Book 8
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and further that Pythagoras spent most of his time upon the arithmetical aspect of geometry; he also discovered the musical intervals on the monochord. Nor did he neglect even medicine. We are told by Apollodorus the calculator that he offered a sacrifice of oxen on finding that in a right-angled triangle the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the squares on the sides containing the right angle. And there is an epigram running as followsAnth. Pal. vii. 119.: What time Pythagoras that famed figure found, For which the noble offering he brought.
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He is also said to have been the first to diet athletes on meat, trying first with EurymenesThe story of Eurymenes was known to Porphyry, Vit. Pyth. 18. We can still see how these quotations made by D. L. himself from Favorinus disturb the context.— so we learn from Favorinus in the third book of his Memorabilia—whereas in former times they had trained on dried figs, on butter,Or rather soft cheese;cf. supra,i. § 7, note. and even on wheatmeal, as we are told by the same Favorinus in the eighth book of his Miscellaneous History.
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Some say it was a certain trainer named Pythagoras who instituted this diet,Cf. Iamblichus, Vit. Pyth. 25, and Porphyry, De abstinentia, i. 26. and not our Pythagoras, who forbade even the killing, let alone the eating, of animals which share with us the privilege of having a soul. This was the excuse put forward; but his real reason for forbidding animal diet was to practise people and accustom them to simplicity of life, so that they could live on things easily procurable, spreading their tables with uncooked foods and drinking pure water only, for this was the way to a healthy body and a keen mind. Of course the only altar at which he worshipped was that of Apollo the Giver of Life, behind the Altar of Horns at Delos, for thereon were placed flour and meal and cakes, without the use of fire, and there was no animal victim, as we are told by Aristotle in his Constitution of Delos.
