PYTHAGORAS

, one of the greatest philosophers of antiquity, was born about the 47th Olympiad, or 590 years before Christ. His father's principal residence was at Samos, but being a travelling merchant, his son Pythagoras was born at Sidon in Syria; but soon returning home again, our philosopher was brought up at Samos, where he was educated in a manner that was answerable to the great hopes that were conceived of him. He was called “the youth with a fine head of hair;” and from the great qualities that soon appeared in him, he was regarded as a good genius sent into the world for the benefit of mankind.

Samos however afforded no philosophers capable of satisfying his thirst for knowledge; and therefore, at 18 years of age, he resolved to travel in quest of them elsewhere. The fame of Pherecydes drew him first to the island of Syros: from hence he went to Miletus, where he conversed with Thales. He then travelled to Phœnicia, and stayed some time at Sidon, the place of his birth; and from hence he passed into Egypt, where Thales and Solon had been before him.

Having spent 25 years in Egypt, to acquire all the learning and knowledge he could procure in that country, with the same view he travelled through Chaldea, and visited Babylon. Returning after some time, he went to Crete; and from hence to Sparta, to be instructed in the laws of Minos and Lycurgus. He then returned to Samos; which, finding under the tyranny of Polycrates, he quitted again, and visited the several countries of Greece. Passing through Peloponnesus, he stopped at Phlius, where Leo then reigned; and in his conversation with that prince, he spoke with so much eloquence and wisdom, that Leo was at once ravished and surprised.

From Peloponnesus he went into Italy, and passed some time at Heraclea, and at Tarentum, but made his chief residence at Croton; where, after reforming the manners of the citizens by preaching, and establishing the city by wise and prudent counsels, he opened a school, to display the treasures of wisdom and learning he possessed. It is not to be wondered, that he was soon attended by a crowd of disciples, who repaired to him from different parts of Greece and Italy.

He gave his scholars the rules of the Egyptian priests, and made them pass through the austerities which he himself had endured. He at first enjoined them a five years silence in the school, during which they were only to hear; after which, leave was given them to start questions, and to propose doubts, under the caution however, to say, “not a little in many words, but much in a few.” Having gone through their probation, they were obliged, before they were admitted, to bring all their fortune into the common stock, which was managed by persons chosen on purpose, and called œconomists, and the whole community had all things in common.

The necessity of concealing their mysteries induced the Egyptians to make use of three sorts of styles, or ways of expressing their thoughts; the simple, the | hieroglyphical, and the symbolical. In the simple, they spoke plainly and intelligibly, as in common conversation; in the hieroglyphical, they concealed their thoughts under certain images and characters; and in the symbolical, they explained them by short expressions, which, under a sense plain and simple, included another wholly figurative. Pythagoras borrowed these three different ways from the Egyptians, in all the instructions he gave; but chiefly imitated the symbolical style, which he thought very proper to inculcate the greatest and most important truths: for a symbol, by its double sense, the proper and the figurative, teaches two things at once; and nothing pleases the mind more, than the double image it represents to our view.

In this manner Pythagoras delivered many excellent things concerning God and the human soul, and a great variety of precepts, relating to the conduct of life, political as well as civil; he made also some considerable discoveries and advances in the arts and sciences. Thus, among the works ascribed to him, there are not only books of physic, and books of morality, like that contained in what are called his Golden Verses, but treatises on politics and theology. All these works are lost: but the vastness of his mind appears from the wonderful things he performed. He delivered, as antiquity relates, several cities of Italy and Sicily from the yoke of slavery; he appeased seditions in others; and he softened the manners, and brought to temper the most savage and unruly spirits, of several people and tyrants. Phalaris, the tyrant of Sicily, it is said, was the only one who could withstand the remonstrances of Pythagoras; and he it seems was so enraged at his discourses, that he ordered him to be put to death. But though the lectures of the philosopher could make no impression on the tyrant, yet they were sufficient to reanimate the Sicilians, and to put them upon a bold action. In short, Phalaris was killed the same day that he had fixed for the death of the philosopher.

Pythagoras had a great veneration for marriage; and therefore himself married at Croton, a daughter of one of the chief men of that city, by whom he had two sons and a daughter: one of the sons succeeded his father in the school, and became the master of Empedocles: the daughter, named Damo, was distinguished both by her learning and her virtues, and wrote an excellent commentary upon Homer. It is related, that Pythagoras had given her some of his writings, with express commands not to impart them to any but those of his own family; to which Damo was so scrupulously obedient, that even when she was reduced to extreme poverty, she refused a great sum of money for them.

From the country in which Pythagoras thus settled and gave his instructions, his society of disciples was called the Italic sect of philosophers, and their reputation continued for some ages afterwards, when the Academy and the Lycæum united to obscure and swallow up the Italic lect. Pythagoras's disciples regarded the words of their master as the oracles of a god; his authority alone, though unsupported by reason, passed with them for reason itself: they looked on him as the most perfect image of God among men. His house was called the temple of Ceres, and his court yard the temple of the Muses: and when he went into towns, it was said he went thither, “not to teach men, but to heal them.”

Pythagoras however was persecuted by bad men in the last years of his life; and some say he was killed in a tumult raised by them against him; but according to others, he died a natural death, at 90 years of age, about 497 years before Christ.

Beside the high respect and veneration the world has always had for Pythagoras, on account of the excellence of his wisdom, his morality, his theology, and politics, he was renowned as learned in all the sciences, and a considerable inventor of many things in them; as arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, &c. In arithmetic, the common multiplication table is, to this day, still called Pythagoras's table. In geometry, it is said he invented many theorems, particularly these three; 1st, Only three polygons, or regular plane figures, can fill up the space about a point, viz, the equilateral triangle, the square, and the hexagon: 2d, The sum of the three angles of every triangle, is equal to two right angles: 3d, In any right-angled triangle, the square on the longest side, is equal to both the squares on the two shorter sides: for the discovery of this last theorem, some authors say he offered to the gods a hecatomb, or a sacrifice of a hundred oxen; Plutarch however says it was only one ox, and even that is questioned by Cicero, as inconsistent with his doctrine, which forbade bloody sacrisices: the more accurate therefore say, he sacrificed an ox made of flour, or of clay; and Plutarch even doubts whether such sacrifice, whatever it was, was made for the said theorem, or for the area of the parabola, which it was said Pythagoras also found out.

In astronomy his inventions were many and great. It is reported he discovered, or maintained the true system of the world, which places the sun in the centre, and makes all the planets revolve about him; from him it is to this day called the old or Pythagorean system; and is the same as that lately revived by Copernicus. He first discovered, that Lucifer and Hesperus were but one and the same, being the planet Venus, though formerly thought to be two different stars. The invention of the obliquity of the zodiac is likewise ascribed to him. He first gave to the world the name *ko<*>m<*>, Kosmos, from the order and beauty of all things comprehended in it; asserting that it was made according to musical proportion: for as he held that the sun, by him and his followers termed the fiery globe of unity, was seated in the midst of the universe, and the earth and planets moving around him, so he held that the seven planets had an harmonious motion, and their distances from the sun corresponded to the musical intervals or divisions of the monochord.

Pythagoras and his followers held the transmigration of souls, making them successively occupy one body after another: on which account they abstained from flesh, and lived chiefly on vegetables.

Pythagoras's Table, the same as the multiplication-table; which see.