XX

POETIC TESTIMONIES

Timon, in his Silli, has not left unnoticed the dignified appearance of Pythagoras, though he he attacks him on other points. Thus he speaks:

''Pythagoras who often teaches
precepts of magic, and with speeches
Of long high-sounding diction draws,
From gaping crowds, a vain applause."

In his Alcmaeon, Innesimachus says:

"As we do sacrifice to the Phoebus whom
Pythagoras worships, never eating aught
Which has the breath of life."

Austophon says in his Pythagorean:

A. "He said that when he did descend below
Among the shades in Hell, he there beheld
All men who e'er had died; and there he saw
That the Pythagoreans differed much
From all the rest; for that with them alone
Did Pluto deign to eat, much honoring
Their pious habits."

B. "He's a civil God,
If he likes eating with such dirty fellows."

And again in the same play he says,

"They eat nothing but herbs and vegetables, and drink
Pure water only; but their lice are such
Their cloaks so dirty, and their unwash'd scent
So rank, that none of our younger men
Will for a moment bear them."

Referring to his having been different people at different times, Xenophanes says in an elegiac poem, that begins thus:

"Now will I upon another subject touch,
And lead the way.....
They say that once, as passing by he saw
A dog severely beaten, he did pity him;
And spoke as follows to the man who beat him:
"Stop now and beat him not; since in his body
Abides the soul of a dear friend of mine,
Whose voice I recognized as he was crying."

Cratinus also ridiculed him in his Pythagorean Woman; but in his Tarentines he speaks thus:

"They are accustomed, if by chance they see
A private individual abroad,
To try what powers of argument he has.
How he can speak and reason; and they bother him
With strange antithesis, and forced conclusions,
Errors, comparisons, and magnitudes,
Till they have filled, and quite perplexed his mind."