Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras

This is Thomas Taylor's English translation, dated 1818, of Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras. The title page adds fragments of ethical writings by certain Pythagoreans in the Doric dialect and a collection of Pythagoric sentences from Stobaeus and others. A verse motto addresses the genuine philosophic few and keeps the vulgar herd at a distance. The contents list runs through numbered chapters.

One passage describes Pythagoras as a youth at Samos, so temperate that elderly men honoured him, his renown reaching Thales at Miletus and Bias at Priene. At eighteen, as the tyranny of Polycrates began, he left privately by night with Hermodamas, called Creophilus. Another passage reports a saying of the Pythagoreans that teachers who work for reward are worse than statuaries, and that philosophy deserves more attention than parents or agriculture. Footnotes discuss the divine origin of Pythagoras and of Plato, citing Apuleius, Plutarch and Hesychius.