Note 226 — No. 81. [Steele and Addison.[225]
Reading edition
The annotators of the 1786 edition devoted a very long note to the defence of Pythagoras against what is here said of him. As to his "harlotry," he clearly could not be responsible for the metamorphoses of his soul after death. His soul continued, it was said, to shift its habitations; and Dicearchus, almost a whole century after the death of Socrates, related, that on its third removal, it got into the body of Alce, a beautiful courtesan. (Aul. Gell., "Noct. Att.," IV. xi.) Lucian, long after, taking a century posterior to Pythagoras, makes his soul animate the body of Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles.