These men also thought it right to adhere to the customs and legal institutes of their ancestors, even though they should be somewhat inferior to other customs and laws. For to fly from the existing laws, and to be studious of innovation, is by no means profitable and salutary. Pythagoras therefore gave many other specimens of piety to the Gods, evincing that his life was conformable to his doctrines. Nor will it be foreign to the purpose to mention one of them, which may serve to elucidate the rest. But I will relate what Pythagoras said and did relative to the embassy from Sybaris to Crotona, about demanding the return of the exiles. For some of his associates were slain by order of the ambassadors, one of whom slew a part of them with his own hands; but another was the son of one of those who had excited the sedition, and who died through disease. When the Crotonians therefore were deliberating how they should act in this affair, Pythagoras said to his disciples, that he was not willing the Crotonians should be so greatly discordant in this affair, and that in his opinion, the ambassadors should not even lead victims to the altars, much less ought they to drag suppliants [i. e. the exiles] from them. But when the Sybarites came to him with their complaints, and the man who had slain some of his associates with his own hands, was defending his conduct, Pythagoras said, that he should not answer [an homicide]. Hence, some persons accused him of asserting that he was Apollo, because prior to this some one having asked him about a certain object of inquiry, why the thing was so; he in his turn asked the interrogator, if he would think fit to inquire of Apollo when he was delivering oracles to him, why he delivered them? But to another of the ambassadors who appeared to him to deride his school, in which he taught the return of souls to the supernal realms, and who said that he would give him an epistle to his father, as he was about to descend into Hades, and exhorted him to bring another letter in answer, from his father, when he returned; Pythagoras replied, that he was not about to descend into the abode of the impious, where he clearly knew that murderers were punished. But the ambassadors reviling him, he proceeded to the sea, many persons following him, and there sprinkled himself with marine water. Some one however of the Crotonian counsellors, after reviling the rest of the ambassadors, observed that he understood they had defamed Pythagoras, whom not even a brute would dare to blaspheme, though all animals should again utter the same voice as men, which fables report they did in the beginning of things.