37. It is no easy task to give an account of Pythagoras that can claim to be regarded as history. Our principal sources of information[185] are the Lives composed by Iamblichos, Porphyry, and Laertios Diogenes. That of Iamblichos is a wretched compilation, based chiefly on the work of the arithmetician Nikomachos of Gerasa in Judaea, and the romance of Apollonios of Tyana, who regarded himself as a second Pythagoras, and accordingly took great liberties with his materials.[186] Porphyry stands, as a writer, on a far higher level than Iamblichos; but his authorities do not inspire us with more confidence. He, too, made use of Nikomachos, and of a certain novelist called Antonius Diogenes, author of a work entitled _Marvels from beyond Thule_.[187] Diogenes quotes, as usual, a considerable number of authorities, and the statements he makes must be estimated according to the nature of the sources from which they were drawn.[188] So far, it must be confessed, our material does not seem promising. Further examination shows, however, that a good many fragments of two much older authorities, Aristoxenos and Dikaiarchos, are embedded in the mass. These writers were both disciples of Aristotle; they were natives of Southern Italy, and contemporary with the last generation of the Pythagorean school. Both wrote accounts of Pythagoras; and Aristoxenos, who was personally intimate with the last representatives of scientific Pythagoreanism, also made a collection of the sayings of his friends. Now the Neopythagorean story, as we have it in Iamblichos, is a tissue of incredible and fantastic myths; but, if we sift out the statements which go back to Aristoxenos and Dikaiarchos, we can easily construct a rational narrative, in which Pythagoras appears not as a miracle-monger and religious innovator, but simply as a moralist and statesman. We might then be tempted to suppose that this is the genuine tradition; but that would be altogether a mistake. There is, in fact, a third and still earlier stratum in the Lives, and this agrees with the latest accounts in representing Pythagoras as a wonder-worker and a religious reformer. Footnote 185: See E. Rohde’s admirable papers, “Die Quellen des Iamblichus in seiner Biographie des Pythagoras” (_Rh. Mus._ xxvi., xxvii.). Footnote 186: Iamblichos was a disciple of Porphyry, and contemporary with Constantine. The _Life of Pythagoras_ has been edited by Nauck (1884). Nikomachos belongs to the beginning of the second century A.D. There is no evidence that he added anything to the authorities he followed, but these were already vitiated by Neopythagorean fables. Still, it is to him we chiefly owe the preservation of the valuable evidence of Aristoxenos. Footnote 187: Porphyry’s _Life of Pythagoras_ is the only considerable extract from his _History of Philosophy_, in four books, that has survived. The romance of Antonius is the original parodied by Lucian in his _Vera Historia_.