fiction based on the Sokratic idealisation of Sparta and Crete. Corinth, Argos, and Syracuse are quite forgotten. Nor is there any evidence that the Pythagoreans favoured the aristocratic party.[1] The main purpose of the Order was the cultivation of holiness. In this respect it resembled an Orphic society, though Apollo, and not Dionysos, was the chief Pythagorean god. That is doubtless due to the connexion of Pythagoras with Delos, and explains why the Krotoniates identified him with Apollo Hyperboreios.[2]
40.Downfall of the Order. For a time the new Order succeeded in securing supreme power in the Achaian cities, but reaction soon came. Our accounts of these events are much confused by failure to distinguish between the revolt of Kylon in the lifetime of Pythagoras himself, and the later risings which led to the expulsion of the Pythagoreans from Italy. It is only if we keep these apart that we begin to see our way. Timaios appears to have connected the rising of Kylon closely with
- ↑ The only statement which might suggest that Pythagoras took the aristocratic side is the remark in Diogenes (viii. 3) ὥστε σχεδὸν εἶναι ἀριστοκρατίαν τὴν πολιτείαν. That may come from Timaios, but (as the adverb σχεδόν shows) it is not to be taken literally. The Pythagorean rule was no doubt an ἀριστοκρατία in the sense given to the word by Sokrates in Plato's Republic, but it was not based either on birth or on wealth, so that it was not an aristocracy in the common Greek sense of the word, and still less an oligarchy. It was more like the "Rule of the Saints." Kylon, the chief opponent of the Pythagoreans, is described by Aristoxenos (Iamb. V. Pyth. 248) as γένει καὶ δόξῃ καὶ πλούτῳ πρωτεύων τῶν πολιτῶν. Taras, later the chief seat of the Pythagoreans, was a democracy. (Cf. Strabo, vi. p. 280, ἴσχυσαν δέ ποτε οἱ Ταραντῖνοι καθ' ὑπερβολὴν πολιτευόμενοι δημοκρατικῶς . . . ἀπεδέξαντο δὲ καὶ τὴν Πυθαγόρειον φιλοσοφίαν κτλ. The truth is that, at this time, the new religion appealed to the people rather than the aristocracies, which were apt to be "free-thinking." Xenophanes, not Pythagoras, is their man.
- ↑ We have the authority of Aristotle, fr. 186. 1510 b 20, for this identification. The names of Abaris and Aristeas stand for a mystical movement parallel to the Orphic, but based on the worship of Apollo. The later tradition makes them predecessors of Pythagoras; and that this has some historical basis appears from Herod. iv. 13 sqq., and above all from the statement that Aristeas had a statue at Metapontion, where Pythagoras died. The connexion of Pythagoras with Salmoxis belongs to the same order of ideas. As the legend of the Hyperboreans is Delian, we see that the religion taught by Pythagoras was genuinely Ionian in its origin, and had nothing to do with Dionysos.
