did not believe in transmigration at all, and Herodotos was deceived by the priests or the symbolism of the monuments.
Aristoxenos said that Pythagoras left Samos in order to escape from the tyranny of Polykrates.[1] It was at Kroton, a city which had long been in friendly relations with Samos and was famed for its athletes and its doctors,[2] that he founded his society. Timaios appears to have said that he came to Italy in 529 B.C. and remained at Kroton for twenty years. He died at Metapontion, whither he had retired when the Krotoniates rose in revolt against his authority.[3]
39.The Order. The Pythagorean Order was simply, in its origin, a religious fraternity, and not, as has been maintained, a political league.[4] Nor had it anything whatever to do with the "Dorian aristocratic ideal." Pythagoras was an Ionian, and the Order was originally confined to Achaian states.[5] Moreover the "Dorian aristocratic ideal" is a
- ↑ Porph. V. Pyth. 9 (R. P. 53 a).
- ↑ From what Herodotos tells us of Demokedes (iii. 131) we may infer that the medical school of Kroton was founded before the time of Pythagoras. The series of Olympian victories won by Krotoniates in the sixth century B.C. is remarkable.
- ↑ For a full discussion of the chronological problem, see Rostagni, op. cit. pp. 376 sqq. It seems clear that Timaios made the rising of Kylon take place just after the destruction of Sybaris (510 B.C.), with which he connected it. The statement that Pythagoras then retired to Metapontion is confirmed by Cicero, who speaks (De fin. v. 4) of the honours still paid to his memory in that city (R. P. 57 c). Aristoxenos (ap. Iambl. V. Pyth. 249) referred to the same thing (R. P. 57 c). Cf. also Andron, fr. 6 (F.H.G. ii. 347).
- ↑ Plato, Rep. x. 600 a 9, clearly implies that Pythagoras held no public office. The view that the Pythagorean sect was a political league, maintained in modern times by Krische (De societatis a Pythagora conditae scopo politico, 1830), goes back as Rohde has shown (loc. cit.), to Dikaiarchos, the champion of the "Practical Life," just as the view that it was primarily a scientific society goes back to the mathematician and musician Aristoxenos.
- ↑ The idea that the Pythagoreans represented the "Dorian ideal" dies very hard. In his Kulturhistorische Beiträge (Heft i. p. 59), Max C. P. Schmidt imagines that later writers call the founder of the sect Pythagoras instead of Pythagores, as he is called by Herakleitos and Demokritos, because he had become "a Dorian of the Dorians." The fact is simply that Πυθαγόρας is the Attic form of Πυθαγόρης, and is no more "Doric" than Ἀναξαγόρας. Even in the reign of Trajan, the Samians still knew that Πυθαγόρης was the correct spelling. Cf. the title vignette in Diels, Vors.
