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The very employment of the gods for mere decoration bears this stamp. The remarkable vision, with which the poem opens, tells in good Pythagorean style how the soul now inhabiting Quintus Ennius had previously been domiciled in Homer and still earlier in a peacock, and then in good physicist style explains the nature of things and the relation of the body to the mind.
When the liquor was placed on the table, after dinner, the Pythagorean got to his feet, filled a large glass of water, and taking a gulp of it, leaving it about half full, he proceeded as follows: "Gentlemen: considering the state of morals in our unfortunate country, arising as it does from the use of intoxicating liquors and the flesh of animals, I feel myself called upon to impress upon the consciences of this respectable auditory the necessity of studying the admirable principles of the great philosopher whose simplicity of life in food and drink I humbly endeavor to imitate.
The system of the world, as Canon Copernicus taught in the last century, following the doctrines of Aristarchus of Samos and Pythagorean philosophers, is doubtless known to you, as there have actually been prepared some compendiums of them for the urchins of village schools and dialogues abstracted from them for the use of town children.
The last, as bequeathed to us by Aristophanes, has features which bear little family resemblance to the philosophical parodies of the Pythagorean poet.
With his mythological travesties the Pythagorean mingled, apparently, many earnest maxims of morality , and though not free, in the judgment of Aristotle, from a vice of style usually common only to ages the most refined ; he was yet proverbial, even in the most polished period of Grecian letters, for the graces of his diction and the happy choice of his expressions.
The Pythagorean, as well as Topertoe, was also occasionally forced to the use of crutches; and it was certainly a strange and remarkable thing to witness two men, each at the extreme point of social indulgence, and each departing from reason and common-sense, suffering from the consequences of their respective errors; Manifold, a most voracious fellow, knocked on the head by an attack of apoplexy, and Cooke, the philosopher, suffering the tortures of the damned from a most violent rheumatism, produced by a monomania which compelled him to decline the simple enjoyment of reasonable food and dress.
This feature of his thought is commonly ascribed to Pythagorean influence, which was strong at Alexandria, and, indeed, throughout the world, at this era. The exact details of the holiness of four, seven, ten, fifty, etc., Philo may have borrowed from neo-Pythagorean sources, but the general tendency was the natural result of his environment and his stage of thought.
Do you think I will put my wine against your paltry water?" "Don't call it paltry," replied the Pythagorean; "it is delicious. You know not how it elevates the spirits and, so to speak, philosophizes the whole system of man. I am beginning to feel extremely happy."
Whatever other inferences may be drawn from these facts, they are sufficient to prove that Socrates had become acquainted with some of the leading philosophers of the Greek world before he was forty, and to make it highly probable that it was he who introduced the word 'philosophy' in its Pythagorean sense to the Athenians.
Besides, it is even my opinion that it was the great esteem in which the Pythagoreans were held, that gave rise to that opinion among those who came after him, that King Numa was a Pythagorean.
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