Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius. Hicks, R. D., editor. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1925.

Philolaus of Croton was a Pythagorean, and it was from him that Plato requests Dion to buy the Pythagorean treatises.[*](Cf. iii. 9.) He (Dion) was put to death because he was thought to be aiming at a tyranny.[*](The subject of ἐτελεύτα would naturally be Philolaus, and so D. L. understood it; but the original reference was clearly to Dion.) This is what we have written upon him[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 126.):

    Fancies of all things are most flattering;
  1. If you intend, but do not, you are lost.
  2. So Croton taught Philolaus to his cost,
  3. Who fancied he would like to be their king.[*](Or in prose: My chief advice to all men is: to lull suspicion to rest. For even if you don’t do something, and people fancy you do, it is ill for you. So Croton, his native land, once put Philolaus to death, fancying he wished to have a tyrant’s house.)