tronomy of the Egyptians, and acquired the observations of infinite ages (as Valerius Maximus expresses it), he determined upon exploring new and more distant scenes in search of knowledge, and from Egypt went to Babylon; his recommendations from Egypt secured him a reception by the Chaldees and Magi; here he was a disciple of Nazaratus the Assyrian, and we are told by Porphyry, that he was purified by Zabratus from all defilements of his former life; by what particular modes of discipline this purification was effected Porphyry does not explain. From Babylon he pushed his travels into Persia, and was instructed by the Magi in their religion and way of living; from them he received those rules of diet which he afterwards prescribed to his disciples, with various opinions of things clean and unclean, which were amongst his maxims; these conform to the present practice of the Brahmins, which may well be supposed to have been inviolably preserved through that separated and sacred cast from times of high antiquity; for what invention can be devised to secure the longevity of any system better than that upon which the sacerdotal order of Brahmins is established? By the Persian Magi he was instructed in many particulars of Jewish knowledge, chiefly their interpretations of dreams. We have Cicero's authority for this part of his travels (de fin. lib. v.) and Valerius Maximus says the Persian Magi taught him a most complete system of ethics; that they likewise instructed him in the motions and courses of the heavenly bodies, their properties and effects, and the influence every star respectively is supposed to have.

In the course of these travels he passed more than twenty years; he then turned his face homewards, taking the isle of Crete in his way: here and at Lacedemon he perused their famous codes of laws, and

having now completed the great tour of science, and stored his mind with all the hidden treasures of oriental knowledge, he presented himself, for the first time, to the admiring eyes of Greece, assembled at the Olympic Games.

A spectacle no doubt it was for universal admiration and respect; an understanding so enriched and full in its meridian vigour, was an object that the wisest of his contemporaries might look up to with veneration little short of idolatry. Pythagoras in this attitude, surrounded by the Grecian sages on the field of the Olympic Games, whilst every eye was fixed with rapture and delight upon one of the most perfect forms in nature, began to pour forth the wonders of his doctrine: astonishment seized the hearers, and almost doubting if it was a mortal that had been discoursing, they with one voice applauded his wisdom, and demanded by what title he would in future be addressed: Pythagoras answered, that their seven sages had taken the name of wise men, or sophists; for his part he left them in possession of a distinction they so well merited; he wished to be no otherwise remembered or described than as a Lover of Wisdom; his pretensions did not go to the possession of it: and if they would call him a Philosopher he should be contented with the appellation: from this time the name Philosopher became a title of honour amongst the learned, whilst that of Sophist sunk into universal contempt.

No. IX.

I HAVE observed that Pythagoras, on his return from the East, took the island of Crete in his way; here he visited the famous philosopher Epimenides. Porphyry and Iamblichus must be greatly out in

their chronology when they make Epimenides one of Pythagoras's scholars; Laertius's account is more probable, who says he was one of Pythagoras's masters, which naturally accounts for that Philosopher's seeking an interview with him in Crete, as he did afterwards with Pherecydes on his deathbed in Syria: in this interview, Pythagoras, no doubt, gave an account to Epimenides of the many marvellous things he had learned in his travels, and so far the disciple may be said to have instructed his master; Epimenides himself was no small adept in the marvellous, and propagated a story through Greece of his having slept fifty-seven years in a cave, and that upon waking after his long repose he resumed his search for some sheep, which his father had sent him upon more than half a century before; the story does not say that he found these sheep, which probably were now become more difficult to recover than upon his first search; he returned however to his father's house, and was rather surprised upon discovering a new generation in possession, who thought no more of Epimenides than they did of his sheep this sleeping philosopher however filled up the gap in his life pretty well, for Zenophanes says he lived to one hundred and fifty-seven years of age; and the Cretans, who are liars upon record, stretch their account to two hundred and ninety-nine years, modestly stopping short of three centuries. Deducting therefore fifty-seven years of sleep, during which he probably made no great advances in science, he might have occasion to go to school when he waked, and, though an old man, might be a young scholar under Pythagoras, if the credibility of the above story can once be admitted.

From the Olympic Games, Pythagoras repaired to Samos, and opened school in a place called in the time of Antipho (who is quoted by Laertius) Pytha

gora Hemicyclus. Here he began a practice he continued in Italy, of retiring to a cave without the town for the purpose of study, but in fact the idea was, like most others of his, oriental: hermits have it to this day; and if mortification is used to recommend religion, solitude may be chosen to set off wisdom. Pythagoras in a cave, visited in the dead of night with awful reverence and credulity, might pass stories upon his hearers, which he could not risk in the face of the sun and the streets of the city.

He was not, however, so far sequestered from the concerns of the world as to enjoy himself in his cave under the tyranny of Polycrates, now more oppressive than at his departure for- Egypt. He thereupon resolved to go into Italy, and took Delos in his way; here he wrote the verses on the sepulchre of Apollo, which Porphyry records: from Delos he passed to Phlius, the ancient country of his family; and at Phlius, Cicero informs us he expounded several points of his new philosophy to the tyrant Leo, who, being struck with his doctrine, demanded of him what branch of science he principally professed: Pythagoras replied, that he professed none, but was a philosopher: the name was new to Leo, and he desired to be informed of its signification, and wherein philosophers differed from other professors of the learned sciences: Pythagoras answered, "that it appeared to him men were drawn to different objects and pursuits in life, as the Greeks were to their Olympic Games, some for glory, some for gain; at the same time," says he, " 'you must have observed that others attend without any view to either, for curiosity and amusement only; so we, who are travellers and adventurers, as it were, from another life and another nature, come amongst mankind, indifferent to the ordinary allurements of avarice or ambition, and studious of nothing but of the truth

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and essence of things: such may be called Lovers of Wisdom, or in one word Philosophers; and, like the unconcerned spectators above described, have no others to pursue, but the acquisition of knowledge and the rational enjoyments of a contemplative mind."-In this reply he glances at his doctrine of the Metempsychosis.

In his progress towards Italy Pythagoras went to Delphi, that he might give the more authority to his precepts upon the pretence of his having received them from the priestess Theoclea.

In. Italy he established himself for the remainder of his life, and taught there forty years, wanting one, in his colleges at Metapontum, Heraclea, and Croton. He staid twenty years at Croton before he went to Metapontum; Milo, the famous Olympic victor, was one of his scholars at the former of these places. The fame of his doctrines drew a prodigious resort to his college; no less than six hundred disciples at one time attended his lectures nightly: he imposed rules of preparation and a system of discipline for his students, admirably contrived to inspire them with veneration for his person, and to train their minds to the exercises of patience and respect: he prescribed a probationary silence of five years, during which initiation they were not once admitted to the sight of their master, who in the meantime, like an invisible and superior spirit, governed them after the most absolute manner by mandates, which they never heard but through the channel of his subordinate agents: at length they were ushered with much ceremony into the awful presence. Such a course of discipline could not fail to prepare every mind, capable of undergoing it, for the marvellous stories which at certain times he introduced into his lectures, touching the doctrine of the Metempsychosis, and the revelation of his own divinity: he scrupled not to tell them, that