1. Xenophanes, Fragments, None (6th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
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2. Xenophanes, Fragments, None (6th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
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3. Xenophanes, Fragments, None (6th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
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4. Empedocles, Fragments, None (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
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5. Plato, Laws, None (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
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6. Plato, Meno, None (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
| 81a. Men. Now does it seem to you to be a good argument, Socrates? Soc. It does not. Men. Can you explain how not? Soc. I can; for I have heard from wise men and women who told of things divine that— Men. What was it they said ? Soc. Something true, as I thought, and admirable. Men. What was it? And who were the speakers? Soc. They were certain priests and priestesses who have studied so as to be able to give a reasoned account of their ministry; and Pindar also |
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7. Aristoxenus, Fragments, 43 (4th cent. BCE - 3rd cent. BCE)
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8. Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library, 5.28.6 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 5.28.6. for the belief of Pythagoras prevails among them, that the souls of men are immortal and that after a prescribed number of years they commence upon a new life, the soul entering into another body. Consequently, we are told, at the funerals of their dead some cast letters upon the pyre which they have written to their deceased kinsmen, as if the dead would be able to read these letters. |
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9. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 8.6, 8.15, 8.34, 8.77 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
| 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. 8.15. 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 8.34. 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. 8.77. The sun he calls a vast collection of fire and larger than the moon; the moon, he says, is of the shape of a quoit, and the heaven itself crystalline. The soul, again, assumes all the various forms of animals and plants. At any rate he says:Before now I was born a boy and a maid, a bush and a bird, and a dumb fish leaping out of the sea.His poems On Nature and Purifications run to 5000 lines, his Discourse on Medicine to 600. of the tragedies we have spoken above. |
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10. Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, 31, 183 (3rd cent. CE - 4th cent. CE)
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11. Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras, 20-21, 30-31, 45, 18 (3rd cent. CE - 4th cent. CE)
| 18. When he reached Italy he stopped at Crotona. His presence was that of a free man, tall, graceful in speech and gesture, and in all things else. Dicaearchus relates that the arrival of this great traveler, endowed with all the advantages of nature, and prosperously guided by fortune, produced on the Crotonians so great an impression, that he won the esteem of the elder magistrates, by his many and excellent discourses. They ordered him to exhort the young men, and then to the boys who flocked out of the school to hear him; and lastly to the women, who came together on purpose. SPAN |
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12. Aristoxenus, Fragments, 43
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13. Heraclitus Lesbius, Fragments, None
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