Pythagoras and his followers be given an opportunity, at any rate, to justify their conduct in our presence before we condemn them.” Cylon replied haughtily: “Have not these Pythagoreans deprived you of the right to judge and decide upon public matters? What right have they to ask you to listen to them now? They did not consult you when they deprived you of the right to exercise justice, now it is your turn to strike without listening to them!” Such vehement opinions were greeted with rounds of applause, and popular frenzy and passion rose higher than ever. One evening, when forty of the principal members of the order had met at the abode of Milon, the tribune collected his followers and the house was surrounded. The Pythagoreans, who had the master with them, barricaded the doors. The enraged crowd set fire to the building, which speedily became enveloped in flames. Thirty-eight Pythagoreans, the very first of the master’s disciples and constituting the flower of the order, along with Pythagoras himself, perished either in the flames or at the hands of the people. Archippus and Lysis alone escaped massacre.[23] Thus died this mighty sage, this divine man whose effort it had been to instil his own wisdom into human rule and government. The murder of the Pythagoreans was the signal for a democratic revolution in Croton and about the Gulf of Tarentum. The towns of Italy expelled from their walls the unfortunate disciples of the master. The order was dispersed; fragments of it, however, spread throughout Sicily and Greece, propagating everywhere the master’s words and teachings. Lysis became the teacher of Epaminondas. After fresh revolutions, the Pythagoreans were permitted to return to Italy on condition they no longer formed a political body. They were still united in a touching fraternity, and looked upon themselves as one family. One of them who had fallen upon sickness and poverty was kindly taken in by an inn-keeper. Before dying he traced a few mysterious signs on the door of the inn and said to the host: “Do not be uneasy, one of my brothers will pay my debt.” A year afterwards, as a stranger was passing by this inn he saw the signs and said to the host: “I am a Pythagorean; one of my brothers died here; tell me what I owe you on his account.” The order existed for two hundred and fifty years; the ideas and traditions of the master have come down to the present times.