Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras, or Pythagoric Life: Accompanied by Fragments of the Ethical Writings of certain Pythagoreans in the Doric dialect; and a collection of Pythagoric Sentences from Stobaeus and others, which are omitted by Gale in his Opuscula Mythologica, and have not been noticed by any editorIamblichus
Philosophy
Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras, or Pythagoric Life: Accompanied by Fragments of the Ethical Writings of certain Pythagoreans in the Doric dialect; and a collection of Pythagoric Sentences from Stobaeus and others, which are omitted by Gale in his Opuscula Mythologica, and have not been noticed by any editor
Iamblichus
Ethics, Ancient; Philosophers -- Greece -- Biography; Philosophy, Ancient; Pythagoras; Pythagoras and Pythagorean school
him, giving for a long time a specimen of their peculiar manners. But if
they were rejected they received the double of the wealth which they
brought, and a tomb was raised to them as if they were dead by the
_homacoï_; for thus all the disciples of the man were called. And if
they happened to meet with them afterwards, they behaved to them as if
they were other persons, but said that they were dead, whom they had
modelled by education, in the expectation that they would become truly
good men by the disciplines they would learn. They also were of opinion
that those who were more slow in the acquisition of knowledge, were
badly organized, and, as I may say, imperfect and barren. If, however,
after Pythagoras had physiognomically considered their form, their mode
of walking, and every other motion, and the state of their body, and he
had conceived good hope respecting them; after likewise the quinquennial
silence, and the orgies and initiations from so many disciplines,
together with the ablutions of the soul, and so many and such great
purifications produced from such various theorems, through which the
sagacity and sanctity of the soul is perfectly ingenerated; if, after
all this, some one was found to be still sluggish and of a dull
intellect, they raised to such a one in the school a certain pillar and
monument, (as they are said to have done to Perialus the Thurian, and
Cylon the prince of the Sybarites, who were rejected by them) expelled
him from the _Homacoïon_ or auditory, loading him with a great quantity
of silver and gold. For these were deposited by them in common, and were
committed to the care of certain persons adapted to this purpose, and
who were called Economics, from the office which they bore. And if
afterwards they happened to meet with such a one, they conceived him to
be any other person, than him who according to them was dead. Hence also
Lysis, blaming a certain person named Hipparchus, because he had
communicated the doctrines of the Pythagoreans to the profane, and to
those who acceded to them without disciplines and theory, says as
follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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