What Pythagoras contrived and effected in Italy is told us by later eulogists, rather than by historians. In the history of Pythagoras by Malchus (this was the Syrian name of Porphyry) many strange things are related, and with the Neo-Platonists the contrast between their deep insight and their belief in the miraculous is surprising. For instance, seeing that the later biographers of Pythagoras had already related a quantity of marvels, they now proceeded to add yet more to these with reference to his appearance in Italy. It appears that they were exerting themselves to place him, as they afterwards did with Apollonius of Tyana, in opposition to Christ. For the wonders which they tell of him seem partly to be an amplification of those in the New Testament, and in part they are altogether absurd. For instance, they make Pythagoras begin his career in Italy with a miracle. When he landed in the Bay of Tarentum, at Crotona, he encountered fishermen on the way to the town who had caught nothing. He called upon them to draw their nets once more, and foretold the number of fishes that would be found in them. The fishermen, marvelling at this prophecy, promised him that if it came true they would do whatever he desired. It came to pass as he said, and Pythagoras then desired them to throw the fishes alive back into the sea, for the Pythagoreans ate no flesh. And it is further related as a miracle which then took place, that none of the fishes whilst they were out of the water died during the counting. This is the kind of miracle that is recorded, and the stories with which his biographers fill his life are of the same silly nature. They then make him effect such a general impression upon the mind of Italy, that all the towns reformed upon their luxurious and depraved customs, and the tyrants partly gave up their powers voluntarily, and partly they were driven out. They thereby, however, commit such historical errors as to make Charondas and Zaleucus, who lived long before Pythagoras, his disciples; and similarly to ascribe the expulsion and death of the tyrant Phalaris to him, and to his action.[34]