CHAPTER XIII

HE SHARED ORPHEUS' CONTROL OVER ANIMALS

According to credible historians, his words possessed an admonitory quality that prevailed even with animals, which confirms that, in intelligent men learning tames beasts even wild or irrational. The Daunian bear, who had severely injured the inhabitants, was by Pythagoras detained, long stroking it gently, feeding it on maize and acorns, and after compelling it by an oath to leave alone living beings, he sent it away. It hid itself in the mountains and forest, and was never since known to injure any irrational animal.

At Tarentum he saw an ox feeding in a pasture, where he ate green beans. He advised the herdsman to abstain from this food to tell the ox to abstain from this food. The herdsman laughed at him, remarking he did not know the language of oxen; but that if Pythagoras did, he had better tell him so himself. Pythagoras approached the ox's ear and whispered into it for a long time, hereafter the ox not only refrained from them, but even never tasted them. This ox lived a long while at Tarentum, near the temple of Juno, and was fed on human food by visitors, till very old, considered sacred. Once happening to be talking to his intimates about birds, symbols and prodigies, and observed that all these are messengers of the Gods, sent by them to men truly dear to them, when he brought down an eagle flying over Olympia, which he gently stroked and dismissed.

Through such and similar occurrences, Pythagoras demonstrated that he possessed the same dominion as Orpheus over savage animals, and that he allured and detained them by the power of his voice.