Chapter XXXVII (2)

“Sur la physiologie des influences extérieures, la Grèce du
temps d’Hippocrate et après lui fut le théâtre d’expériences en
grand, les plus importantes et les plus instructives. Toute la
population (la population libre, s’entend) étoit soumise à un
système régulier d’éducation physique (N. B. this is a little too
strongly stated): dans quelques cités, à Lacédémone par exemple,
les femmes n’en étoient pas exemptées. Ce système se composoit
d’exercices et d’une alimentation, que combinèrent l’empirisme
d’abord, puis une théorie plus savante: il concernoit (comme
dit Hippocrate lui-même, en ne parlant, il est vrai, que de la
partie alimentaire), il concernoit et les malades pour leur
rétablissement, et les gens bien portans pour la conservation de
leur santé, et les personnes livrées aux exercices gymnastiques
pour l’accroissement de leurs forces. On savoit au juste ce
qu’il falloit pour conserver seulement le corps en bon état ou
pour traiter un malade—pour former un militaire ou pour faire un
athlète—et en particulier, un lutteur, un coureur, un sauteur,
un pugiliste. Une classe d’hommes, les maîtres des gymnases,
étoient exclusivement adonnés à la culture de cet art, auquel
les médecins participoient dans les limites de leur profession,
et Hippocrate, qui dans les Aphorismes, invoque l’exemple des
athlètes, nous parle dans le Traité des Articulations des
personnes maigres, qui n’ayant pas été amaigris par un procédé
régulier de l’art, ont les chairs muqueuses. Les anciens
médecins savoient, comme on le voit, procurer l’amaigrissement
conformément à l’art, et reconnoitre à ses effets un
amaigrissement irrégulier: toutes choses auxquelles nos médecins
sont étrangers, et dont on ne retrouve l’analogue que parmi les
_entraineurs_ Anglois. Au reste cet ensemble de connoissances
empiriques et théoriques doit être mis au rang des pertes
fâcheuses qui ont accompagné la longue et turbulente transition
du monde ancien an monde moderne. Les admirables institutions
destinées dans l’antiquité à développer et affermir le corps,
ont disparu: l’hygiène publique est déstituée à cet égard de
toute direction scientifique et générale, et demeure abandonnée
complètement au hasard.”

See also the remarks of Plato respecting Herodikus, De Republicâ,
iii, p. 406; Aristotel. Politic. iii, 11, 6; iv, 1, 1; viii, 4, 1.

The biographers of Pythagoras tell us that his arrival there, his preaching, and his conduct, produced an effect almost electric upon the minds of the people, with an extensive reform, public as well as private. Political discontent was repressed, incontinence disappeared, luxury became discredited, and the women, hastened to exchange their golden ornaments for the simplest attire. No less than two thousand persons were converted at his first preaching; and so effective were his discourses to the youth, that the Supreme Council of One Thousand invited him into their assembly, solicited his advice, and even offered to constitute him their prytanis, or president, while his wife and daughter were placed at the head of the religious processions of females.[730] Nor was his influence confined to Kroton. Other towns in Italy and Sicily,—Sybaris, Metapontum, Rhêgium, Katana, Himera, etc., all felt the benefit of his exhortations, which extricated some of them even from slavery. Such are the tales of which the biographers of Pythagoras are full.[731] And we see that even the disciples of Aristotle, about the year 300 B. C.,—Aristoxenus, Dikæarchus, Herakleidês of Pontus, etc., are hardly less charged with them than the Neo-Pythagoreans of three or four centuries later: they doubtless heard them from their contemporary Pythagoreans,[732] the last members of a declining sect, among whom the attributes of the primitive founder passed for godlike, but who had no memorials, no historical judgment, and no means of forming a true conception of Kroton as it stood in 530 B. C.[733]

[730] Valerius Maxim. viii, 15, xv, 1; Jamblichus, Vit. Pyth. c.
45; Timæus, Fragm. 78, ed. Didot.

[731] Porphyry, Vit. Pythag. c. 21-54; Jamblich. 33-35, 166.

[732] The compilations of Porphyry and Jamblichus on the life
of Pythagoras, copied from a great variety of authors, will
doubtless contain some truth amidst their confused heap of
statements, many incredible, and nearly all unauthenticated. But
it is very difficult to single out what these portions of truth
really are. Even Aristoxenus and Dikæarchus, the best authors
from whom these biographers quote, lived near two centuries
after the death of Pythagoras, and do not appear to have had
any early memorials to consult, nor any better informants than
the contemporary Pythagoreans,—the last of an expiring sect,
and probably among the least eminent for intellect, since the
philosophers of the Sokratic school in its various branches
carried off the acute and aspiring young men of that time.

Meiners, in his Geschichte der Wissenschaften (vol. i, b. iii, p.
191, _seq._), has given a careful analysis of the various authors
from whom the two biographers have borrowed, and a comparative
estimate of their trustworthiness. It is an excellent piece of
historical criticism, though the author exaggerates both the
merits and the influence of the first Pythagoreans: Kiessling, in
the notes to his edition of Jamblichus, has given some extracts
from it, but by no means enough to dispense with the perusal
of the original. I think Meiners allows too much credit, on
the whole, to Aristoxenus (see p. 214), and makes too little
deduction for the various stories, difficult to be believed, of
which Aristoxenus is given as the source: of course the latter
could not furnish better matter than he heard from his own
witnesses. Where Meiners’s judgment is more severe, it is also
better borne out, especially respecting Porphyry himself, and his
scholar Jamblichus. These later Pythagorean philosophers seem to
have set up as a formal canon of credibility, that which many
religious men of antiquity acted upon from a mere unconscious
sentiment and fear of giving offence to the gods,—That it was
_not right to disbelieve any story_ recounted respecting the
gods, and wherein the divine agency was introduced: no one could
tell but what it _might be true_: to deny its truth, was to
set bounds to the divine omnipotence. Accordingly, they made
no difficulty in believing what was recounted about Aristæus,
Abaris, and other eminent subjects of mythes (Jamblichus, Vit.
Pyth. c. 138-148)—καὶ τοῦτό γε πάντες οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι ὅμως ἔχουσι
πιστευτικῶς, οἶον περὶ Ἀρισταίου καὶ Ἀβάριδος τὰ μυθολογούμενα
καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα τοιαῦτα λέγεται ... τῶν τοιούτων δὲ τῶν δοκούντων
μυθικῶν ἀπομνημονεύουσιν, ~ὡς οὐδὲν ἀπιστοῦντες ὅτι ἂν εἰς τὸ
θεῖον ἀναγηται~. Also, not less formally laid down in Jamblichus,
Adhortatio ad Philosophiam, as the fourth Symbolum, p. 324, ed.
Kiessling. Περὶ θεῶν μηδὲν θαυμαστὸν ἀπιστεῖ, μηδὲ περὶ θείων
δογμάτων. Reasoning from their principles, this was a consistent
corollary to lay down; but it helps us to estimate their value as
selectors and discriminators of accounts respecting Pythagoras.
The extravagant compliments paid by the emperor Julian in his
letters to Jamblichus will not suffice to establish the authority
of the latter as a critic and witness: see the Epistolæ 34, 40,
41, in Heyler’s edit. of Julian’s letters.

[733] Aulus Gell. N. A. iv, 11. Apollonius (ap. Jamblich. c. 262)
alludes to τὰ ὑπομνήματα τῶν Κροτωνιατῶν: what the date of these
may be, we do not know, but there is no reason to believe them
anterior to Aristoxenus.

To trace these tales to a true foundation is impossible: but we may entertain reasonable belief that the success of Pythagoras, as a person favored by the gods and patentee of divine secrets, was very great,—that he procured to himself both the reverence of the multitude and the peculiar attachment and obedience of many devoted adherents, chiefly belonging to the wealthy and powerful classes,—that a select body of these adherents, three hundred in number, bound themselves by a sort of vow both to Pythagoras and to each other, and adopted a peculiar diet, ritual, and observances, as a token of union,—though without anything like community of property, which some have ascribed to them. Such a band of men, standing high in the city for wealth and station, and bound together by this intimate tie, came by almost unconscious tendency to mingle political ambition with religious and scientific pursuits. Political clubs with sworn members, under one form or another, were a constant phenomenon in the Grecian cities,[734] and the Pythagorean order at its first formation was the most efficient of all clubs; since it presented an intimacy of attachment among its members, as well as a feeling of haughty exclusiveness against the public without, such as no other fraternity could parallel.[735] The devoted attachment of Pythagoreans towards each other is not less emphatically set forth than their contempt for every one else. In fact, these two attributes of the order seem the best ascertained, as well as the most permanent of all: moreover, we may be sure that the peculiar observances of the order passed for exemplary virtues in the eyes of its members, and exalted ambition into a duty, by making them sincerely believe that they were the only persons fit to govern. It is no matter of surprise, then, to learn that the Pythagoreans gradually drew to themselves great ascendency in the government of Kroton. And as similar clubs, not less influential, were formed at Metapontum and other places, so the Pythagorean order spread its net and dictated the course of affairs over a large portion of Magna Græcia. Such ascendency of the Pythagoreans must have procured for the master himself some real, and still more supposed, influence over the march of government at Kroton and elsewhere, of a nature not then possessed by any of his contemporaries throughout Greece.[736] But his influence was probably exercised in the background, through the medium of the brotherhood who reverenced him: for it is hardly conformable to Greek manners that a stranger of his character should guide personally and avowedly the political affairs of any Grecian city.

[734] Thucyd. viii, 54. τὰς ξυνωμοσίας, αἵπερ ἐτύγχανον πρότερον
οὖσαι ἐν τῇ πόλει ἐπὶ δίκαις καὶ ἀρχαῖς, ἁπάσας ἐπελθὼν, etc.

On this important passage, in which Thucydidês notes the
political clubs of Athens as sworn societies,—numerous,
notorious, and efficient,—I shall speak farther in a future stage
of the history. Dr. Arnold has a good note on the passage.

[735] Justin, xx, 4. “Sed trecenti ex juvenibus cum sodalitii
juris sacramento quodam nexi, separatam a ceteris civibus vitam
exercerent, quasi cœtum clandestinæ conjurationis haberent,
civitatem in se converterunt.”

Compare Diogen. Laërt. viii, 3; Apollonius ap. Jamblich. c. 254;
Porphyry, Vit. Pyth. c. 33.

The story of the devoted attachments of the two Pythagoreans
Damon and Phintias appears to be very well attested: Aristoxenus
heard it from the lips of the younger Dionysius the despot, whose
sentence had elicited such manifestation of friendship (Porphyry,
Vit. Pyth. c. 59-62, Cicero, De Officiis, iii, 10; and Davis ad
Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v, 22).

[736] Plutarch, Philosoph. cum Principib. c. i, p. 777. ἂν
δ᾽ ἄρχοντος ἀνδρὸς καὶ πολιτικοῦ καὶ πρακτικοῦ καθάψηται (ὁ
φιλόσοφος) καὶ τοῦτον ἀναπλήσῃ καλοκᾳγαθίας, πολλοὺς δι᾽
ἑνὸς ὠφέλησεν, ὡς Πυθαγόρας τοῖς πρωτεύουσι τῶν Ἰταλιωτῶν
συγγενόμενος.

Nor are we to believe that Pythagoras came originally to Kroton with the express design of creating for himself an ascendent political position,—still less that he came for the purpose of realizing a great preconceived political idea, and transforming Kroton into a model-city of pure Dorism, as has been supposed by some eminent modern authors. Such schemes might indeed be ascribed to him by Pythagoreans of the Platonic age, when large ideas of political amelioration were rife in the minds of speculative men,—by men disposed to forego the authorship of their own opinions, and preferring to accredit them as traditions handed down from a founder who had left no memorials; but it requires better evidence than theirs to make us believe that any real Greek born in 580 B. C. actually conceived such plans. We cannot construe the scheme of Pythagoras as going farther than the formation of a private, select order of brethren, embracing his religious fancies, ethical tone, and germs of scientific idea,—and manifesting adhesion by those observances which Herodotus and Plato call the Pythagorean orgies and mode of life. And his private order became politically powerful, because he was skilful or fortunate enough to enlist a sufficient number of wealthy Krotoniates, possessing individual influence which they strengthened immensely by thus regimenting themselves in intimate union. The Pythagorean orgies or religious ceremonies were not inconsistent with public activity, bodily as well as mental: probably the rich men of the order may have been rendered even more active, by being fortified against the temptations of a life of indulgence. The character of the order as it first stood, different from that to which it was afterwards reduced, was indeed religious and exclusive, but also active and domineering; not despising any of those bodily accomplishments which increased the efficiency of the Grecian citizen, and which so particularly harmonized with the preëxisting tendencies of Kroton.[737] Niebuhr and O. Müller have even supposed that the select Three Hundred Pythagoreans constituted a sort of smaller senate at that city,[738]—an hypothesis no way probable; we may rather conceive them as a powerful private club, exercising ascendency in the interior of the senate, and governing through the medium of the constituted authorities. Nor can we receive without great allowance the assertion of Varro,[739] who, assimilating Pythagoras to Plato, tells us that he confined his instructions on matters of government to chosen disciples, who had gone through a complete training, and had reached the perfection of wisdom and virtue. It seems more probable that the political Pythagoreans were those who were most qualified for action, and least for speculation. And we may reasonably suppose in the general of the order that skill in turning to account the aptitudes of individuals, which two centuries ago was so conspicuous in the Jesuits; to whom, in various ways, the Pythagoreans bear considerable resemblance. All that we can be said to know about their political principles is, that they were exclusive and aristocratical, adverse to the control and interference of the people; a circumstance no way disadvantageous to them, since they coincided in this respect with the existing government of the city,—had not their own conduct brought additional odium on the old aristocracy, and raised up an aggravated democratical opposition, carried to the most deplorable lengths of violence.

[737] I transcribe here the summary given by Krische, at the
close of his Dissertation on the Pythagorean order, p. 101:
“Societatis scopus fuit mere politicus, ut lapsam optimatium
potestatem non modo in pristinum restitueret, sed firmaret
amplificaretque: cum summo hoc scopo duo conjuncti fuerunt;
moralis alter, alter ad literas spectans. Discipulos suos bonos
probosque homines reddere voluit Pythagoras, et ut civitatem
moderantes potestate suâ non abuterentur ad plebem opprimendam;
et ut plebs, intelligens suis commodis consuli, conditione suâ
contenta esset. Quoniam vero bonum sapiensque moderamen nisi
a prudente literisque exculto viro exspectari (non) licet,
philosophiæ studium necessarium duxit Samius iis, qui ad
civitatis clavum tenendum se accingerent.”

This is the general view (coinciding substantially with that
of O. Müller,—Dorians, iii, 9, 16) given by an author who has
gone through the evidences with care and learning. It differs
on some important points from the idea which I conceive of the
primitive master and his contemporary brethren. It leaves out
the religious ascendency, which I imagine to have stood first
among the means as well as among the premeditated purposes
of Pythagoras, and sets forth a reformatory political scheme
as directly contemplated by him, of which there is no proof.
Though the political ascendency of the early Pythagoreans is
the most prominent feature in their early history, it is not to
be considered as the manifestation of any peculiar or settled
political idea,—it is rather a result of their position and means
of union. Ritter observes, in my opinion more justly: “We must
not believe that the mysteries of the Pythagorean order were of
a simply political character: the most probable accounts warrant
us in considering that its central point was a mystic religious
teaching,” (Geschicht. der Philosophie, b. iv, ch. i, vol. i, pp.
365-368:) compare Hoeck. Kreta, vol. iii, p. 223.

Krische (p. 32) as well as Boeckh (Philolaus, pp. 39-42) and O.
Müller assimilate the Pythagorean life to the Dorian or Spartan
habits, and call the Pythagorean philosophy the expression
of Grecian Dorism, as opposed to the Ionians and the Ionic
philosophy. I confess that I perceive no analogy between the two,
either in action or speculation. The Spartans stand completely
distinct from other Dorians; and even the Spartan habits of
life, though they present some points of resemblance with the
bodily training of the Pythagoreans, exhibit still more important
points of difference, in respect to religious peculiarity and
mysticism, as well as to scientific element embodied with it. The
Pythagorean philosophy, and the Eleatic philosophy, were both
equally opposed to the Ionic; yet neither of them is in any way
connected with Dorian tendencies. Neither Elea nor Kroton were
Doric cities; moreover, Xenophanês as well as Pythagoras were
both Ionians.

The general assertions respecting Ionic mobility and inconstancy,
contrasted with Doric constancy and steadiness, will not be found
borne out by a study of facts. The Dorism of Pythagoras appears
to me a complete fancy. O. Müller even turns Kroton into a Dorian
city, contrary to all evidence.

[738] Niebuhr, Römisch. Gesch. i, p. 165, 2nd edit.; O. Müller,
Hist of Dorians, iii, 9, 16: Krische is opposed to this idea,
sect. v, p. 84.

[739] Varro ap. Augustin. de Ordine, ii, 30; Krische, p. 77.

All the information which we possess, apocryphal as it is, respecting this memorable club, is derived from its warm admirers; yet even their statements are enough to explain how it came to provoke deadly and extensive enmity. A stranger coming to teach new religious dogmas and observances, with a tincture of science and some new ethical ideas and phrases, though he would obtain some zealous votaries, would also bring upon himself a certain measure of antipathy. Extreme strictness of observances, combined with the art of touching skilfully the springs of religious terror in others, would indeed do much both to fortify and to exalt him. But when it was discovered that science, philosophy, and even the mystic revelations of religion, whatever they were, remained confined to the private talk and practice of the disciples, and were thus thrown into the background, while all that was seen and felt without, was the political predominance of an ambitious fraternity,—we need not wonder that Pythagorism in all its parts became odious to a large portion of the community. Moreover, we find the order represented not merely as constituting a devoted and exclusive political party, but also as manifesting an ostentatious self-conceit throughout their personal demeanor,[740]—refusing the hand of fellowship to all except the brethren, and disgusting especially their own familiar friends and kinsmen. So far as we know Grecian philosophy, this is the only instance in which it was distinctly abused for political and party objects: the early days of the Pythagorean order stand distinguished for such perversion, which, fortunately for the progress of philosophy, never presented itself afterwards in Greece.[741] Even at Athens, however, we shall hereafter see that Sokratês, though standing really aloof from all party intrigue, incurred much of his unpopularity from supposed political conjunction with Kritias and Alkibiadês,[742] to which, indeed, the orator Æschinês distinctly ascribes his condemnation, speaking about sixty years after the event. Had Sokratês been known as the founder of a band holding together intimately for ambitious purposes, the result would have been eminently pernicious to philosophy, and probably much sooner pernicious to himself.

[740] Apollonius ap. Jamblichum, V. P. c. 254, 255, 256, 257.
ἡγεμόνες δὲ ἐγένοντο τῆς διαφορᾶς οἱ ταῖς συγγενείαις καὶ ταῖς
~οἰκειότησιν~ ἐγγύτατα καθεστηκότες τῶν Πυθαγορείων. Αἴτιον δ᾽
ἦν, ὅτι τὰ μὲν πολλὰ αὐτοὺς ἐλύπει τῶν πραττομένων, etc.: compare
also the lines descriptive of Pythagoras, c. 259. Τοὺς μὲν
ἑταίρους ἧγεν ἴσους μακάρεσσι θεοῖσι. Τοὺς δ᾽ ἄλλους ἡγεῖτ᾽ οὔτ᾽
ἐν λόγῳ, ἐν ἀριθμῷ.

That this Apollonius, cited both by Jamblichus and by Porphyry,
is Apollonius of Tyana, has been rendered probable by Meiners
(Gesch. der Wissensch. v. i, pp. 239-245): compare Welcker,
Prolegomena ad Theognid. pp. xlv, xlvi.

When we read the life of Apollonius by Philostratus, we see that
the former was himself extremely communicative: he might be the
rather disposed therefore to think that the seclusion and reserve
of Pythagoras was a defect, and to ascribe to it much of the
mischief which afterwards overtook the order.

[741] Schleiermacher observes, that “Philosophy among the
Pythagoreans was connected with political objects, and their
school with a practical brotherly partnership, such as was never
on any other occasion seen in Greece.” (Introduction to his
Translation of Plato, p. 12.) See also Theopompus, Fr. 68, ed.
Didot, apud Athenæum, v, p. 213, and Euripidês, Mêdêa, 294.

[742] Xenophon, Memorab. i, 2, 12; Æschines, cont. Timarch. c.
34. ὑμεῖς, ὦ Ἀθηναῖοι, Σωκράτην μὲν τὸν σοφιστὴν ἀπεκτείνατε, ὅτι
Κριτίαν ἐφάνη πεπαιδευκὼς, ἕνα τῶν τριάκοντα.

It was this cause which brought about the complete and violent destruction of the Pythagorean order. Their ascendency had provoked such wide-spread discontent, that their enemies became emboldened to employ extreme force against them. Kylon and Ninon—the former of whom is said to have sought admittance into the order, but to have been rejected on account of his bad character—took the lead in pronounced opposition to the Pythagoreans; and the odium which the latter had incurred extended itself farther to the Senate of One Thousand, through the medium of which their ascendency had been exercised. Propositions were made for rendering the government more democratical, and for constituting a new senate, taken by lot from all the people, before which the magistrates should go through their trial of accountability after office; an opportunity being chosen in which the Senate of One Thousand had given signal offence by refusing to divide among the people the recently conquered territory of Sybaris.[743] In spite of the opposition of the Pythagoreans, this change of government was carried through. Ninon and Kylon, their principal enemies, made use of it to exasperate the people still farther against the order, until they provoked actual popular violence against it. The Pythagoreans were attacked when assembled in their meeting-house near the temple of Apollo, or, as some said, in the house of Milo: the building was set on fire, and many of the members perished;[744] none but the younger and more vigorous escaping. Similar disturbances, and the like violent suppression of the order, with destruction of several among the leading citizens, are said to have taken place in other cities of Magna Græcia,—Tarentum, Metapontum, Kaulonia. And we are told that these cities remained for some time in a state of great disquietude and commotion from which they were only rescued by the friendly mediation of the Peloponnesian Achæans, the original founders of Sybaris and Kroton,—assisted, indeed, by mediators from other parts of Greece. The cities were at length pacified, and induced to adopt an amicable congress, with common religious festivals at a temple founded expressly for the purpose, and dedicated to Zeus Homarius.[745]

[743] This is stated in Jamblichus, c. 255; yet it is difficult
to believe; for if the fact had been so, the destruction of the
Pythagoreans would naturally have produced an allotment and
permanent occupation of the Sybaritan territory,—which certainly
did not take place, for Sybaris remained without resident
possessors until the foundation of Thurii.

[744] Jamblichus, c, 255-259; Porphyry, c. 54-57; Diogen. Laërt.
viii, 39; Diodor. x, Fragm. vol. iv, p. 56, Wess.

[745] Polyb. ii, 39; Plutarch, De Genio Socratis, c. 13, p. 583;
Aristoxenus, ap. Jamblich. c. 250. That the enemies of the order
attacked it by setting fire to the house in which the members
were assembled, is the circumstance in which all accounts agree.
On all other points there is great discrepancy, especially
respecting the names and dates of the Pythagoreans who escaped:
Boeckh (Philolaus, p. 9, _seq._) and Brandis (Handbuch der Gesch.
Philos. ch. lxxiii, p. 432) try to reconcile these discrepancies.

Aristophanês introduces Strepsiadês, at the close of the Nubes,
as setting fire to the meeting-house (φροντιστήριον) of Sokratês
and his disciples possibly the Pythagorean conflagration may have
suggested this.

Thus perished the original Pythagorean order. Respecting Pythagoras himself, there were conflicting accounts; some representing that he was burnt in the temple with his disciples;[746] others, that he had died a short time previously; others again affirmed that he was alive at the time, but absent, and that he died not long afterwards in exile, after forty days of voluntary abstinence from food. His tomb was still shown at Metapontum in the days of Cicero.[747] As an active brotherhood, the Pythagoreans never revived; but the dispersed members came together as a sect, for common religious observances and common pursuit of science. They were readmitted, after some interval, into the cities of Magna Græcia,[748] from which they had been originally expelled, but to which the sect is always considered as particularly belonging,—though individual members of it are found besides at Thebes and other cities of Greece. Indeed, some of these later Pythagoreans sometimes even acquired great political influence, as we see in the case of the Tarentine Archytas, the contemporary of Plato.

[746] “Pythagoras Samius suspicione dominatûs injustâ vivus in
fano concrematus est.” (Arnobius adv. Gentes, lib. i, p. 23, ed.
Elmenhorst.)

[747] Cicero, De Finib. v, 2 (who seems to have copied from
Dikæarchus: see Fuhr. ad Dikæarchi Fragment. p. 55); Justin, xx,
4; Diogen. Laërt. viii, 40; Jamblichus, V. P. c. 249.

O. Müller says (Dorians, iii, 9, 16), that “the influence of
the Pythagorean league upon the administration of the Italian
states was of the most beneficial kind, which continued for many
generations after the dissolution of the league itself.”

The first of these two assertions cannot be made out, and depends
only on the statements of later encomiasts, who even supply
materials to contradict their own general view. The judgment
of Welcker respecting the influence of the Pythagoreans, much
less favorable, is at the same time more probable. (Præfat. ad
Theognid. p. xlv.)

The second of the two assertions appears to me quite incorrect;
the influence of the Pythagorean order on the government of
Magna Græcia ceased altogether, as far as we are able to judge.
An individual Pythagorean like Archytas might obtain influence,
but this is not the influence of the order. Nor ought O. Müller
to talk about the Italian Greeks giving up the Doric customs and
adopting an Achæan government. There is nothing to prove that
Kroton ever had Doric customs.

[748] Aristotel. de Cœlo, ii, 13. οἱ περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν, καλούμενοι
δὲ Πυθαγορεῖοι. “Italici philosophi quondam nominati.” (Cicero,
De Senect. c. 21.)

It has already been stated that the period when Pythagoras arrived at Kroton may be fixed somewhere between B. C. 540-530; and his arrival is said to have occurred at a time of great depression in the minds of the Krotoniates. They had recently been defeated by the united Lokrians and Rhegians, vastly inferior to themselves in number, at the river Sagra; and the humiliation thus brought upon them is said to have rendered them docile to the training of the Samian missionary.[749] As the birth of the Pythagorean order is thus connected with the defeat of the Krotoniates at the Sagra, so its extinction is also connected with their victory over the Sybarites at the river Traeis, or Trionto, about twenty years afterwards.

[749] Heyne places the date of the battle of Sagra about 560
B. C.; but this is very uncertain. See his Opuscula, vol. ii,
Prolus. ii, pp. 53, and Prolus. x, p. 184. See also Justin, xx,
3, and Strabo, vi, pp. 261-263. It will be seen that the latter
conceives the battle of the Sagra as having happened after the
destruction of Sybaris by the Krotoniates; for he states twice
that the Krotoniates lost so many citizens at the Sagra, that
the city did not long survive so terrible a blow: he cannot,
therefore, have supposed that the complete triumph of the
Krotoniates over the great Sybaris was gained afterwards.

Of the history of these two great Achæan cities we unfortunately know very little. Though both were powerful, yet down to the period of 510 B. C., Sybaris seems to have been decidedly the greatest: of its dominion as well as of its much-denounced luxury I have spoken in a former chapter.[750] It was at that time that the war broke out between them which ended in the destruction of Sybaris. It is certain that the Sybaritans were aggressors in the war; but by what causes it had been preceded in their own town, or what provocation they had received, we make out very indistinctly. There had been a political revolution at Sybaris, we are told, not long before, in which a popular leader named Têlys had headed a rising against the oligarchical government, and induced the people to banish five hundred of the leading rich men, as well as to confiscate their properties. He had acquired the sovereignty and become despot of Sybaris;[751] and it appears that he, or his rule at Sybaris, was much abhorred at Kroton,—since the Krotoniate Philippus, a man of splendid muscular form and an Olympic victor, was exiled for having engaged himself to marry the daughter of Têlys.[752] According to the narrative given by the later Pythagoreans, those exiles, whom Têlys had driven from Sybaris, took refuge at Kroton, and cast themselves as suppliants on the altars for protection. It may well be, indeed, that they were in part Pythagoreans of Sybaris. A body of powerful exiles, harbored in a town so close at hand, naturally inspired alarm, and Têlys demanded that they should be delivered up, threatening war in case of refusal. This demand excited consternation at Kroton, since the military strength of Sybaris was decidedly superior. The surrender of the exiles was much debated, and almost decreed, by the Krotoniates, until at length the persuasion of Pythagoras himself is said to have determined them to risk any hazard sooner than incur the dishonor of betraying suppliants.

[750] See above, vol. iii, chap. xxii.

[751] Diodor. xii, 9. Herodotus calls Têlys in one place βασιλῆα,
in another τύραννον of Sybaris (v, 44): this is not at variance
with the story of Diodorus.

The story given by Athenæus, out of Herakleidês Ponticus,
respecting the subversion of the dominion of Têlys, cannot be
reconciled either with Herodotus or Diodorus (Athenæus, xii,
p. 522). Dr. Thirlwall supposes the deposition of Têlys to
have occurred between the defeat at the Traeis and the capture
of Sybaris; but this is inconsistent with the statement of
Herakleidês, and not countenanced by any other evidence.

[752] Herodot. v, 47.

On the demand of the Sybarites being refused, Têlys marched against Kroton, at the head of a force which is reckoned at three hundred thousand men.[753] He marched, too, in defiance of the strongest religious warnings against the enterprise,—for the sacrifices, offered on his behalf by the Iamid prophet Kallias of Elis, were decisively unfavorable, and the prophet himself fled in terror to Kroton.[754] Near the river Traeis, or Trionto, he was met by the forces of Kroton, consisting, we are informed, of one hundred thousand men, and commanded by the great athlete and Pythagorean Milo; who was clothed, we are told, in the costume and armed with the club of Hêraklês. They were farther reinforced, however, by a valuable ally, the Spartan Dorieus, younger brother of king Kleomenês, then coasting along the gulf of Tarentum with a body of colonists, intending to found a settlement in Sicily. A bloody battle was fought, in which the Sybarites were totally worsted, with prodigious slaughter; while the victors, fiercely provoked and giving no quarter, followed up the pursuit so warmly that they took the city, dispersed its inhabitants, and crushed its whole power[755] in the short space of seventy days. The Sybarites fled in great part to Laos and Skidros,[756] their settlements planted on the Mediterranean coast, across the Calabrian peninsula. And so eager were the Krotoniates to render the site of Sybaris untenable, that they turned the course of the river Krathis so as to overwhelm and destroy it: the dry bed in which the river had originally flowed was still visible in the time of Herodotus,[757] who was among the settlers in the town of Thurii, afterwards founded, nearly adjoining.

[753] Diodor. xii, 9; Strabo, vi, p. 263; Jamblichus, Vit.
Pythag. c. 260; Skymn. Chi. v, 340.

[754] Herodot. v, 44.

[755] Diodor. xii, 9, 10; Strabo, vi, p. 263.

[756] Herodot. vi, 21; Strabo, vi, p. 253.

[757] Herodot. v, 45; Diodor. xii, 9, 10; Strabo, vi, p. 263.
Strabo mentions expressly the turning of the river for the
purpose of overwhelming the city,—ἐλόντες γὰρ τὴν πόλιν ἐπήγαγον
τὸν ποταμὸν καὶ κατέκλυσαν. It is to this change in the channel
of the river that I refer the expression in Herodotus,—τέμενός
τε καὶ νηὸν ἐόντα ~παρὰ τὸν ξηρὸν~ Κρᾶθιν. It was natural
that the old deserted bed of the river should be called “_the
dry Krathis_:” whereas, if we suppose that there was only one
channel, the expression has no appropriate meaning. For I do not
think that any one can be well satisfied with the explanation
of Bähr “Vocatur Crathis hoc loco ξηρὸς _siccus_, ut qui hieme
fluit, æstatis vero tempore exsiccatus est: quod adhuc in multis
Italiæ inferioris fluviis observant.” I doubt whether this be
true, as a matter of fact, respecting the river Krathis (see my
preceding volume, ch. xxii), but even if the fact were true, the
epithet in Bähr’s sense has no especial significance for the
purpose contemplated by Herodotus, who merely wishes to describe
the site of the temple erected by Dorieus. “Near the Krathis,” or
“near the dry Krathis,” would be equivalent expressions, if we
adopted Bähr’s construction; whereas to say, “near the deserted
channel of the Krathis,” would be a good local designation.

It appears, however, that the Krotoniates for a long time kept the site of Sybaris deserted, refusing even to allot the territory among the body of their own citizens: from which circumstances, as has been before noticed, the commotion against the Pythagorean order is said to have arisen. They may perhaps have been afraid of the name and recollections of the city; wherein no large or permanent establishment was ever formed, until Thurii was established by Athens about sixty-five years afterwards. Nevertheless, the name of the Sybarites did not perish. Having maintained themselves at Laos, Skidros, and elsewhere, they afterwards formed the privileged Old-citizens among the colonists of Thurii; but misbehaved themselves in that capacity, and were mostly either slain or expelled. Even after that, however, the name of Sybaris still remained on a reduced scale in some portion of the territory. Herodotus recounts what he was told by the Sybarites, and we find subsequent indications of them even as late as Theokritus.

The conquest and destruction of the original Sybaris—perhaps in 510 B. C. the greatest of all Grecian cities—appears to have excited a strong sympathy in the Hellenic world. In Milêtus, especially, with which it had maintained intimate union, the grief was so vehement, that all the Milesians shaved their heads in token of mourning.[758] The event happened just at the time of the expulsion of Hippias from Athens, and must have made a sensible revolution in the relations of the Greek cities on the Italian coast with the rustic population of the interior. The Krotoniates might destroy Sybaris, and disperse its inhabitants, but they could not succeed to its wide dominion over dependent territory; and the extinction of this great aggregate power, stretching across the peninsula from sea to sea, lessened the means of resistance against the Oscan movements from the inland. From this time forward, the cities of Magna Græcia, as well as those of Ionia, tend to decline in consequence, while Athens, on the other hand, becomes both more conspicuous and more powerful. At the invasion of Greece by Xerxês, thirty years after this conquest of Sybaris, Sparta and Athens send to ask for aid both from Sicily and Korkyra,—but not from Magna Græcia.

[758] Herodot. vi, 21.

It is much to be regretted that we do not possess fuller information respecting these important changes among the Greco-Italian cities, but we may remark that even Herodotus,—himself a citizen of Thurii, and dwelling on the spot not more than eighty years after the capture of Sybaris,—evidently found no written memorials to consult; and could obtain from verbal conversation nothing better than statements both meagre and contradictory. The material circumstance, for example, of the aid rendered by the Spartan Dorieus and his colonists, though positively asserted by the Sybarites, was as positively denied by the Krotoniates, who alleged that they had accomplished the conquest by themselves, and with their own unaided forces. There can be little hesitation in crediting the affirmative assertion of the Sybarites, who showed to Herodotus a temple and precinct erected by the Spartan prince in testimony of his share in the victory, on the banks of the dry, deserted channel, out of which the Krathis had been turned, and in honor of the Krathian Athênê.[759] This of itself forms a proof, coupled with the positive assertion of the Sybarites, sufficient for the case. But they produced another indirect argument to confirm it, which deserves notice. Dorieus had attacked Sybaris while he was passing along the coast of Italy to go and found a colony in Sicily, under the express mandate and encouragement of the oracle; and after tarrying awhile at Sybaris, he pursued his journey to the south-western portion of Sicily, where he and nearly all his companions perished in a battle with the Carthaginians and Egestæans,—though the oracle had promised him that he should acquire and occupy permanently the neighboring territory near Mount Eryx. Now the Sybarites deduced from this fatal disaster of Dorieus and his expedition, combined with the favorable promise of the oracle beforehand, a confident proof of the correctness of their own statement that he had fought at Sybaris. For if he had gone straight to the territory marked out by the oracle, they argued, without turning aside for any other object, the prophecy on which his hopes were founded would have been unquestionably realized, and he would have succeeded; but the ruinous disappointment which actually overtook him was at once explained, and the truth of prophecy vindicated, when it was recollected that he had turned aside to help the Krotoniates against Sybaris, and thus set at nought the conditions prescribed to him. Upon this argument, Herodotus tells us, the Sybarites of his day especially insisted.[760] And while we note their pious and literal faith in the communications of an inspired prophet, we must at the same time observe how perfectly that faith supplied the place of historical premises,—how scanty their stock was of such legitimate evidence,—and how little they had yet learned to appreciate its value.

[759] Herodot. v, 45.

[760] Herodot. v, 45. Τοῦτο δὲ, αὐτοῦ Δωριέος τὸν θάνατον
μαρτύριον μέγιστον ποιεῦνται (Συβαρῖται), ὅτι παρὰ τὰ
μεμαντευμένα ποιέων διεφθάρῃ. Εἰ γὰρ δὴ μὴ παρέπρηξε μηδὲν, ἐπ᾽
ᾧ δὲ ἐστάλη ἐποίεε, εἷλε ἂν τὴν Ἐρυκίνην χώρην καὶ ἑλὼν κάτεσχε,
οὐδ᾽ ἂν αὐτός τε καὶ ἡ στρατιὴ διεφθάρῃ.

It is to be remarked, that Herodotus, in his brief mention of the fatal war between Sybaris and Kroton, does not make the least allusion to Pythagoras or his brotherhood. The least which we can infer from such silence is, that the part which they played in reference to the war, and their general ascendency in Magna Græcia, was in reality less conspicuous and overruling than the Pythagorean historians set forth. Even making such allowance, however, the absence of all allusion in Herodotus, to the commotions which accompanied the subversion of the Pythagoreans, is a surprising circumstance. Nor can I pass over a perplexing statement in Polybius, which seems to show that he too must have conceived the history of Sybaris in a way different from that in which it is commonly represented. He tells us that after much suffering in Magna Græcia, from the troubles which followed the expulsion of the Pythagoreans, the cities were induced by Achæan mediation to come to an accommodation, and even to establish something like a permanent league, with a common temple and sacrifices. Now the three cities which he specifies as having been the first to do this, are Kroton, Sybaris, and Kaulonia.[761] But according to the sequence of events and the fatal war, just described, between Kroton and Sybaris, the latter city must have been at that time in ruins; little, if at all, inhabited. I cannot but infer from this statement of Polybius, that he followed different authorities respecting the early history of Magna Græcia in the beginning of the fifth century B. C.

[761] Polyb. ii, 39. Heyne thinks that the agreement here
mentioned by Polybius took place Olymp. 80, 3; or, indeed, after
the repopulation of the Sybaritan territory by the foundation
of Thurii (Opuscula, vol. ii; Prolus. x, p. 189). But there
seems great difficulty in imagining that the state of violent
commotion—which, according to Polybius, was only appeased by this
agreement—can possibly have lasted so long as half a century; the
received date of the overthrow of the Pythagoreans being about
504 B. C.

Indeed, the early history of these cities gives us little more than a few isolated facts and names. With regard to their legislators, Zaleukus and Charondas, nothing is made out except their existence,—and even that fact some ancient critics contested. Of Zaleukus, whom chronologists place in 664 B. C., I have already spoken; the date of Charondas cannot be assigned, but we may perhaps presume that it was at some time between 600-500 B. C. He was a citizen of middling station, born in the Chalkidic colony of Katana in Sicily,[762] and he framed laws not only for his own city, but for the other Chalkidic cities in Sicily and Italy,—Leontini, Naxos, Zanklê, and Rhêgium. The laws and the solemn preamble ascribed to him by Diodorus and Stobæus, belong to a later day,[763] and we are obliged to content ourselves with collecting the brief hints of Aristotle, who tells us that the laws of Charondas descended to great minuteness of distinction and specification, especially in graduating the fine for offences according to the property of the guilty person fined,[764]—but that there was nothing in his laws strictly original and peculiar, except that he was the first to introduce the solemn indictment against perjured witnesses before justice. The perjured witness, in Grecian ideas, was looked upon as having committed a crime half religious, half civil; and the indictment raised against him, known by a peculiar name, partook of both characters, approaching in some respects to the procedure against a murderer. Such distinct form of indictment against perjured testimony—with its appropriate name,[765] which we shall find maintained at Athens throughout the best-known days of Attic law—was first enacted by Charondas.

[762] Aristot. Politic. ii, 9, 6; iv, 9, 10. Heyne puts Charondas
much earlier than the foundation of Thurii, in which, I think,
he is undoubtedly right: but without determining the date more
exactly (Opuscul. vol. ii; Prolus. ix, p. 160), Charondas must
certainly have been earlier than Anaxilas of Rhêgium and the
great Sicilian despots; which will place him higher than 500 B.
C.: but I do not know that any more precise mark of time can be
found.

[763] Diodorus, xii, 35; Stobæus, Serm. xliv, 20-40; Cicero
de Legg. ii, 6. See K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech.
Staatsalterthümer, ch. 89; Heyne, Opuscul. vol. ii, pp. 72-164.
Brandis (Geschichte der Röm. Philosophie, ch. xxvi, p. 102) seems
to conceive these prologues as genuine.

The mistakes and confusion made by ancient writers respecting
these lawgivers—even by writers earlier than Aristotle (Politic.
ii, 9, 5)—are such as we have no means of clearing up.

Seneca (Epist. 90) calls both Zaleukus and Charondas disciples
of Pythagoras. That the former was so, is not to be believed;
but it is not wholly impossible that the latter may have been
so,—or at least that he may have been a companion of the earliest
Pythagoreans.

[764] Aristotel. Politic. ii, 9, 8. Χαρώνδου δ᾽ ἴδιον μὲν οὐδέν
ἐστι πλὴν αἱ δίκαι τῶν ψευδομαρτύρων· πρῶτος γὰρ ἐποίησε τὴν
ἐπίσκηψιν· τῇ δ᾽ ἀκριβείᾳ τῶν νόμων ἐστὶ γλαφυρώτερος καὶ τῶν νῦν
νομοθετῶν. To the fulness and precision predicated respecting
Charondas in the latter part of this passage, I refer the other
passage in Politic. iv, 10, 6, which is not to be construed as
if it meant that Charondas had graduated fines on the rich and
poor with a distinct view to that political trick (of indirectly
eliminating the poor from public duties) which Aristotle had been
just adverting to,—but merely means that Charondas had been nice
and minute in graduating pecuniary penalties generally, having
reference to the wealth or poverty of the person sentenced.

[765] Πρῶτος γὰρ ἐποίησε τὴν ~ἐπίσκηψιν~ (Aristot. Politic. ii,
9, 8). See Harpokration, v. Ἐπεσκήψατο, and Pollux, viii, 33;
Demosthenês cont. Stephanum, ii, c. 5; cont. Euerg. et Mnêsibul.
c. 1. The word ἐπίσκηψις carries with it the solemnity of meaning
adverted to it in the text, and seems to have been used specially
with reference to an action or indictment against perjured
witnesses: which indictment was permitted to be brought with a
less degree of risk or cost to the accuser than most others in
the Attic dikasteries, (Dêmosth. cont. Euerg. et Mn. _l. c._)