Jup. Begin the sale, then.
Merc. Whom shall we put up first?
Jup.This fellow with the long hair,—the Ionian. He's rather an imposing personage.
Merc. You, Pythagoras! step out, and show yourself to the company.
Jup. Put him up.
Merc. Gentlemen, we here offer you a professor of the very best and most select description—who buys? Who wants to be a cut above the rest of the world? Who wants to understand the harmonies of the universe? and to live two lives?[1]
Customer (turning the Philosopher round and examining him). He's not bad to look at. What does he know best?
- ↑ Mr Grote, in the introductory chapter of his Plato, thus sketches the Pythagorean doctrine of "The Music of the Spheres." "The revolutions of such grand bodies [the Sun and Planets] could not take place, in the opinion of the Pythagoreans, without producing a loud and powerful sound; and as their distances from the central fire were supposed to be arranged in musical ratios, so the result of all these separate sounds was full and perfect harmony. To the objection—Why were not these sounds heard by us?—they replied, that we had heard them constantly and without intermission from the hour of our birth; hence they had become imperceptible by habit."
The "two lives" is of course an allusion to Pythagoras's notion of the transmigration of souls. It is said of him that he professed to be conscious of having been formerly Euphorbus, one of the chiefs present at the siege of Troy, and of having subsequently borne other shapes. There is also a story of his having interfered on behalf of a dog which was being beaten, declaring that in its cries he recognised "the voice of a departed friend."
