(23) Pythagoras being asked, how a lover of wine might be cured of intoxication, answered, if he frequently surveys what his actions were when he was intoxicated. Stob. p. 165.

(389) generally, obedience to commanders and self-control in sensual pleasures? True. Then we shall approve such language as that of Diomede in Homer, ‘Friend, sit still and obey my word 17 ,’ and the verses which follow, ‘The Greeks marched breathing prowess 18 , … in silent awe of their leaders 19 ,’ and other sentiments of the same kind. We shall. What of this line, ‘O heavy with wine, who hast the eyes of a dog and the heart of a stag 20 ,’ and of the words which follow? Would you say that these, or any similar impertinences which private individuals are supposed to address to their rulers, whether in verse or prose, are well or ill spoken? They are ill spoken. They may very possibly afford some amusement, but they do not conduce to temperance. And therefore they are likely to do harm to our young men—you would agree with me there? Yes. And then, again, to make the wisest of men say that nothing in his opinion is more glorious than ‘When the tables are full of bread and meat, and the cup-bearer carries round wine which he draws from the bowl and pours into the cups 21 ,’ is it fit or conducive to temperance for a young man to hear such words? Or the verse ‘The saddest of fates is to die and meet destiny from hunger 22 ?’ What would you say again to the tale of Zeus, who, while other gods and men were asleep and he the only person

(8) It is likewise said, that the Pythagoreans frequently inquired and doubted why we accustom boys to take their food in an orderly and commensurate manner, and show them that order and symmetry are beautiful; but that the contraries to these, disorder and incommensuration, are base; and that he who is given to wine and is insatiable, is held in great disgrace. For if no one of these is useful to us when we have arrived at the age of virility, it was in vain that we were accustomed, when boys, to an order of this kind. And there is also the same reason concerning the other manners [to which we are accustomed when boys]. This, therefore, is not seen to happen in other animals which are disciplined by men; but immediately from the first, a whelp and a colt are accustomed to, and learn those things which it is requisite for them to do when they have arrived at the perfection of their nature.

And universally, it is said that the Pythagoreans exhorted both those they happened to meet, and their familiars, to avoid pleasure as a thing that required the greatest caution. For nothing so much deceives us, or precipitates us into error, as this passion. In short, as it seems, they contended that we should never do any thing with a view to pleasure as the end. For this scope is, for the most part, indecorous and noxious. But they asserted, that especially looking to the beautiful and decorous, we should do whatever is to be done. And that in the second place we should look to the advantageous and the useful. These things, however, require no casual judgment.

(5) That one then will fall into drinking much wine in debauchery. For wine is the debaucher. Therefore she does not remember her brothers and her father, for pleasure and sweet profits deceive her.

(368) Sons of an illustrious father, that was not a bad beginning of the Elegiac verses which the admirer of Glaucon made in honour of you after you had distinguished yourselves at the battle of MegaANSWER: — ‘Sons of Ariston,’ he sang, ‘divine offspring of an illustrious hero.’ The epithet is very appropriate, for there is something truly divine in being able to argue as you have done for the superiority of injustice, and remaining unconvinced by your own arguments. And I do believe that you are not convinced—this I infer from your general character, for had I judged only from your speeches I should have mistrusted you. But now, the greater my confidence in you, the greater is my difficulty in knowing what to say. For I am in a strait between two; on the one hand I feel that I am unequal to the task; and my inability is brought home to me by the fact that you were not satisfied with the answer which I made to Thrasymachus, proving, as I thought, the superiority which justice has over injustice. And yet I cannot refuse to help, while breath and speech remain to me; I am afraid that there would be an impiety in being present when justice is evil spoken of and not lifting up a hand in her defence. And therefore I had best give such help as I can. Glaucon and the rest entreated me by all means not to let the question drop, but to proceed in the investigation. They wanted to arrive at the truth, first, about the nature of justice and injustice, and secondly, about their relative advantages. I told them, what I really thought, that the enquiry would be of a serious nature, and would require very good eyes.

(1) At that time also, when he was journeying from Sybaris to Crotona, he met near the shore with some fishermen, who were then drawing their nets heavily laden with fishes from the deep, and told them he knew the exact number of the fish they had caught. But the fishermen promising they would perform whatever he should order them to do, if the event corresponded with his prediction, he ordered them, after they had accurately numbered the fish, to return them alive to the sea: and what is yet more wonderful, not one of the fish died while he stood on the shore, though they had been detained from the water a considerable time. Having therefore paid the fishermen the price of their fish, he departed for Crotona.

But they every where divulged the fact, and having learnt his name from some children, they told it to all men. Hence those that heard of this affair were desirous of seeing the stranger, and what they desired was easily obtained. But they were astonished on surveying his countenance, and conjectured him to be such a man as he was in reality. A few days also after this, he entered the Gymnasium, and being surrounded with a crowd of young men, he is said to have delivered an oration to them, in which he incited them to pay attention to their elders, evincing that in the world, in life, in cities, and in nature, that which has a precedency is more honorable than that which is consequent in time.

As for instance, that the east is more honorable than the west; the morning than the evening; the beginning than the end; and generation than corruption. In a similar manner he observed, that natives were more honorable than strangers, and the leaders of colonies than the builders of cities: and universally Gods than dæmons; dæmons than demigods; and heroes than men. Of these likewise he observed, that the authors of generation are more honorable than their progeny. He said these things, however, for the sake of proving by induction, that children should very much esteem their parents, to whom he asserted they owed as many thanks as a dead man would owe to him who should be able to bring him back again into light.

Afterwards, he observed, that it was indeed just to love those above all others, and never to give them pain, who first benefited us, and in the greatest degree. But parents alone benefit their children prior to their birth, and are the causes to their offspring of all their upright conduct; and that when children show themselves to be in no respect inferior to their parents in beneficence towards them, it is not possible for them in this respect to err. For it is reasonable to suppose, that the Gods will pardon those who honor their parent in no less a degree than the divinities themselves; since we learnt from our parents to honor divinity. Hence Homer also added the same appellation to the king of the Gods; for he denominates him the father of Gods and mortals.

Many other mythologists also have delivered to us, that the kings of the Gods have been ambitious to vindicate to themselves that excessive love which subsists through marriage, in children towards their parents. And that on this account, they have at the same time introduced the hypothesis of father and mother among the Gods, the former indeed generating Minerva, but the latter Vulcan, who are of a nature contrary to each other, in order that what is most remote may participate of friendship.

(2) “It is reported that you philosophize to every one you may happen to meet, and publicly, which Pythagoras did not think fit to do. And these things, indeed, O Hipparchus, you learnt with diligent assiduity, but you have not preserved them; having tasted, O excellent man, of Sicilian delicacies, which you ought not to have tasted a second time. If, therefore, you abandon these, I shall rejoice; but if not, you will be dead in my opinion. For it will be pious to call to mind the divine and human precepts of Pythagoras, and not to make the goods of wisdom common to those, who have not even in a dream their soul purified. For it is not lawful to extend to every casual person, things which were obtained with such great labors, and such diligent assiduity, nor to divulge the mysteries of the Eleusinian Goddesses to the profane.

For those who do either of these, are equally unjust and impious. But it will be well to consider what a great length of time we consumed in wiping away the stains which had insinuated themselves into our breasts, till, after the lapse of some years, we became fit recipients of the doctrines of Pythagoras. For as dyers previously purify garments, and then fix in the colors with which they wish them to be imbued, in order that the dye may not be washed away, and may never become evanescent; after the same manner also that divine man prepared the souls of those that were lovers of philosophy, so that they might not deceive him in any of those beautiful and good qualities which he hoped they would possess.

For he did not impart spurious doctrines, nor snares, in which most of the sophists, who are at leisure for no good purpose, entangle young men; but he possessed a scientific knowledge of things human and divine. These men, however, making his doctrine a pretext, perform many dreadful deeds, ensnaring youth not in a becoming nor yet in a casual way. Hence they render their auditors noxious and precipitate. For they infuse theorems and divine doctrines into confused and turbid manners. Just as if some one should pour pure and clear water into a deep well full of mud; for he would disturb the mud, and destroy the clear water. The same thing likewise takes place between those who teach and those who are taught after this manner.

For dense thickets and which are full of briars surround the intellect and heart of those who have not been purely initiated in disciplines, obscure the mild, tranquil, and reasoning power of the soul, and openly impede the intellective part from becoming increased and elevated. It is requisite likewise to call intemperance and avarice the mothers of these thickets; both which are naturally prolific. From intemperance, therefore, unlawful marriages, [unjust] desires, corruptions, intoxication, preternatural pleasures, and certain vehement appetites blossom forth, and which impel their possessors into profundities and precipices. For now desires have compelled some not to abstain either from their mothers or their daughters, and violating law, their country, city, and king, with their hands as it were bound behind them, they are violently dragged along like slaves to extreme destruction.

But from avarice germinate rapine, robbery, parricide, sacrilege, sorcery, and such other evils at are the sisters of these. In the first place, therefore, it is necessary to purify the woods in which these passions have fixed their abode, with fire and sword, and all the machines of disciplines; and having liberated the reasoning power from such mighty evils, we may then implant in and deliver to it something useful and good.” So great and so necessary was the attention which, according to Pythagoras, ought to be paid to disciplines prior to philosophy. He likewise ordained that a singular honor, and the most accurate investigation, should be given to the teaching and participation of his dogmas, as he judiciously examined the conceptions of those that came to him, by various documents, and ten thousand forms of scientific theory.

A certain noble, who lived under the Christian dispensation when wine was allowed, sent his servant to a monastery to fetch some wine. The servant went and bought the wine, and was returning with it, when he passed the house of a very austere and testy devotee. This devotee called out to him, "What have you got there?" The servant said, "Wine, belonging to such a noble." The devotee said, "What! does a follower of God indulge in wine? Followers of God should have naught to do with pleasure and drinking; for wine is a very Satan, and steals men's wits. Your wits are not too bright already, so you have no need to render them still duller by drink." In illustration of this, he told the story of one Ziayi Dalaq, a very tall man, who had a dwarfish brother. This brother one day received him very ungraciously, only half rising from his seat in answer to his salutation, and Ziayi Dalaq said to him, "You seem to think yourself so tall that it is necessary to clip off somewhat of your height." Finally the devotee broke the wine-jar with a stone, and the servant went and told his master. The noble was very wrathful at the presumption of the devotee in taking upon himself to prohibit wine, as condemned by the law of nature, when it had not been prohibited by the Gospel, and he took a thick stick and went to the devotee's house to chastise him. The devotee heard of his approach and hid himself under some wool, which belonged to the ropemakers of the village, He said to himself, "To tell an angry man of his faults one needs to have a face as hard as a mirror, which reflects his ugliness without fear or favor." Just so the Prince of Tirmid was once playing chess with a courtier, and being checkmated, got into a rage and threw the chessboard at his courtier's head. So before playing the next game the courtier protected his head by wrappings of felt. Then the neighbors of the devotee, hearing the noise, came out and interceded for him with the noble, telling him that the devotee was half-witted, and could not be held responsible for his actions; and moreover, that as he was a favorite of God, it was useless to attempt to slay him before his time, for the Prophet and other saints had been miraculously preserved in circumstances fatal to ordinary persons. The noble refused to be pacified; but the neighbors redoubled their entreaties, urging that he had so much pleasure in his sovereignty that he could well dispense with the pleasure of wine. The noble strenuously denied this, saying that no other pleasure of sovereignty, or what not, could compensate him for the loss of wine, which made him sway from side to side like the jessamine. The prophets themselves had rejected all other pleasures for that of spiritual intoxication, and he who has once embraced a living mistress will never put up with a dead one. The moral is, that spiritual pleasures, typified by wine, are not to be bartered away for earthly pleasures. The Prophet said, "The world is carrion, and they who seek it are dogs;" and the Koran says, "The present life is no other than a pastime and a sport; but the future mansion is life indeed."

(10) We however perceive that some things become immediately the cause of a great change in quality, as is evident in wine. For when it is drank abundantly, it makes men at first more cheerful, but afterwards more insane and indecorous. But men are ignorant of those things which do not exhibit a power of this kind; though every thing that is eaten is the cause of a certain peculiar disposition. Hence it requires great wisdom, to be able to know and perceive, what kind and what quantity of food ought to be used. This science, however, was at first unfolded by Apollo and Pæon; but afterwards by Esculapius and his followers.

(12) They likewise were of opinion that great providential attention should be paid by those who beget children, to the future progeny. The first, therefore, and the greatest care which should be taken by him who applies himself to the procreation of children is, that he lives temperately and healthfully, that he neither fills himself with food unseasonably, nor uses such aliments as may render the habits of the body worse than they were, and above all things, that he avoids intoxication. For they thought that depraved seed was produced from a bad, discordant, and turbid temperament. And universally they were of opinion, that none but an indolent and inconsiderate person would attempt to produce an animal, and lead it into existence, without providing with all possible diligence that its ingress into being and life might be most elegant and pleasing.

For those that are lovers of dogs, pay every possible attention to the generation of whelps, in order that they may be produced from such things as are proper, and when it is proper, and in such a way as is proper, and thus may become a good offspring. The same attention also is paid by those who are lovers of birds. And it is evident that others also who are studious about the procreation of generous animals, endeavour by all possible means, that the generation of them may not be in vain. It would be absurd therefore that men should pay no attention to their own offspring, but should both beget them casually and with perfect carelessness, and, after they are begotten, nourish and educate them with extreme negligence.

For this is the most powerful and most manifest cause of the vice and depravity of the greater part of mankind. For with the multitude the procreation of children is undertaken in a beastly and rash manner. And such were the assertions, and such the doctrine of these men, which they verified both in words and deeds, respecting temperance; these precepts having been originally received by them from Pythagoras himself, like certain oracles delivered by the Pythian Apollo.

(22) It is impossible that he can be free who is a slave to his passions. Pythagoras. Stob. 165.

Pythagoras said, that intoxication is the meditation of insanity. Stob. p. 165.

(569) that the father should be supported by the son? The father did not bring him into being, or settle him in life, in order that when his son became a man he should himself be the servant of his own servants and should support him and his rabble of slaves and companions; but that his son should protect him, and that by his help he might be emancipated from the government of the rich and aristocratic, as they are termed. And so he bids him and his companions depart, just as any other father might drive out of the house a riotous son and his undesirable associates. By heaven, he said, then the parent will discover what a monster he has been fostering in his bosom; and, when he wants to drive him out, he will find that he is weak and his son strong. Why, you do not mean to say that the tyrant will use violence? What! beat his father if he opposes him? Yes, he will, having first disarmed him. Then he is a parricide, and a cruel guardian of an aged parent; and this is real tyranny, about which there can be no longer a mistake: as the saying is, the people who would escape the smoke which is the slavery of freemen, has fallen into the fire which is the tyranny of slaves. Thus liberty, getting out of all order and reason, passes into the harshest and bitterest form of slavery. True, he said. Very well; and may we not rightly say that we have sufficiently discussed the nature of tyranny, and the manner of the transition from democracy to tyranny? Yes, quite enough, he said.

(5) They who are able to drink in a somewhat more than others of this Sight, ofttimes from out the body fall asleep in this fairest Spectacle, as was the case with Uranus and Cronus, our forebears. may this be out lot too, O father mine! Hermes: Yea, may it be, my son! But as it is, we are not yet strung to the Vision, and not as yet have we the power our mind's eye to unfold and gaze upon the Beauty of the Good - Beauty that naught can e'er corrupt or any comprehend. For only then wilt thou upon It gaze when thou canst say no word concerning It. For Gnosis of the Good is holy silence and a giving holiday to every sense.

Hear me, Jove's son, blest Bacchus, God of wine, Born of two mothers, honor'd and divine; Lysian, Euion * Bacchus, various-nam'd, Of Gods the offspring secret, holy, fam'd: Fertile and nourishing whose liberal care Earth's fruits increases, flourishing and fair; Sounding, magnanimous, Lenæan pow'r O various form'd, medic'nal, holy flow'r: Mortals in thee, repose from labour find, Delightful charm, desir'd by all mankind: Fair-hair'd Euion, Bromian, joyful God, Lysian, invested with the leafy rod. To these our rites, benignant pow'r incline, When fav'ring men, or when on Gods you shine; Be present to thy mystic's suppliant pray'r, Rejoicing come, and fruits abundant bear.

(572) drawn into a perfectly lawless life, which by his seducers is termed perfect liberty; and his father and friends take part with his moderate desires, and the opposite party assist the opposite ones. As soon as these dire magicians and tyrant-makers find that they are losing their hold on him, they contrive to implant in him a master passion, to be lord over his idle and spendthrift lusts—a sort of monstrous winged drone—that is the only image which will adequately describe him. Yes, he said, that is the only adequate image of him. And when his other lusts, amid clouds of incense and perfumes and garlands and wines, and all the pleasures of a dissolute life, now let loose, come buzzing around him, nourishing to the utmost the sting of desire which they implant in his drone-like nature, then at last this lord of the soul, having Madness for the captain of his guard, breaks out into a frenzy: and if he finds in himself any good opinions or appetites in process of formation 1 , and there is in him any sense of shame remaining, to these better principles he puts an end, and casts them forth until he has purged away temperance and brought in madness to the full. Yes, he said, that is the way in which the tyrannical man is generated. And is not this the reason why of old love has been called a tyrant? I should not wonder. Further, I said, has not a drunken man also the spirit of

(574) he, goaded on by them, and especially by love himself, who is in a manner the captain of them, is in a frenzy, and would fain discover whom he can defraud or despoil of his property, in order that he may gratify them? Yes, that is sure to be the case. He must have money, no matter how, if he is to escape horrid pains and pangs. He must. And as in himself there was a succession of pleasures, and the new got the better of the old and took away their rights, so he being younger will claim to have more than his father and his mother, and if he has spent his own share of the property, he will take a slice of theirs. No doubt he will. And if his parents will not give way, then he will try first of all to cheat and deceive them. Very true. And if he fails, then he will use force and plunder them. Yes, probably. And if the old man and woman fight for their own, what then, my friend? Will the creature feel any compunction at tyrannizing over them? Nay, he said, I should not feel at all comfortable about his parents. But, O heavens! Adeimantus, on account of some new-fangled love of a harlot, who is anything but a necessary connection, can you believe that he would strike the mother who is his ancient friend and necessary to his very existence, and would place her under the authority of the other, when she is brought under the same roof with her; or that, under like circumstances, he would do the same to his withered old father, first and most indispensable of friends, for the sake of some newly-found blooming youth who is the reverse of indispensable? Yes, indeed, he said; I believe that he would. Truly, then, I said, a tyrannical son is a blessing to his father and mother. He is indeed, he replied.

(1) And this indeed is what he said to the young men in the Gymnasium. But when they had told their parents what they had heard, a thousand men having called Pythagoras into the senate-house, and praised him for what he had said to their sons, desired him, if he had any thing advantageous to say to the Crotonians, to unfold it to those who were the leaders of the administration. He was also the first that advised them to build a temple to the Muses, in order that they might preserve the existing concord. For he observed that all these divinities were called by one common name, [the Muses,] that they subsisted in conjunction with each other, especially rejoiced in common honors, and in short, that there was always one and the same choir of the Muses.

He likewise farther observed, that they comprehended in themselves symphony, harmony, rythm, and all things which procure concord. They also evince that their power does not alone extend to the most beautiful theorems, but likewise to the symphony and harmony of things. In the next place, he said it was necessary they should apprehend that they received their country from the multitude of the citizens, as a common deposit. Hence, it was requisite they should so govern it, that they might faithfully transmit it to their posterity, as an hereditary possession. And that this would firmly be effected, if they were equal in all things to the citizens, and surpassed them in nothing else than justice. For men knowing that every place requires justice, have asserted in fables that Themis has the same order with Jupiter, that Dice, i. e. justice, is seated by Pluto, and that Law is established in cities; in order that he who does not act justly in things which his rank in society requires him to perform, may at the same time appear to be unjust towards the whole world.

He added, it was proper that the senators should not make use of any of the Gods for the purpose of an oath, but that their language should be such as to render them worthy of belief even without oaths. And likewise, that they should so manage their own domestic affairs, as to make the government of them the object of their deliberate choice. That they should also be genuinely disposed towards their own offspring, as being the only animals that have a sensation of this conception. And that they should so associate with a wife the companion of life, as to be mindful that other compacts are engraved in tables and pillars, but those with wives are inserted in children. That they should likewise endeavour to be beloved by their offspring, not through nature, of which they were not the causes, but through deliberate choice: for this is voluntary beneficence.

(1) Pythagoras, therefore, complying with their wish, is said to have given the boys the following advice: That they should neither revile any one, nor take vengeance on those that reviled. He likewise exhorted them to pay diligent attention to learning, which derives its appellation from their age. He added, that it was easy for a modest youth to preserve probity through the whole of life; but that it was difficult for one to accomplish this, who was not naturally well disposed at that age; or rather it is impossible that he who begins his course from a bad impulse, should run well to the end. Besides this, he observed that boys were most dear to divinity, and hence in times of great drought, they were sent by cities to implore rain from the Gods, in consequence of the persuasion that divinity is especially attentive to children; though such as are permitted to be continually conversant with sacred ceremonies, scarcely obtain purification in perfection.

From this cause also, the most philanthropic of the Gods, Apollo and Love, are universally represented in pictures as having the age of boys. It is likewise acknowledged, that some of the games in which the conquerors are crowned, were instituted on account of boys; the Pythian, indeed, in consequence of the serpent Python being slain by a boy; but the Nemean and Isthmian, on account of the death of Archemorus and Melicerta. Besides what has been said likewise, while the city of Crotona was building, Apollo promised to the founder, that he would give him a progeny, if he brought a colony into Italy; from which inferring that Apollo providentially attended to the propagation of them, and that all the Gods paid attention to every age, they ought to render themselves worthy of their friendship.

He added, that they should exercise themselves in hearing, in order that they may be able to speak. And farther still, that as soon as they have entered into the path in which they intend to proceed to old age, they should follow the steps of those that preceded them, and never contradict those that are older than themselves. For thus hereafter, they will justly think it right that neither should they be injured by their juniors. On account of these exhortations, it must be confessed that he deserved not to be called by his own name, but that all men should denominate him divine.

(8) Wherefore I've ever heard, my son, Good Daimon also say - (and had He set it down in written words, He would have greatly helped the race of men; for He alone, my son, doth truly, as the Firstborn God, gazing on all things, give voice to words (logoi) divine) - yea, once I heard Him say: "All things are one, and most of all the bodies which the mind alone perceives. Our life is owing to [God's] Energy and Power and Aeon. His Mind is good, so is His Soul as well. And this being so, intelligible things know naught of separation. So, then, Mind, being Ruler of all things, and being Soul of God, can do whate'er it wills."

(5) Tat: In that case, father mine, the teaching (logos) as to Fate, which previously thou didst explain to me, risks to be overset. For that if it be absolutely fated for a man to fornicate, or commit sacrilege, or do some other evil deed, why is he punished - when he hath done the deed from Fate's necessity? Hermes: All works, my son, are Fate's; and without Fate naught of things corporal - or good, or ill - can come to pass. But it is fated, too, that he who doeth ill, shall suffer. And for this cause he doth it - that he may suffer what he suffereth, because he did it.