INTRODUCTION.
The collection of Pythagoric Fragments contained in this volume must be considered by every one as highly valuable if their antiquity only is regarded; but by the lover of genuine wisdom they will be deemed inestimable, as proceeding from the school of the father of philosophy.
Of the greater part of the authors of these fragments little more than the country in which they lived is known. But of Charondas, and Zaleucus, those celebrated legislators, Seneca in his 90th Epistle informs us that they learnt their laws in the silent and sacred recess of Pythagoras. Though Seneca, however, Diodorus Siculus, Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry, and Iamblichus make both Charondas and Zaleucus to be the disciples of Pythagoras; yet Dr. Bentley, in his Dissertation on Phalaris, seems more disposed to think that they were not Pythagoreans than that they were. At the conclusion, however, of his discussion of this subject he says, “I do not assert any thing positively on either side of this whole debate about the two lawgivers [Charondas and Zaleucus]. I rather desire to stand a neuter, till the matter shall be decided by some abler hand[1].” But the man of intellect who reads this concession of the doctor, will doubtless laugh when he finds him also asserting, “Thus much I am sure may be safely concluded, that if Zaleucus was really Pythagoras’ disciple, the learned Mr. Dodwell’s calculation must be wrong [respecting the age of Pythagoras]. For which is more probable, that a Mr. Dodwell was mistaken in this particular, or that Diodorus Siculus, Laertius, Porphyry, and Iamblichus were wrong, who lived so many centuries prior to him, and who were able to derive information so much more decisive respecting Zaleucus, through books which were then extant, but which have long since utterly perished? By Vossius[2], however, who, though he was not perhaps so great a verbal critic as Bentley, was certainly a man of more intellect[3], the whole of these fragments were considered as precious monuments; and he wonders, and is at the same time indignant, at their not being more frequently perused.
Of Hierocles, the author of the Ethical Fragments, something more is known than of the authors of the Political Fragments, through what is said of him by Suidas, Damascius[4], and Æneas Gazæus. For from the last of these we learn that he flourished about the end of the fifth century of the Christian era; and from the other two, that he was a Platonic philosopher of Alexandria: that his conceptions were magnificent, and his genius sublime; that he was very eloquent, astonished his auditors by the beauty and copiousness of his language, and contended with Plato himself in elegance of diction, and fertility of intellect. One of his auditors was Theosebius, a man of great penetration, who at different times twice heard Hierocles orally explaining the Gorgias of Plato; and though on comparing the latter with the former explanation, he found nothing in the one which might be said to be the same with what was in the other, yet each of them unfolded as much as possible the intention of Plato in that dialogue—which, as Damascius well observes, was a thing of a most singular nature, and clearly demonstrates the amplitude of his conceptions. We are informed, also, by the same Theosebius, that Hierocles once said, when expounding Plato, that the discourses of Socrates[5] resembled cubes, because they remained firm wherever they might fall.
The following circumstance, says Suidas, evinces the fortitude and magnanimity of Hierocles. On coming to Byzantium, he offended the prevailers (προσεκρουσε τοις Κρατουσι) i.e. the Christians[6]; and being brought into a court of justice by them was whipped. But while the blood was flowing, he took some of it in the hollow of his hand, and besprinkled with it the judge, at the same time exclaiming:
Cyclops, since human flesh is thy delight,
Now drink this wine[7].
Being banished, most probably in consequence of this magnanimous behaviour; and returning some time after to Alexandria, he gave philosophical lectures to his auditors in his usual manner. Suidas adds, that the grandeur of the conceptions of Hierocles may be learnt from the perusal of his Commentaries On the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans, and from his treatise On Providence[8]; in which works it appears that he was sublimely wise in his life, but not accurate in his knowledge. Damascius also says, that Hierocles was not at all deficient in any thing pertaining to merely human science, but that he was by no means replete with blessed conceptions, i.e. with conceptions which are the offspring of an entheastic, or divinely inspired energy; and which are to be found in abundance in the writings of Plato, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, and Damascius himself. This, indeed, will be immediately evident[9] to the man who has penetrated the depth of these writings, but to the merely verbal critic is a circumstance involved in Cimmerian darkness.