Book 8
1.45
And againAnth. Plan. v. 35.: If thou wouldst know the mind of old Pythagoras, Look on Euphorbus’ buckler and its boss. He says I’ve lived before. If, when he says he was, He was not, he was no-one when he was. And again, of the manner of his deathAnth. Pal. vii. 122.: Woe! Woe! Whence, Pythagoras, this deep reverence for beans? Why did he fall in the midst of his disciples? A bean-field there was he durst not cross; sooner than trample on it, he endured to be slain at the cross-roads by the men of Acragas.
1.45
He flourished in the 60th Olympiad540-536 b.c. Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. i 65 in the 62nd Olympiad [532-528 b.c.], eight years later, and contemporary with Polycrates of Samos. and his school lasted until the ninth or tenth generation.
1.46
For the last of the Pythagoreans, whom Aristoxenus in his time saw, were Xenophilus from the Thracian Chalcidice, Phanton of Phlius, and Echecrates, Diocles and Polymnastus, also of Phlius, who were pupils of Philolaus and Eurytus of Tarentum.
1.46
There were four men of the name of Pythagoras living about the same time and at no great distance from one another: (1) of Croton, a man with tyrannical leanings; (2) of Phlius, an athlete, some say a trainer; (3) of Zacynthus; (4) our subject, who discovered the secrets of philosophy [and taught them], and to whom was applied the phrase, The Master said (Ipse dixit), which passed into a proverb of ordinary life.
