[745] Polyb. ii, 39; Plutarch, De Genio Socratis, c. 13, p. 583; Aristoxenus, ap. Jamblich. c. 250. That the enemies of the order attacked it by setting fire to the house in which the members were assembled, is the circumstance in which all accounts agree. On all other points there is great discrepancy, especially respecting the names and dates of the Pythagoreans who escaped: Boeckh (Philolaus, p. 9, seq.) and Brandis (Handbuch der Gesch. Philos. ch. lxxiii, p. 432) try to reconcile these discrepancies.
Aristophanês introduces Strepsiadês, at the close of the Nubes, as setting fire to the meeting-house (φροντιστήριον) of Sokratês and his disciples possibly the Pythagorean conflagration may have suggested this.
[746] “Pythagoras Samius suspicione dominatûs injustâ vivus in fano concrematus est.” (Arnobius adv. Gentes, lib. i, p. 23, ed. Elmenhorst.)
[747] Cicero, De Finib. v, 2 (who seems to have copied from Dikæarchus: see Fuhr. ad Dikæarchi Fragment. p. 55); Justin, xx, 4; Diogen. Laërt. viii, 40; Jamblichus, V. P. c. 249.
O. Müller says (Dorians, iii, 9, 16), that “the influence of the Pythagorean league upon the administration of the Italian states was of the most beneficial kind, which continued for many generations after the dissolution of the league itself.”
The first of these two assertions cannot be made out, and depends only on the statements of later encomiasts, who even supply materials to contradict their own general view. The judgment of Welcker respecting the influence of the Pythagoreans, much less favorable, is at the same time more probable. (Præfat. ad Theognid. p. xlv.)
The second of the two assertions appears to me quite incorrect; the influence of the Pythagorean order on the government of Magna Græcia ceased altogether, as far as we are able to judge. An individual Pythagorean like Archytas might obtain influence, but this is not the influence of the order. Nor ought O. Müller to talk about the Italian Greeks giving up the Doric customs and adopting an Achæan government. There is nothing to prove that Kroton ever had Doric customs.
[748] Aristotel. de Cœlo, ii, 13. οἱ περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν, καλούμενοι δὲ Πυθαγορεῖοι. “Italici philosophi quondam nominati.” (Cicero, De Senect. c. 21.)
[749] Heyne places the date of the battle of Sagra about 560 B. C.; but this is very uncertain. See his Opuscula, vol. ii, Prolus. ii, pp. 53, and Prolus. x, p. 184. See also Justin, xx, 3, and Strabo, vi, pp. 261-263. It will be seen that the latter conceives the battle of the Sagra as having happened after the destruction of Sybaris by the Krotoniates; for he states twice that the Krotoniates lost so many citizens at the Sagra, that the city did not long survive so terrible a blow: he cannot, therefore, have supposed that the complete triumph of the Krotoniates over the great Sybaris was gained afterwards.
[750] See above, vol. iii, chap. xxii.