The End of the Pythagoreans

There were persons hostile to the Pythagoreans and rose against them.

Stratagems were employed to destroy them during the absence of Pythagoras.

Some say that he went to Pherecydes the Syrian, but others to Metapontum.

The Cylonians’ Account

Many causes, however, of the stratagems are enumerated. And one of them, which is said to have originated from the men called Cylonians, was as follows:

Cylon the Crotonian became the leader for his birth, renown, and wealth, as well as for his severe, violent, turbulence, and tyrannical manners.

However, he had the greatest desire of being part of the Pythagoric life. He applied to Pythagoras, who was now old, but was rejected.

Because of this, he and his friends exercised violent hostilities against Pythagoras and his disciples.

So vehement likewise and immoderate[52] was the ambition of Cylon, and of those who arranged themselves on his side, that it extended itself to the very last of the Pythagoreans.

Pythagoras, therefore, for this cause went to Metapontum, and committed suicide.

But the Cylonians continued to form stratagems against the Pythagoreans, and to exhibit indications of all possible malevolence.

Nevertheless, for a certain time the probity of the Pythagoreans subdued [this enmity,] and also the decision of the cities themselves, so that they were willing that their political concerns should be managed by the Pythagoreans [alone].

In the end, the Cylonians became so hostile and set fire to the house of Milo where the Pythagoreans were consulting on warlike concerns. They burnt all the men except Archippus and Lysis. These 2 Tarentines were in perfect vigour and so escaped out of the house.

After this, the Pythagoreans ceased to pay any further attention to the affairs of government because:

1. The cities became negligent (they were not at all affected by the disaster)
2. The men most qualified to govern were lost

Archippus returned to Tarentum while Lysis went into Greece and dwelt in the Achaia of Peloponnesus, because he hated the negligence of the cities.

Afterwards, he migrated to Thebes wanting to retire there. His auditor there was Epaminondas who called Lysis his father. There also Lysis terminated his life.

But the rest of the Pythagoreans, except Archytas of Tarentum, left Italy and gathered in Rhegium.

The most celebrated of them were the Phlyasians:

• Phanto
• Echecrates
• Polymnastus
• Diocles
• Xenophilus Chalcidensis of Thrace.

But in time, the public administration worsened. Yet, these Pythagoreans preserved their pristine manners and disciplines, though the sect began to fail until it generously perished, as narrated by Aristoxenus.

Nichomachus’ Account

According to Nicomachus, the burning happened while Pythagoras was at Delos. He went there to help his preceptor Pherecydes the Syrian who was then afflicted with the morbus pedicularis. When he died, he performed the necessary funeral rites.

Then, those who had been rejected by the Pythagoreans, and to whom monuments had been raised as if they were dead, attacked them and burned them. Afterwards, they were overwhelmed by the Italians with stones, and thrown out of the house unburied.

At that time, science failed together with those who had scientific knowledge. Until that time, science was thought as something arcane and ineffable.

But such things only as were difficult to be understood, and which were not unfolded, were preserved in the memory of those who did not belong to the Pythagorean sect; a few things excepted, which certain Pythagoreans, who happened at that time to be in foreign lands, preserved as certain sparks of science very obscure and of difficult investigation.

The Pythagoreans were not moderately dejected by the calamity. They were scattered in different places, and isolated themselves from the rest of mankind.

To preserve philosophy, they made an arrangement of certain commentaries and symbols. They collected the writings of the more ancient Pythagoreans and such things as they remembered.

At death, each person left these to his son, daughter, or wife, with a strict injunction not to give them to anyone outside of the family. This mandate was for a long time observed.

Apollonius’ Account

Apollonius dissents these particulars. He adds many things which we have not mentioned.

He says that the envy of others attended Pythagoras from his childhood.

He was pleasing to the public. But when he started associating with his disciples alone, the public opinion for him diminished.

The Pythagoreans paid more attention to foreigners than to the locals. So the latter thought that his disciples had hostile intentions on the locals.

Young men also hated:

• his high rank
• him being wealthier
• him having the first honors in their own families and managing the affairs of the city in common

They formed a group of over 300 men.

The Crotonians who occupied their land set up a government, with the Pythagoreans, that the locals did not like. The people tried to change it.

When Sybaris was captured, the land taken in the war was supposed to be divided by lot according to the people’s will. But the government prevented this and so their silent hatred of the Pythagoreans burst forth. They separated themselves from them.

But the leaders of this dissent were the closest to the Pythagoreans, both by alliance and familiarity.

The Pythagoreans’ peculiar actions offended these leaders, as well as casual persons.

All the Pythagoreans called him not as Pythagoras by name while he was alive, but as “Divine”.

After his death, they called him that man; just as Homer represents Eumæus when he makes mention of Ulysses, saying,

Him, tho’ he’s absent, yet I fear, O guest To name; such is the greatness of my love and care.

They followed the the precepts of Pythagoras, always rising from bed before the rising of the sun and never wore a ring in which the image of God was engraved.

They also carefully observed to adore the rising sun and avoided wearing a ring of the above mentioned description, lest they should have it about them at funerals, or in some impure place.

They were attentive to the mandate of Pythagoras, not to do anything without previous deliberation and disquisition; but to form a plan in the morning of what ought to be done [in the course of the day,] and at night to call to mind the actions of the day, by this means at one and the same time exploring their conduct, and exercising their memory.

They also observed the precept, that if any one of their associates appointed to meet them at a certain place, they should stay there till he came through the day and the night.

The Pythagoreans were used to remember what was said, and not to speak casually.

In short, Pythagoras ordered them to be attentive to order and method as long as they lived, and not to blaspheme at the time of death, but to die with propitious words, such as are used by those who are sailing out of port into the Adriatic sea.

The kindred of the Pythagoreans however, were indignant that the Pythagoreans gave their right hand to those of their own sect alone, their parents excepted; and that they shared their possessions with each other in common, but excluded their relations from this fellowship, as if they were strangers. These, therefore, becoming the sources of the dissension, the rest readily fell into hostility against the Pythagoreans.

Hippasus, also, Diodorus and Theages said at the same time, that every citizen ought to be a partaker of the magistracy and the assembly, and that the rulers should give an account of their conduct, to those who were elected by lot for this purpose from the multitude.

But the Pythagoreans, Alcimachus, Dimachus, Meton and Democedes opposed this, and persevered in prohibiting the dissolution of the polity derived from their ancestors.

Those however, who patronized the multitude, subdued the other party. The multitude therefore, being assembled together, Cylon and Ninon who were rhetoricians accused the Pythagoreans. And of these, one belonged to the class of the rich, but the other was a plebeian. They also divided their harangues between themselves.

But of these harangues, the longer being delivered by Cylon, Ninon concluded, pretending that he had explored the arcana of the Pythagoreans, and that he had connected and committed to writing such particulars as were especially calculated to criminate the Pythagoreans, and giving a book to ascribe, he ordered him to read it.

But the book was inscribed the Sacred Discourse. And the following is a specimen of what it contained= Friends are to be venerated in the same manner as the Gods; but others are to be treated as brutes. This very sentence also is ascribed to Pythagoras by his disciples, and is by them expressed in verse as follows:

He like the blessed Gods his friends rever’d,

But reckon’d others men of no account.

Homer, too, especially deserves to be praised for calling a king the shepherd of the people. For being a friend to that government in which the rulers 185 are few, he evinced by this epithet that the rest of men are cattle.

They hated beans since they were the leaders of decision by lot which was used to manage affairs.

Again, empire should be the object of desire= for they proclaim that it is better to be one day a bull, than to be an ox for ever. That the legal institutes of others are laudable; but that they should be exhorted to use those which are known to themselves.

In one word, Ninon showed that their philosophy was a conspiracy against the multitude, and therefore exhorted them not to hear the counsellors, but to consider that they would never have been admitted into the assembly, if the council of the Pythagoreans had been approved by the session of a thousand men; so that it was not fit to suffer those to speak, who prevented to the utmost of their power others from being heard.

He observe that they should consider the right hand which was rejected by the Pythagoreans, as hostile to them, when they gave their suffrages by an extension of the hands, or calculated the number of the votes.

That they should also consider it to be a disgraceful circumstance, that they who conquered 30 myriads of men at the river Tracis, should be vanquished by a thousandth part of the same number through sedition in the city itself. In short Ninon so exasperated his hearers by his calumnies, that in a few days after, a great 186 multitude assembled together intending to attack the Pythagoreans as they were sacrificing to the Muses in a house near to the temple of Apollo.

The Pythagoreans, however, foreseeing that this would take place, fled to an inn; but Democedes, with those that had arrived at puberty, withdrew to Platea. And those that had dissolved the laws made a decree in which they accused Democedes of compelling the younger part of the community to the possession of empire, and proclaimed by a cryer that thirty talents should be given to any one who destroyed him. An engagement also taking place, and Theages having vanquished Democedes in that contest, they distributed to him the thirty talents which the city had promised.

But as the city, and the whole region were involved in many evils, the exiles were brought to judgment, and the power of decision being given to three cities, viz. to the Tarentines, Metapontines, and the Caulonians, those that were sent by them to determine the cause were corrupted by money, as we learn from the chronicles of the Crotonians.

Hence the Crotonians condemned by their own decision those that were accused, to exile. In consequence, too, of this decision, and the authority which it conferred on them, they expelled all those from the city, who were dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs, and at the same time banished all their families, asserting that it was not fit to be impious, and that children ought not to be divulsed from their parents.

They likewise abolished loans, and made the land to be undivided.

Many years after this, when Dinarchus and his associates were slain in another battle, and Litagus also was dead, who had been the greatest leader of the seditious, a certain pity and repentance induced the citizens to recall those Pythagoreans that were left, from exile.

For this purpose, they sent ambassadors from Achaia, and through them became amicable with the exiles, and consecrated their oaths at Delphi.

But around 60 Pythagoreans returned from exile, except those who were of a more advanced age, among which were some who applied themselves to medicine, and restored health to those that were sick by a certain diet; of which method of cure they were themselves the authors.

Those Pythagoreans were saved and were celebrated by the people when the situation was lawless. This was not the situation under Ninon. These same Pythagoreans having left the city in order to ask help against the Thurians who invaded the country, perished in battle, mutually defending each other.

But the city was so changed into a contrary opinion of the Pythagoreans, that besides the praise which it bestowed on them, it apprehended that it would gratify the Muses in a still greater degree, if it performed a public sacrifice in the temple of the Muses, which at the request of the Pythagoreans, they had before constructed in honor of those Goddesses, And thus much concerning the attack which was made on the Pythagoreans.