The Complete Pythagoras: A Compilation of Pythagorean Texts

about public affairs, feeling the fitness of dispensing justice and promoting profit in the place constructed by him who promoted the welfare of all mankind. Outside of the city, he formed a cave adapted to the practices of his philosophy, in which he spent the greater part of day and night, ever busied with scientific research, and meditating as did Minos, the son of Jupiter. Indeed, he surpassed those who later practiced his disciplines chiefly in this: that they advertised themselves for the knowledge of theorems of minute importance, while Pythagoras unfolded a complete science of the celestial orbs, founding it on arithmetical and geometrical demonstrations. Still more than for all this, he is to be admired for what he accomplished later. His philosophy now gained great importance, and his fame spread to all Greece so that the best students visited Samos on his account to share in his erudition. But his fellow-citizens insisted on employing him in all their embassies, and compelled him to take part in the administration of public affairs. Pythagoras began to realize the impossibility of complying with the claims of his country while remaining at home to advance his philosophy; and observing that all earlier philosophers had passed their life in foreign countries, he determined to resign all political occupations. Besides, according to contemporary testimony, he was disgusted at the Samians' scorn for education.

Therefore he went to Italy, conceiving that his real fatherland must be the country containing the greatest number of most scholarly men. Such was the success of his journey that on his arrival at Crotona, the noblest city in Italy, he gathered as many as six hundred followers, who by his discourses were moved, not only to philosophical study, but to an amicable sharing of their worldly goods, whence they derived the names of Cenobites (members of a communal life).