Of the following work, the life of Pythagoras, it is necessary to observe that the original has been transmitted to us in a very imperfect state, partly from the numerous verbal errors of the text, partly from the want of connexion in the things that are narrated, and partly from many particulars being related in different places, in the very same words; so that the conjecture of Kuster, one of the German editors of this work is highly probable, that it had not received the last hand of Iamblichus, but that others formed this treatise from the confused materials which they found among his Manuscripts, after his death. Notwithstanding all its defects, however, it is, as I have before observed, a most interesting work; and the benefits are inestimable, which the dissemination of it is calculated to produce. And as two of the most celebrated critics among the Germans, Kuster and Kiessling, have given two splendid editions of this work, it is evident they must have been deeply impressed with a conviction of its value and importance. As to the Pythagoric Ethical Fragments, all eulogy of them is superfluous, when it is considered that, independently of their being written by very early Pythagoreans, they were some of the sources from which Aristotle himself derived his consummate knowledge of morality, as will be at once evident by comparing his Nicomachean Ethics with these fragments. With respect to the collection of Pythagoric Sentences in this volume, it is almost needless to observe that they are incomparably excellent; and it is deeply to be regretted that the Greek original of the Sentences of Sextus[6] being lost, the fraudulent Latin version of them by the Presbyter Ruffinus alone remains. I call it a fraudulent version, because Ruffinus, wishing to persuade the reader that these Sentences were written by a bishop of the name of Sixtus, has in many places perverted and contaminated the meaning of the original. In the selection, however, which I have made from these Sentences, I have endeavoured, and I trust not in vain, to give the genuine sense of Sextus, unmingled with the barbarous and polluted interpolations of Ruffinus. If the English reader has my translation of the Sentences of Demophilus, and Mr. Bridgman’s translation of the Golden Sentences of Democrates, and the Similitudes of Demophilus,[7] he will then be possessed of all the Pythagoric Sentences that are extant, those alone of Sextus excepted, which I have not translated, in consequence of the very impure and spurious state, in which they at present exist.