Kitap 8
1.5
When Euphorbus died, his soul passed into Hermotimus, and he also, wishing to authenticate the story, went up to the temple of Apollo at Branchidae, where he identified the shield which Menelaus, on his voyage home from Troy, had dedicated to Apollo, so he said: the shield being now so rotten through and through that the ivory facing only was left. When Hermotimus died, he became Pyrrhus, a fisherman of Delos, and again he remembered everything, how he was first Aethalides, then Euphorbus, then Hermotimus, and then Pyrrhus. But when Pyrrhus died, he became Pythagoras, and still remembered all the facts mentioned.
1.6
There are some who insist, absurdly enough, that Pythagoras left no writings whatever. At all events Heraclitus, the physicist,Fr. 129 D., 17 B. almost shouts in our ear, Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, practised inquiry beyond all other men, and in this selection of his writings made himself a wisdom of his own, showing much learning but poor workmanship. The occasion of this remark was the opening words of Pythagoras’s treatise On Nature, namely, Nay, I swear by the air I breathe, I swear by the water I drink, I will never suffer censure on account of this work. Pythagoras in fact wrote three books. On Education, On Statesmanship, and On Nature.
