Book 8
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Some say there was also another Pythagoras, a sculptor of Rhegium, who is thought to have been the first to aim at rhythm and symmetry; another a sculptor of Samos; another a bad orator; another a doctor who wrote on hernia and also compiled some things about Homer; and yet another who, so we are told by Dionysius, wrote a history of the Dorian race. Eratosthenes says, according to what we learn from Favorinus in the eighth book of his Miscellaneous History, that the last-named was the first to box scientifically, in the 48th Olympiad,588-584 b.c. keeping his hair long and wearing a purple robe; and that when he was excluded with ridicule from the boys’ contest, he went at once to the men’s and won that;
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this is declared by Theaetetus’s epigramAnth. Plan. iii. 35.: Know’st one Pythagoras, long-haired Pythagoras, The far-fam’d boxer of the Samians? I am Pythagoras; ask the Elians What were my feats, thou’lt not believe the tale.
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Favorinus says that our philosopher used definitions throughout the subject matter of mathematics; their use was extended by Socrates and his disciples, and afterwards by Aristotle and the Stoics.
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Further, we are told that he was the first to call the heaven the universe and the earth spherical,As Favorinus seems to have paid special attention to discoveries and the invention of names (cf. ii. 1, 20, viii. 12, 47, ix. 23, 34), it seems likely that he is our author’s authority here; so probably a different book of Favorinus is cited. though Theophrastus says it was Parmenides, and Zeno that it was Hesiod.
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It is said that Cylon was a rival of Pythagoras, as AntilochusApelt suggests Antiphon, comparing Xen. Mem. i. 6. was of Socrates.
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Pythagoras the athlete was also the subject of another epigram as followsAnth. Plan. iii. 16.: Gone to box with other lads Is the lad Pythagoras, Gone to the games Olympian Crates’ son the Samian. The philosopher also wrote the following letter:
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Pythagoras to Anaximenes.
