Kitap 8
1.42
Pythagoras had a wife, Theano by name, daughter of Brontinus of Croton, though some call her Brontinus’s wife and Pythagoras’s pupil. He had a daughter Damo, according to the letter of Lysis to Hippasus, which says of him, I am told by many that you discourse publicly, a thing which Pythagoras deemed unworthy, for certain it is that, when he entrusted his daughter Damo with the custody of his memoirs, he solemnly charged her never to give them to anyone outside his house. And, although she could have sold the writings for a large sum of money, she would not, but reckoned poverty and her father’s solemn injunctions more precious than gold, for all that she was a woman.
1.43
They also had a son Telauges, who succeeded his father and, according to some, was Empedocles’ instructor. At all events Hippobotus makes Empedocles sayFr. 155 D.: Telauges, famed Son of Theano and Pythagoras. Telauges wrote nothing, so far as we know, but his mother Theano wrote a few things. Further, a story is told that being asked how many days it was before a woman becomes pure after intercourse, she replied, With her own husband at once, with another man never. And she advised a woman going in to her own husband to put off her shame with her clothes, and on leaving him to put it on again along with them. Asked Put on what? she replied, What makes me to be called a woman.
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To return to Pythagoras. According to Heraclides, the son of Serapion, he was eighty years old when he died, and this agrees with his own description of the life of man, though most authorities say he was ninety. And there are jesting lines of my own upon him as followsAnth. Pal. vii. 121.: Not thou alone from all things animate Didst keep, Pythagoras. All food is dead When boil’d and bak’d and salt-besprinkle-èd; For then it surely is inanimate. AgainAnth. Plan. v. 34.: So wise was wise Pythagoras that he Would touch no meats, but called it impious, Bade others eat. Good wisdom: not for us To do the wrong; let others impious be.
