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(1) Hermes, the God who presides over language, was formerly very properly considered as common to all priests; and the power who presides over the true science concerning the Gods is one and the same in the whole of things. Hence our ancestors dedicated the inventions of their wisdom to this deity, inscribing all their own writings with the name of Hermes. If, therefore, we participate of a portion of this God, adapted and commensurate to our powers, you do well to propose your theological doubts to the priests, as friends, and to make these doubts known to them. I also very properly conceiving that the epistle sent to my disciple Anebo was written to me, shall give you a true answer to your inquiries. For it would not be becoming, that Pythagoras and Plato, Democritus and Eudoxus, and many other of the ancient Greeks, should have obtained appropriate instruction from the sacred scribes of their time, but that you who are our contemporary, and think conformably to those ancients, should be frustrated of your wish by those who are now living, and who are called common preceptors. I, therefore, thus betake myself to the present discussion; and do you, if you please, conceive that the same person to whom you sent the letter returns you an answer. Or, if it should seem fit to you, admit it to be me who discourses with you in writing, or some other prophet of the Egyptians, for this is of no consequence. Or, which I think is still better, dismiss the consideration whether the speaker is an inferior or a superior character, but direct your attention to what is said, so as readily to excite your mind to survey whether what is asserted is true or false.

(1) We shall, therefore, deliver to you the peculiar dogmas of the Assyrians; and also clearly develop to you our own opinions; collecting some things from the infinite writings of the ancients, but others from those particulars which were comprehended by the ancients in one treatise, and pertain to the whole knowledge of divine natures. If also you should propose any philosophic inquiry, we shall discuss it for you, according to the ancient pillars of Hermes, which Plato and Pythagoras knew before, and from thence constituted their philosophy. But such things as exhibit foreign inquiries, or which are contradictory and contentious, we shall assist mildly and aptly, or we shall demonstrate their absurdity. Such, likewise, as proceed conformably to common conceptions, we shall endeavour to discuss in a way perfectly known and clear. And things, indeed, which require the experience of divine operations to an accurate knowledge of them, we shall explain, as far as this is possible to be effected by words alone; but such as are full of intellectual theory, we shall develop with a view to the purification of the soul.

(1) Another mode also of erudition is transmitted to us, which was effected through Pythagoric precepts, and sentences which extended to human life and human opinions; a few of which out of many I shall narrate. One of these therefore contains an exhortation to remove contention and strife from true friendship, and especially from all friendship, if possible. But if this is not possible, at least to expel it from paternal friendship, and universally from that which subsists with elders and benefactors. For to contend pervicaciously with such as these, anger or some other similar passion intervening, is not to preserve, [but destroy] the existing friendship. But they say it is necessary that the smallest lacerations and ulcerations should take place in friendships.

And that this will be effected, if both the friends know how to yield and subdue their anger, and especially the younger of the two, and who belongs to some one of the above-mentioned orders. They likewise thought it necessary that the corrections and admonitions which they called pædartases , and which the elder employed towards the younger, should be made with much suavity of manners and great caution; and also that much solicitude and appropriation should be exhibited in admonitions. For thus the admonition will become decorous and beneficial. They likewise say that faith should never be separated from friendship, neither seriously nor in jest. For it is no longer easy for the existing friendship to remain in a sane condition, when falsehood once insinuates itself into the manners of those who assert themselves to be friends.

And again they say, that friendship is not to be rejected on account of misfortune, or any other imbecility which happens to human life; but that the only laudable rejection of a friend and of friendship, is that which takes place through great and incurable vice. Such therefore was the form of correction with the Pythagoreans through sentences, and which extended to all the virtues, and to the whole of life.

(6) It is likewise related of Clinias the Tarentine, that when he had learnt that Prorus the Cyrenæan, who was zealously addicted to the Pythagorean doctrines, was in danger of losing all his property, he sailed to Cyrene, after having collected a sum of money, and restored the affairs of Prorus to a better condition, not only incurring, in so doing, a diminution of his own property, but despising the peril which he was exposed to in the voyage. After the same manner also, Thestor Posidoniates, having learnt from report alone, that Thymaridas Parius the Pythagorean had fallen into poverty, from the possession of great wealth, is said to have sailed to Parus, after having collected a large sum of money, and thus reinstated Thymaridas in property.

These therefore are beautiful instances of friendship. The decisions, however, of the Pythagoreans respecting the communion of divine goods, the concord of intellect, and things pertaining to a divine soul, are much more admirable than the above examples. For they perpetually exhorted each other, not to divulse the God within them. Hence all the endeavour of their friendship both in deeds and words, was directed to a certain divine mixture, to a union with divinity, and to a communion with intellect and a divine soul. But it is not possible to find any thing better than this, either in what is uttered by words, or performed by deeds. For I am of opinion, that all the goods of friendship are comprehended in this. Hence, as we have collected in this, as in a summit, all the prerogatives of the Pythagoric friendship, we shall omit to say any thing further about it.