[42] So Diog. Laert., VIII, vit. Pyth., c. 4.
[43] Diodorus of Eretria is not otherwise known, Aristoxenus is mentioned by Cicero, Quæst. Tusculan., I, 18, as a writer on music.
[44] That is, of course, Zoroaster. The account here given of his doctrines does not agree with what we know of them from other sources. The minimum date for his activity (700 B.C.) makes it impossible for him to have been a contemporary of Pythagoras. See the translator’s Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, I, p. 126; II, p. 232.
[45] Reading with Roeper τὴν κόσμου φύσιν καὶ. Cruice has τὸν κόσμον φύσιν κατὰ, “that the cosmos is a nature according to,” etc.
[46] δαίμονες, spirits or dæmons in the Greek sense, not necessarily evil. But Aetius, de Placit. Philosoph. ap. Diels Doxogr. 306, makes Pythagoras use the word as equivalent to τὸ κακόν. Cf. pp. 52, 92 infra.
[47] Hippolytus like nearly every other writer of his time here confuses the Egyptians with the Alexandrian Greeks. It was these last and not the subjects of the Pharaohs who were given to mathematics and geometry, of which sciences they laid the foundations on which we have since built. Certain devotees of the Alexandrian god Serapis also shut themselves up in cells of the Serapeum, which they could hardly have done in any temple in Pharaonic times. See Forerunners, I, 79. Hippolytus gives a much more elaborate and detailed account of Pythagorean teaching in Book VI, II, pp. 20 ff. infra.
[48] Diog. Laert., VIII, vit. Heraclit., c. 6, attributes this opinion to Heraclitus.
[49] This verse appears in Diog. Laert., VIII, vit. Empedocles, c. 6.
[50] So Diog. Laert., ubi. cit.
[51] This sentence seems to have got out of place. It should probably follow that on Lysis and Archippus, etc., on the last page. The story of the shield is told by Diog. Laert., VIII, vit. Pyth., c. 4, and by Ovid, Metamorph., XV, 162 ff. For more about Empedocles see Book VII, II, pp. 82 ff. infra.