And there is much else that they tell of those sages who observe the rule of Pythagoras but I must not now enter upon such points, but hurry on to the work which I have set myself to complete. "For erewhile, I already became both girl and boy."Īnd the story that he made at Olympia a bull of pastry and sacrificed it to the god also shows that he approved of the sentiments of Pythagoras. "Rejoice ye, for I am unto you an immortal God, and no more mortal." Moreover they declare that Empedocles of Acragas had trodden this way of wisdom when he wrote the line For many were the divine and ineffable secrets which they had heard, but which it was difficult for any to keep who had not previously learnt that silence also is a mode of speech. And the followers of Pythagoras accepted as law any decisions communicated by him, and honored him as an emissary from Zeus, but imposed, out of respect for their divine character, a ritual silence on themselves. For he said that, whereas other men only make conjectures about divinity and make guesses that contradict one another concerning it, - in his own case he said that Apollo had come to him acknowledging that he was the god in person and that Athena and the Muses and other gods, whose forms and names men did not yet know, had also consorted with him though without making such acknowledgment. For they say that he had of a certainty social intercourse with the gods, and learnt from them the conditions under which they take pleasure in men or are disgusted, and on this intercourse he based his account of nature. For that he would not stain the altars with blood nay, rather the honey-cake and frankincense and the hymn of praise, these they say were the offerings made to the Gods by this man, who realized that they welcome such tribute more than they do the hecatombs and the knife laid upon the sacrificial basket. And they say that he declined to wear apparel made from dead animal products and, to guard his purity, abstained from all flesh diet, and from the offering of animals in sacrifice. THE votaries of Pythagoras of Samos have this story to tell of him, that he was not an Ionian at all, but that, once on a time in Troy, he had been Euphorbus, and that he had come to life after death, but had died as the songs of Homer relate.
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