Kitap 1
9
IT is said that the order and method followed by Pythagoras, and afterwards by his school and his successors, in admitting and training their pupils were as follows: At the very outset he physiognomized the young men who presented themselves for instruction. That word means to inquire into the character and dispositions of men by an inference drawn from their facial appearance and expression, and from the form and bearing of their whole body. Then, when he had thus examined a man and found him suitable, he at once gave orders that he should be admitted to the school and should keep silence for a fixed period of time; this was not the same for all, but differed according to his estimate of the man's capacity for learning quickly. But the one who kept silent listened to what was said by others; he was, however, religiously forbidden to ask questions, if he had not fully understood, or to remark upon what he had heard. Now, no one kept silence for less than two years, and during the entire period of silent listening they were called a)koustikoi/ or auditors. But when they had learned what is of all things the most difficult, to keep quiet and listen, and had finally begun to be adepts in that silence which is called e)xemuqi/a or continence in words, they were then allowed to speak, to ask questions, and to write down what they had heard, and to express their own opinions. During this stage they were called maqhmatikoi/ or students of science, evidently from those branches of knowledge which they had now begun to learn and practise; for the ancient Greeks called geometry, gnomonics, The science of dialling, concerned with the making and testing of sun-dials (gnw/mones). music and other higher studies maqh/mata or sciences ; but the common people apply the term mathematici to those who ought to be called by their ethnic name, Chaldaeans. Chaldaei and mathematici were general terms for astrologers at Rome; see e.g. Suet. Dom. xiv. 1, xv. 3; Tib. lxix; etc. Finally, equipped with this scientific training, they advanced to the investigation of the phenomena of the universe and the laws of nature, and then, and not till then, they were called fusikoi/ or natural philosophers.
