[{163b}] Empedocles, of Agrigentum, a Pythagorean; he held that there are two principal powers in nature, amity and discord, and that
“Sometimes by friendship, all are knit in one,
Sometimes by discord, severed and undone.”
See Stanley’s “Lives of the Philosophers.”
[{163c}] Alluding to the doctrine of Pythagoras, according to whom, number is the principle most providential of all heaven and earth, the root of divine beings, of gods and demons, the fountain and root of all things; that which, before all things, exists in the divine mind, from which, and out of which, all things are digested into order, and remain numbered by an indissoluble series. The whole system of the Pythagoreans is at large explained and illustrated by Stanley. See his “Lives of Philosophers.”
[{164}] See our author’s “Auction of Lives,” where Socrates swears by the dog and the plane-tree.
This was called the ορκος Ραδαμανθιος, or oath of Rhadamanthus, who, as Porphyry informs us, made a law that men should swear, if they needs must swear, by geese, dogs, etc. υπερ που μη τους θεους επι πασιν ονομαζω, that they might not, on every trifling occasion, call in the name of the gods. This is a kind of religious reason, the custom was therefore, Porphyry tells us, adopted by the wise and pious Socrates. Lucian, however, who laughs at everything here (as well as the place above quoted), ridicules him for it.
[{165a}] See Homer’s “Odyssey,” book ix. 1. 302. Pope translates it badly,
“Wisdom held my hand.”
Homer says nothing but—my mind changed.
[{165b}] One of the fables here alluded to is yet extant amongst those ascribed to Æsop, but that concerning the camel I never met with.
[{166a}] That part of Athens which was called the upper city, in opposition to the lower city. The Acropolis was on the top of a high rock.