gratitude to gods and to good men. To abstain from beans because they are flatulent and partake most of the breath of life; and besides, it is better for the stomach if they are not taken, and this again will make our dreams in sleep smooth and untroubled. Alexander in his Successions of Philosophers says that he found in the Pythagorean memoirs the following tenets as well.

§ 8.25 The principle of all things is the monad or unit; arising from this monad the undefined dyad or two serves as material substratum to the monad, which is cause; from the monad and the undefined dyad spring numbers; from numbers, points; from points, lines; from lines, plane figures; from plane figures, solid figures; from solid figures, sensible bodies, the elements of which are four, fire, water, earth and air; these elements interchange and turn into one another completely, and combine to produce a universe animate, intelligent, spherical, with the earth at its centre, the earth itself too being spherical and inhabited round about. There are also antipodes, and our “down” is their “up.”

§ 8.26 Light and darkness have equal part in the universe, so have hot and cold, and dry and moist; and of these, if hot preponderates, we have summer; if cold, winter; if dry, spring; if moist, late autumn. If all are in equilibrium, we have the best periods of the year, of which the freshness of spring constitutes the healthy season, and the decay of late autumn the unhealthy. So too, in the day, freshness belongs to the morning, and decay to the evening, which is therefore more unhealthy. The air about the earth is stagnant and unwholesome, and all within it is mortal; but the uppermost air is ever-moved and pure and healthy, and all within it is immortal and consequently divine.

§ 8.27 The sun, the moon, and the other stars are gods; for, in them, there is a preponderance of heat, and heat is the cause of life. The moon is illumined by the sun. Gods and men are akin, inasmuch as man partakes of heat; therefore God takes thought for man. Fate is the cause of things being thus ordered both as a whole and separately. The sun's ray penetrates through the aether, whether cold or dense – the air they call cold aether, and the sea and moisture dense aether – and this ray descends even to the depths and for this reason quickens all things.

§ 8.28 All things live which partake of heat – this is why plants are living things – but all have not soul, which is a detached part of aether, partly the hot and partly the cold, for it partakes of cold aether too. Soul is distinct from life; it is immortal, since that from which it is detached is immortal. Living creatures are reproduced from one another by germination; there is no such thing as spontaneous generation from earth. The germ is a clot of brain containing hot vapour within it; and this, when brought to the womb, throws out, from the brain, ichor, fluid and blood, whence are formed flesh, sinews, bones, hairs, and the whole of the body, while soul and sense come from the vapour within.

§ 8.29 First congealing in about forty days, it receives form and, according to the ratios of “harmony,” in seven, nine, or at the most ten, months, the mature child is brought forth. It has in it all the relations constituting life, and these, forming a continuous series, keep it together according to the ratios of harmony, each appearing at regulated intervals. Sense generally, and sight in particular, is a certain unusually hot vapour. This is why it is said to see through air and water, because the hot aether is resisted by the cold; for, if the vapour in the eyes had been cold, it would have been dissipated on meeting the air, its like. As it is, in certain [lines] he calls the eyes the portals of the sun. His conclusion is the same with regard to hearing and the other senses.

§ 8.30 The soul of man, he says, is divided into three parts, intelligence, reason, and passion. Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals as well, but reason by man alone. The seat of the soul extends from the heart to the brain; the part of it which is in the heart is passion, while the parts located in the brain are reason and intelligence. The senses are distillations from these. Reason is immortal, all else mortal. The soul draws nourishment from the blood; the faculties of the soul are winds, for they as well as the soul are invisible, just as the aether is invisible.

§ 8.31 The veins, arteries, and sinews are the bonds of the soul. But when it is strong and settled down into itself, reasonings and deeds become its bonds. When cast out upon the earth, it wanders in the air like the body. Hermes is the steward of souls, and for that reason is called Hermes the Escorter, Hermes the Keeper of the Gate, and Hermes of the Underworld, since it is he who brings in the souls from their bodies both by land and sea; and the pure are taken into the uppermost region, but the impure are not permitted to approach the pure or each other, but are bound by the Furies in bonds unbreakable.

§ 8.32 The whole air is full of souls which are called genii or heroes; these are they who send men dreams and signs of future disease and health, and not to men alone, but to sheep also and cattle as well; and it is to them that purifications and lustrations, all divination, omens and the like, have reference. The most momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or to evil. Blest are the men who acquire a good soul; they can never be at rest, nor ever keep the same course two days together.

§ 8.33 Right has the force of an oath, and that is why Zeus is called the God of Oaths. Virtue is harmony, and so are health and all good and God himself; this is why they say that all things are constructed according to the laws of harmony. The love of friends is just concord and equality. We should not pay equal worship to gods and heroes, but to the gods always, with reverent silence, in white robes, and after purification, to the heroes only from midday onwards. Purification is by cleansing, baptism and lustration, and by keeping clean from all deaths and births and all pollution, and abstaining from meat and flesh of animals that have died, mullets, gurnards, eggs and egg-sprung animals, beans, and the other abstinences prescribed by those who perform rites in the sanctuaries.

§ 8.34 According to Aristotle in his work On the Pythagoreans, Pythagoras counselled abstinence from beans either because they are like the genitals, or because they are like the gates of Hades... as being alone unjointed, or because they are injurious, or because they are like the form of the universe, or because they belong to oligarchy, since they are used in election by lot. He bade his disciples not to pick up fallen crumbs, either in order to accustom them not to eat immoderately, or because connected with a person's death; nay, even, according to Aristophanes, crumbs belong to the heroes, for in his Heroes he says: Nor taste ye of what falls beneath the board! Another of his precepts was not to eat white cocks, as being sacred to the Month and wearing suppliant garb – now supplication ranked with things good – sacred to the Month because they announce the time of day; and again white represents the nature of the good, black the nature of evil. Not to touch such fish as were sacred; for it is not right that gods and men should be allotted the same things, any more than free men and slaves.

§ 8.35 Not to break bread; for once friends used to meet over one loaf, as the barbarians do even to this day; and you should not divide bread which brings them together; some give as the explanation of this that it has reference to the judgement of the dead in Hades, others that bread makes cowards in war, others again that it is from it that the whole world begins. He held that the most beautiful figure is the sphere among solids, and the circle among plane figures. Old age may be compared to everything that is decreasing, while youth is one with increase. Health means retention of the form, disease its destruction. Of salt he said it should be brought to table to remind us of what is right; for salt preserves whatever it finds, and it arises from the purest sources, sun and sea.

§ 8.36 This is what Alexander says that he found in the Pythagorean memoirs. What follows is Aristotle's. But Pythagoras's great dignity not even Timon overlooked, who, although he digs at him in his Silli, speaks of Pythagoras, inclined to witching works and ways, Man-snarer, fond of noble periphrase. Xenophanes confirms the statement about his having been different people at different times in the elegiacs beginning: Now other thoughts, another path, I show. What he says of him is as follows: They say that, passing a belaboured whelp, He, full of pity, spake these words of dole: “Stay, smite not!'Tis a friend, a human soul; I knew him straight whenas I heard him yelp!”

§ 8.37 Thus Xenophanes. But Cratinus also lampooned him both in the Pythagorizing Woman and also in The Tarentines, where we read: They are wont, If haply they a foreigner do find, To hold a cross-examination Of doctrines' worth, to trouble and confound him With terms, equations, and antitheses Brain-bung'd with magnitudes and periphrases. Again, Mnesimachus in the Alcmaeon: To Loxias we sacrifice: Pythagoras his rite, Of nothing that is animate we ever take a bite.

§ 8.38 And Aristophon in the Pythagorist: a. He told how he travelled in Hades and looked on the dwellers below, How each of them lives, but how different by far from the lives of the dead Were the lives of the Pythagoreans, for these alone, so he said, Were suffered to dine with King Pluto, which was for their piety's sake. b. What an ill-tempered god for whom such swine, such creatures good company make; and in the same later: Their food is just greens, and to wet it pure water is all that they drink; And the want of a bath, and the vermin, and their old threadbare coats so do stink That none of the rest will come near them.

§ 8.39 Pythagoras met his death in this wise. As he sat one day among his acquaintances at the house of Milo, it chanced that the house was set ablaze out of jealousy by one of the people who were not accounted worthy of admittance to his presence, though some say it was the work of the inhabitants of Croton anxious to safeguard themselves against the setting-up of a tyranny. Pythagoras was caught as he tried to escape; he got as far as a certain field of beans, where he stopped, saying he would be captured rather than cross it, and be killed rather than prate about his doctrines; and so his pursuers cut his throat. So also were murdered more than half of his disciples, to the number of forty or thereabouts; but a very few escaped, including Archippus of Tarentum and Lysis, already mentioned.

§ 8.40 Dicaearchus, however, says that Pythagoras died a fugitive in the sanctuary of the Muses at Metapontum after forty days' starvation. Heraclides, in his Epitome of the Lives of Satyrus, says that, after burying Pherecydes at Delos, he returned to Italy and, when he found Cylon of Croton giving a luxurious banquet to all and sundry, retired to Metapontum to end his days there by starvation, having no wish to live longer. On the other hand, Hermippus relates that, when the men of Agrigentum and Syracuse were at war, Pythagoras and his disciples went out and fought in the van of the army of the Agrigentines, and, their line being turned, he was killed by the Syracusans as he was trying to avoid the beanfield; the rest, about thirty-five in number, were burned at the stake in Tarentum for trying to set up a government in opposition to those in power.

§ 8.41 Hermippus gives another anecdote. Pythagoras, on coming to Italy, made a subterranean dwelling and enjoined on his mother to mark and record all that passed, and at what hour, and to send her notes down to him until he should ascend. She did so. Pythagoras some time afterwards came up withered and looking like a skeleton, then went into the assembly and declared he had been down to Hades, and even read out his experiences to them. They were so affected that they wept and wailed and looked upon him as divine, going so far as to send their wives to him in hopes that they would learn some of his doctrines; and so they were called Pythagorean women. Thus far Hermippus.

§ 8.42 Pythagoras had a wife, Theano by name, daughter of Brontinus of Croton, though some call her Brontinus's wife and Pythagoras's pupil. He had a daughter Damo, according to the letter of Lysis to Hippasus, which says of him, “I am told by many that you discourse publicly, a thing which Pythagoras deemed unworthy, for certain it is that, when he entrusted his daughter Damo with the custody of his memoirs, he solemnly charged her never to give them to anyone outside his house. And, although she could have sold the writings for a large sum of money, she would not, but reckoned poverty and her father's solemn injunctions more precious than gold, for all that she was a woman.”

§ 8.43 They also had a son Telauges, who succeeded his father and, according to some, was Empedocles' instructor. At all events Hippobotus makes Empedocles say: Telauges, famed Son of Theano and Pythagoras. Telauges wrote nothing, so far as we know, but his mother Theano wrote a few things. Further, a story is told that being asked how many days it was before a woman becomes pure after intercourse, she replied, “With her own husband at once, with another man never.” And she advised a woman going in to her own husband to put off her shame with her clothes, and on leaving him to put it on again along with them. Asked “Put on what?” she replied, “What makes me to be called a woman.”

§ 8.44 To return to Pythagoras. According to Heraclides, the son of Serapion, he was eighty years old when he died, and this agrees with his own description of the life of man, though most authorities say he was ninety. And there are jesting lines of my own upon him as follows: Not thou alone from all things animate Didst keep, Pythagoras. All food is dead When boil'd and bak'd and salt-besprinkle-d; For then it surely is inanimate. Again: So wise was wise Pythagoras that he Would touch no meats, but called it impious, Bade others eat. Good wisdom: not for us To do the wrong; let others impious be.

§ 8.45 And again: If thou wouldst know the mind of old Pythagoras, Look on Euphorbus' buckler and its boss. He says “I've lived before.” If, when he says he was, He was not, he was no-one when he was. And again, of the manner of his death: Woe! Woe! Whence, Pythagoras, this deep reverence for beans? Why did he fall in the midst of his disciples? A bean-field there was he durst not cross; sooner than trample on it, he endured to be slain at the cross-roads by the men of Acragas. He flourished in the 60th Olympiad and his school lasted until the ninth or tenth generation.

§ 8.46 For the last of the Pythagoreans, whom Aristoxenus in his time saw, were Xenophilus from the Thracian Chalcidice, Phanton of Phlius, and Echecrates, Diocles and Polymnastus, also of Phlius, who were pupils of Philolaus and Eurytus of Tarentum. There were four men of the name of Pythagoras living about the same time and at no great distance from one another: (1) of Croton, a man with tyrannical leanings; (2) of Phlius, an athlete, some say a trainer; (3) of Zacynthus; (4) our subject, who discovered the secrets of philosophy, and to whom was applied the phrase, “The Master said” (Ipse dixit), which passed into a proverb of ordinary life.

§ 8.47 Some say there was also another Pythagoras, a sculptor of Rhegium, who is thought to have been the first to aim at rhythm and symmetry; another a sculptor of Samos; another a bad orator; another a doctor who wrote on hernia and also compiled some things about Homer; and yet another who, so we are told by Dionysius, wrote a history of the Dorian race. Eratosthenes says, according to what we learn from Favorinus in the eighth book of his Miscellaneous History, that the last-named was the first to box scientifically, in the 48th Olympiad, keeping his hair long and wearing a purple robe; and that when he was excluded with ridicule from the boys' contest, he went at once to the men's and won that;

§ 8.48 this is declared by Theaetetus's epigram: Know'st one Pythagoras, long-haired Pythagoras, The far-famed boxer of the Samians? I am Pythagoras; ask the Elians What were my feats, thou'lt not believe the tale. Favorinus says that our philosopher used definitions throughout the subject matter of mathematics; their use was extended by Socrates and his disciples, and afterwards by Aristotle and the Stoics. Further, we are told that he was the first to call the heaven the universe and the earth spherical, though Theophrastus says it was Parmenides, and Zeno that it was Hesiod.

§ 8.49 It is said that Cylon was a rival of Pythagoras, as Antilochus was of Socrates. Pythagoras the athlete was also the subject of another epigram as follows: Gone to box with other lads Is the lad Pythagoras, Gone to the games Olympian Crates' son the Samian. The philosopher also wrote the following letter: Pythagoras to Anaximenes. “Even you, O most excellent of men, were you no better born and famed than Pythagoras, would have risen and departed from Miletus. But now your ancestral glory has detained you as it had detained me were I Anaximenes's peer. But if you, the best men, abandon your cities, then will their good order perish, and the peril from the Medes will increase.

§ 8.50 For always to scan the heavens is not well, but more seemly is it to be provident for one's mother country. For I too am not altogether in my discourses but am found no less in the wars which the Italians wage with one another.” Having now finished our account of Pythagoras, we have next to speak of the noteworthy Pythagoreans; after them will come the philosophers whom some denominate “sporadic” [i.e. belonging to no particular school]; and then, in the next place, we will append the succession of all those worthy of notice as far as Epicurus, in the way that we promised. We have already treated of Theano and Telauges: so now we have first to speak of Empedocles, for some say he was a pupil of Pythagoras.

§ 8.51 2. EMPEDOCLES Empedocles was, according to Hippobotus, the son of Meton and grandson of Empedocles, and was a native of Agrigentum. This is confirmed by Timaeus in the fifteenth book of his Histories, and he adds that Empedocles, the poet's grandfather, had been a man of distinction. Hermippus also agrees with Timaeus. So, too, Heraclides, in his treatise On Diseases, says that he was of an illustrious family, his grandfather having kept racehorse s. Eratosthenes also in his Olympic Victories records, on the authority of Aristotle, that the father of Meton was a victor in the 71st Olympiad.

§ 8.52 The grammarian Apollodorus in his Chronology tells us that He was the son of Meton, and Glaucus says he went to Thurii, just then founded. Then farther on he adds: Those who relate that, being exiled from his home, he went to Syracuse and fought in their ranks against the Athenians seem, in my judgement at least, to be completely mistaken. For by that time either he was no longer living or in extreme old age, which is inconsistent with the story. For Aristotle and Heraclides both affirm that he died at the age of sixty. The victor with the riding-horse in the 71st Olympiad [496 BCE] was this man's namesake and grandfather, so that Apollodorus in one and the same passage indicates the date as well as the fact.

§ 8.53 But Satyrus in his Lives states that Empedocles was the son of Exaenetus and himself left a son named Exaenetus, and that in the same Olympiad Empedocles himself was victorious in the horse-race and his son in wrestling, or, as Heraclides in his Epitome has it, in the foot-race. I found in the Memorabilia of Favorinus a statement that Empedocles feasted the sacred envoys on a sacrificial ox made of honey and barley-meal, and that he had a brother named Callicratides. Telauges, the son of Pythagoras, in his letter to Philolaus calls Empedocles the son of Archinomus.