CHAPTER 18

WONDERS RELATED OF HIM

If we may credit (says Porphyry, and from him Iamblichus174) what is related of Pythagoras by ancient and creditable authors, his commands had an Influence even upon irrational creatures. For he laid hold of the Daunian bear which did much hurt to the people thereabout, and having stroked her awhile, and given her mazza and fruits, and sworn her that she never more touch any living creature, he let her go. She straightaway hid herself in the hills and woods, and from thenceforward never assaulted any living creature.

Seeing an ox at Tarentum in a pasture wherein grew several things, munching on green beans, he came to the shepherd and counseled him to speak to the Ox that he should abstain from the beans.¹⁷⁵ But the shepherd mocked him, and said he could not speak the language of oxen. Pythagoras himself went up to the ox and whispered in his ear. The animal not only refrained immediately from Beans at that time, but from thenceforward would never touch any. He lived many years after about Juno's temple at Tarentum till he was very old; and called the sacred ox, eating such meats as everyone gave him.

At the Olympic Games, as Pythagoras was by chance discoursing to his friends concerning auguries, omens, and divine signs, and that there are some messages from the gods to such men as have true piety towards them, an eagle flew over his head. He is said by certain words to have stopped her, and to have caused her to come down.¹⁷⁶ After he had stroked her awhile, he let her go again.¹⁷⁷ This perhaps was that white eagle that Iamblichus reports he stroked at Croto, and she endured it quietly. For the Crotonians instituted games, which they called Olympic in emulation of the Grecians.

There is also the story of a river (which Porphyry calls Caucasus;¹⁷⁸ Apollonius, [“a river near Samos”]; Laertius and Iamblichus, Nessus; Aelian, Cosa; St. Cyril, Causus). As he passed over it with many of his friends, the river spoke to him and said with a plain clear voice, “Hail Pythagoras.”

In one and the same day, almost all affirm, that he was present at Metapontum in Italy, and at Tauromenium in Sicily, with the friends which he had in both places. He discoursed to them in a public convention, when as the places are distant many stadia by sea and land, and many days journeys asunder.179 Apollonius relates this as done at Croto and Metapontum.

At the public solemnity of the Olympic Games, he stood up and showed his golden thigh;¹⁸⁰ as he did in private to Abarus, to confirm him in the opinion that he was Hyperborean Apollo, whose priest Abarus was.¹⁸¹

A ship coming into the harbor, and his friends wishing they had the goods that were in it, Pythagoras told them, “Then you will have a dead body.” And, when the ship came at them, they found in it the body of a dead man.¹⁸²

To one who much desired to hear him, he said that he would not discourse until some sign appeared.¹⁸³ Not long after, one coming to bring news of the death of a white bear in Caulonia, he prevented him and related it first.

They affirm, he foretold many things and that they came to pass.¹⁸⁴ Insomuch that Aristippus the Kyrenaean, in his book on Physiology, says he was named “Pythagoras” from speaking things as true as Pythian Apollo.¹⁸⁵ He foretold an earthquake by the water which he tasted out of a well; and foretold, that a ship, which was then under sail with a pleasant gale, should be cast away.

At Sybarus, he took in his hand a serpent of deadly biting and let it go again. And at Tyrrhenia, he took a little serpent and biting it, killed it with his teeth.

A thousand other more wonderful and divine things are related constantly, and with full agreement, about him; so that, to speak freely, more was never attributed to any, nor was any more eminent. For his predictions of earthquakes most certainly are remembered, and his immediate chasing away of the pestilence. And his suppression of violent winds and hail, and his calming of storms—as well in rivers as upon the sea for the ease and safe passage of his friends—from whom Empedocles, Epimenides, and Abaris learning it, often performed the like, which their poems plainly attest. Besides, Empedocles was surnamed Alexanemos, the Chaser away of Winds; Epimenides, Cathartes, the Lustrator; Abaris, Aethrobates, the walker in the air (for, riding upon an arrow of Hyperborean Apollo which was given him, he was carried in the air over rivers and seas and inaccessible places, which some believed to have been done by Pythagoras when he discoursed with his friends at Metapontum and Tauromenium upon the same day).

To these add his trick with a looking glass, as the scholiast of Aristophanes calls it, who describes it thus. The Moon being in the full, he wrote whatsoever he pleased in blood upon a looking glass. And telling it first to the other party, stood behind him, holding the letters towards the Moon; whereby he who stood between him and the Moon, looking steadfastly upon her, read all the letters which were written in the looking glass in the Moon, as if they were written in her.186

But these things, some even of the ancients have imputed to Goetic Magic, as Timon, who terms Pythagoras, a Magician.† Others impute these to imposture, as appears by this relation of Hermippus and the scholiast of Apollonius. They say that when he came into Italy he made a vault underground, and charged his mother to give out that he was dead, and to set down in a table-book all things that happened, expressing the times punctually. Then he went down and shut himself up in the vault, and his mother did as he ordered her, until such time as he came up again. After a while, Pythagoras came up lean and withered. Approaching the congregation, he declared that he was returned from the Infernal Regions,¹⁸⁷ and related to them what was done there, and told them many prodigious stories concerning the Reborn, and the things of the Infernal Regions; telling the living news of their dead friends with whom he said he met in the Infernal Regions.¹⁸⁸ Hieronymus relates that he saw there the soul of Hesiod bound with brass to a pillar, screeching; and that of Homer hung up on a tree, encompassed by serpents, for the fables which he had raised concerning the gods. Those likewise were tormented who used not the company of their own wives.¹⁸⁹

For this he was much honored by the Crotonians. They being much moved at what he said, wept and lamented, and hereupon conceived such an esteem of Pythagoras as being a divine person, that they sent their wives to him to be instructed in his doctrine, which women were called “Pythagoreans.” Thus says Hermippus. The scholiast adds that hereby he raised an opinion concerning himself: that before the Trojan War he was Aethalides, the son of Mercury; then Euphorbus; then Hermotimus; then Pyrrhus, a Delian; lastly, Pythogoras.190 And, as Laertius says in his writings, he reported of himself that he had come from the Infernal Regions to men 207 years since. Of this, more in the Pythagoran Doctrine, see Part 3, The Transmigration of the Soul [page 256].