Note 12 — II. PYTHAGORAS. 570–470 B.C.

“As regards the fruits of this system of training or belief (the Pythagorean), it is interesting to remark,” says the author of the article Pythagoras in Dr. Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, “that, wherever we have notices of distinguished Pythagoreans, we usually hear of them as men of great uprightness, conscientiousness, and self-restraint, and as capable of devoted and enduring friendship.” Amongst them the names of Archytas, and Damon, and Phintias are particularly eminent. Archytas was one of the very greatest geniuses of antiquity: he was distinguished alike as a philosopher, mathematician, statesman, and general. In mechanics he was the inventor of the wooden flying dove—one of the wonders of the older world. Empedokles (the Apollonius of the 5th century B.C.), who devoted his marvellous attainments to the service of humanity, may be claimed as, at least in part, a follower of Pythagoras.