Vitae philosophorum

this is declared by Theaetetus’s epigram[*](Anth. Plan. iii. 35.):

Know’st one Pythagoras, long-haired Pythagoras,
1. The far-fam’d boxer of the Samians?
2. I am Pythagoras; ask the Elians
3. What were my feats, thou’lt not believe the tale.

Favorinus says that our philosopher used definitions throughout the subject matter of mathematics; their use was extended by Socrates and his disciples, and afterwards by Aristotle and the Stoics.

Further, we are told that he was the first to call the heaven the universe and the earth spherical,[*](As Favorinus seems to have paid special attention to discoveries and the invention of names (cf. ii. 1, 20, viii. 12, 47, ix. 23, 34), it seems likely that he is our author’s authority here; so probably a different book of Favorinus is cited.) though Theophrastus says it was Parmenides, and Zeno that it was Hesiod.

It is said that Cylon was a rival of Pythagoras, as Antilochus[*](Apelt suggests Antiphon, comparing Xen. Mem. i. 6.) was of Socrates.

Pythagoras the athlete was also the subject of another epigram as follows[*](Anth. Plan. iii. 16.):

Gone to box with other lads
1. Is the lad Pythagoras,
2. Gone to the games Olympian
3. Crates’ son the Samian.

Pythagoras to Anaximenes.

Even you, O most excellent of men, were you no better born and famed than Pythagoras, would have risen and departed from Miletus. But now your ancestral glory has detained you as it had detained me were I Anaximenes’s peer. But if you, the best men, abandon your cities, then will their good order perish, and the peril from the Medes will increase.

For always to scan the heavens is not well, but more seemly is it to be provident for one’s

Having now finished our account of Pythagoras, we have next to speak of the noteworthy Pythagoreans; after them will come the philosophers whom some denominate sporadic [i.e. belonging to no particular school]; and then, in the next place, we will append the succession of all those worthy of notice as far as Epicurus, in the way that we promised. We have already treated of Theano and Telauges: so now we have first to speak of Empedocles, for some say he was a pupil of Pythagoras.

Empedocles was, according to Hippobotus, the son of Meton and grandson of Empedocles, and was a native of Agrigentum. This is confirmed by Timaeus in the fifteenth book of his Histories, and he adds that Empedocles, the poet’s grandfather, had been a man of distinction. Hermippus also agrees with Timaeus. So, too, Heraclides, in his treatise On Diseases,[*](v. 67.) says that he was of an illustrious family, his grandfather having kept racehorses. Eratosthenes also in his Olympic Victories records, on the authority of Aristotle, that the father of Meton was a victor in the 71st Olympiad.[*](496 b.c.)

The grammarian Apollodorus in his Chronology tells us that

He was the son of Meton, and Glaucus says he went to Thurii, just then founded.[*](445-444 b.c.)

Those who relate that, being exiled from his home, he went to Syracuse and fought in their ranks against the Athenians seem, in my judgement at least, to be completely mistaken. For by that time either he was no longer living or in extreme old age, which is inconsistent with the story.

This man’s namesake and grandfather,