appears to believe that the philosopher and the wrestler were not the same person. He tells us that the eating of figs gives strength to the body, and that hence the athletes were fed on them, and that it was Pythagoras, "the master of exercises" (exercitator), who first taught them to eat flesh.* The notion that Pythagoras and his disciples wholly abstained from animal food, has no doubt helped the belief in the distinction between the sage and the boxer. But it is not established; and Pythagoras had every qualification for excelling in the art of self-defence, being, as Bentley says, "a lusty proper man, and built, as it were, to make a good boxer."t Jamblichus tells us that amongst their other exercises, the disciples of Pythagoras were instructed in anointing, racing, and wrestling, in throwing the plummet, and in leaping, and in short in all exercises calculated to strengthen the powers of the body. The body was considered as worthy of education, as the soul by * Plinius, "Hist. Nat." 1. xxIII, c. 7. the sages of Greece. Cleanthes, the stoic, the strongest man of his age, was in his youth, like Pythagoras, a famous bruiser; Chrysippus shone on the race-course, while Plato and Lycon of Troas were distinguished as wrestlers. In manhood and old age Pythagoras was remarkable for the dignity and gravity of his aspect. No one, says Porphyry, ever saw him. either laugh or cry. His rebuke in one instance is said to have been followed by the fatal effect which has been attributed to the Satires of Archilochus. A young man, reproved by Pythagoras, straightway went and hanged himself. Seeing the alarming consequence of his reprimand, which there need be no doubt was conveyed with all possible mildness, the philosopher, who was of a sweet and amiable temper, and who inculcated in his disciples the duty of being gentle in censuring, ever afterwards, it is said, abstained from reproving at all. The beard of Pythagoras was long and flowing; and as he was regarded as the first * Porphyrius, sec. 35. philosopher, this circumstance helped to make a long beard to be looked on as the badge of a wise man, and to lead all the quacks, who aspired to the reputation and profits of philosophy, to take care to be furnished with this outward and visible sign of their inner wisdom, and of the genuineness of their calling. In all ages of the world evidence of wisdom and virtue, quite as equivocal as a long beard, has been received as perfectly satisfactory both by the learned and the unlearned vulgar. It is a pretty story in illustration of the reverence which the ancients paid to a long beard, which is told by Aulus Gellius of the wise and good Herodes Atticus. A person came to Herodes, wrapped in a cloak with long hair and a very long beard, and asked money of him to buy bread. Herodes inquired what he was, on which the beggar, with a frowning face and surly voice, said he was a philosopher, expressing at the same time his wonder that Herodes should ask any question about what he must see. "I see, indeed," replied the true philosopher, "the beard and the cloak; but the philosopher I do not yet see. I request you, however, with your good leave, to tell me what reason you think we have for knowing you to be a philosopher." On this Herodes dismissed the needy quack with as much money as would buy him bread for thirty days.* He Like Aristotle and Aristippus, Pythagoras delighted in the adorning of his person, and was altogether a man of elegant tastes. wore a white robe with Persian trowsers (avatupides), and a golden crown on his head.† His robe was of linen, woollen clothes being for some reason or other avoided by him and his disciples. There was a refinement about all his habits, as indeed there was about those of the best of his followers amongst the Greek philosophers. He delighted in poetry; his favourite writers being Homer and Hesiod. The verses which he used oftenest to sing were the lines in the seventeenth book of the Iliad (51, 60), describing the death of Euphor * Aulus Gellius, "Noctes Atticæ," 1. ix, c. 2. † Elian, x1, c. 38. Jamblichus, c. XXVIII, sec. 149. bus. Euphorbus, whose soul Pythagoras taught had passed into his body, was, like Pythagoras, extremely beautiful. Like Pythagoras also he delighted in tasteful ornaments ; "his locks," says Homer, "were like those of the Graces, and were bound with gold and silver." Like Sophocles, and the accomplished and amiable Theban, Epaminondas, Pythagoras was skilled in the science and practice of music and dancing.* The instrument of his preference was the lute. Like the fabled Minerva and the true Alcibiades, he probably objected to the pipe on account of its disfiguring the features of the player; but Jamblichus tells us that the Pythagoreans considered that the pipe had something effeminate in it unworthy of free men. Music was part of the regular discipline in the school of Pythagoras, and it was used as a medicine for physical diseases, as well as for the sufferings of the soul. "There were strains composed," says Jamblichus, "for curing the affections of the body, and others which were present remedies against sorrow and anguish of * Quintilian, "Institut. Orat." lib. II. VOL. I. D |