Pythagoras.—Besides what I have just told you, you shall understand that you yourself, who seem to be one individual, are really somebody else.
Customer.—What! do you mean to say I’m somebody else, and not myself, now talking to you?
Pythagoras.—Just at this moment you are; but once upon a time you appeared in another body, and under another name; and hereafter you will pass again into another shape still.
(After a little more discussion of this philosopher’s tenets, he is purchased on behalf of a company of professors from Magna Græca for ten minæ. The next lot is Diogenes, the Cynic.)
Apuleius says in the Florida, Section XV., in reference to Pythagoras, that he went to Egypt to acquire learning, “that he was there taught by the priests the incredible power of ceremonies, the wonderful commutations of numbers, and the most ingenious figures of geometry; but that, not satisfied with these mental accomplishments, he afterwards visited the Chaldæans and the Brahmins, and amongst the latter the Gymnosophists. The Chaldæans taught him the stars, the definite orbits of the planets, and the various effects of both kinds of stars upon the nativity of men, as also, for much money, the remedies for human use derived from the earth, the air, and the sea (the elements earth, air, and water, or all nature).
“But the Brahmins taught him the greater part of his philosophy—what are the rules and principles of the understanding; what the functions of the body; how many the faculties of the soul; how many the mutations of life; what torments or rewards devolve upon the souls of the dead, according to their respective deserts.”
There is ample evidence, therefore, that the Greeks had communication with, and borrowed the philosophy of, both Persia and India at a very early date.
That there was intimate intercourse with India in very ancient times there can be no doubt. In addition to the classical sources of information collected chiefly by the officers of Alexander the Great, Seleucus and the Ptolemies, and which was condensed and reduced to consistent shape by Diodorus, Strabo, Pliny, and Arrian, within the first century before and the first century after Christ, we have the further proof of the fact by the constant finds of innumerable Greek coins over a large portion of north-western India, and even at Cabul. These, so far as yet known, commence with the third of the Seleucidæ, and run on for many centuries, the inscriptions showing that the Greek characters were used in the provinces of Cabul and the Punjab even so late as the fourth century A.D. The consideration of these coins of the Græco-Persian empire of the Seleucidæ naturally leads us to the consideration of the Persians.
I have already shown that the Greeks and Persians held intimate relations with each other as early as the fourth century B.C., and from the speech of Demosthenes against a proposed war with Persia, delivered in 354 B.C, we may well believe that they had already had a long and intimate connection with each other. The passage rends thus:-
“All Greeks know that, so long as they regarded Persia as their common enemy, they were at peace with each other, and enjoyed much prosperity, but since they have looked upon the King (of Persia) as a friend, and quarrelled about disputes with each other, they have suffered worse calamities than any one could possibly imprecate upon them.”