Book 15
Then, skirting shores which face these lands, he found
1
the place foretold the river Aesar's mouth,
and found not far away a burial mound
which covered with its soil the hallowed bones
of Croton.—There, upon the appointed land,
he built up walls—and he conferred the name
of Croton, who was there entombed, on his
new city, which has ever since been called
Crotona.” By tradition it is known
such strange deeds caused that city to be built,
by men of Greece upon the Italian coast.
Here lived a man, by birth a Samian.
60
He had fled from Samos and the ruling class,
a voluntary exile, for his hate
against all tyranny. He had the gift
of holding mental converse with the gods,
who live far distant in the highth of heaven;
and all that Nature has denied to man
and human vision, he reviewed with eyes
of his enlightened soul. And, when he had
examined all things in his careful mind
with watchful study, he released his thoughts
to knowledge of the public.
to crowds of people, silent and amazed,
while he revealed to them the origin
of this vast universe, the cause of things,
what is nature, what a god, whence came the snow,
the cause of lightning—was it Jupiter
or did the winds, that thundered when the cloud
was rent asunder, cause the lightning flash?
What shook the earth, what laws controlled the stars
as they were moved—and every hidden thing
he was the first man to forbid the use
of any animal's flesh as human food,
he was the first to speak with learned lips,
though not believed in this, exhorting them.—
“No, mortals,” he would say, “Do not permit
pollution of your bodies with such food,
for there are grain and good fruits which bear down
