XXII

PYTHAGORAS' FAMILY

Pythagoras had a wife, whose name was Theano, the daughter of Brontinus of Crotona. Some say that she was the wife of Brontinus, and only Pythagoras's pupil. As Lysis mentions in his letter to Hipparchus, he had a daughter named Damo. Lysis's letter speaks of Pythagoras thus:

"And many say that you philosophize in public, as Pythagoras also used to do; who, when he had entrusted his commentaries to his daughter Damo, charged her not to divulge them to any one outside of the house. Though she might have sold his discourses for much money, she did not abandon them; for she thought that obedience to her father's injunction; even though this entailed poverty, better than gold; and that too, though she was a woman."

He had also a son, named Telauges, who was his father's successor in his school, and who, according to some authors, was the teacher of Empedocles. At least Hippobotus relates that Empedocles said,

"Telauges, noble youth, whom in due time
Theano bore, to wise Pythagoras."

But there is no book extant, which is the work of Telauges, though there are some extant that are attributed to his mother Theano. Of her is told a story, that once, when asked how long a woman should be absent from her husband, and remain an pure, she said: The moment she leaves her own husband, she is pure; but she is never pure at all after she leaves anyone else. A woman who was going to her husband was by her told to put off her modesty with, her clothes, and when she left him, to resume it with her clothes; when she was asked what clothes, she said: "Those which cause you to be called a woman."