The Complete Pythagoras: A Compilation of Pythagorean Texts

Temperance was the next topic of his discourses. Since desires are most flourishing during youth, this is the time when control must be effective. While temperance alone is universal in its application to all ages—boy, virgin, woman, or the aged—this special virtue is particularly applicable to youth. Moreover, this virtue alone applies universally to all goods, those of body and soul, preserving both health and studiousness. This may be proved conversely. When the Greeks and Barbarians warred about Troy, each of them fell into the most dreadful calamities, both during the war and the return home, all through the incontinence of a single individual. Moreover, the divinity ordained that the punishment of this single injustice should last over a thousand and ten years, by an oracle predicting the capture of Troy and ordering that the Locrians should annually send virgins into the Temple of Minerva in Troy.

Cultivation of learning was the next topic Pythagoras urged upon the young men. He invited them to observe how absurd it would be to rate the reasoning power as the chief of their faculties, and indeed consult about all other things by its means, and yet bestow no time or labor on its exercise. Attention to the body might be compared to unworthy friends, and is liable to rapid failure; while erudition lasts until death, and for some procures post-mortem renown, and may be likened to good, reliable friends. Pythagoras continued to draw illustrations from history and philosophy, demonstrating that erudition enables a naturally excellent disposition to share in the achievements of the leaders of the race, for others share in their discoveries through erudition.

Erudition possesses four great advantages over all other goods. First, some advantages, such as strength, beauty, health, and fortitude, cannot be exercised except by the cooperation of somebody else. Moreover, wealth, dominion, and many other goods do not remain with him who imparts them to somebody else. Third, some kinds of goods cannot be possessed by some men, but all are susceptible of instruction, according to individual choice. Moreover, an instructed man will naturally, and without any impudence, be led to take part in the administration of the affairs of his home country, as does not occur with mere wealth. One great advantage of erudition is that it may be imparted to another person without in the least diminishing the store of the giver. For it is education which makes the difference between a man and a wild beast, a Greek and a Barbarian, a free man and a slave, and a philosopher and a boor. In short, erudition is so great an advantage over those who do not possess it, that in one whole city and during one whole Olympiad, seven men only were found to be eminent winners in racing, and in the whole habitable globe, those that excelled in wisdom amounted to no more than seven. But in subsequent times, it was generally agreed that Pythagoras alone surpassed all others in philosophy; for instead of calling himself a sage, he called himself a philosopher.