Kitap 1
9
Having thus expressed himself about Pythagoras, my friend Taurus continued: "But nowadays these fellows who turn to philosophy on a sudden with unwashed feet, Proverbial for without preparation. not content with being wholly 'without purpose, without learning, and without scientific training,' even lay down the law as to how they are to be taught philosophy. One says, 'first teach me this,' another chimes in,' I want to learn this, I don't want to learn that'; one is eager to begin with the Symposiumn of Plato because of the revel of Alcibiades, Ch. 30. another with the Phaedrus on account of the speech of Lysias. Ch. 6. By Jupiter!" said he, one man actually asks to read Plato, not in order to better his life, but to deck out his diction and style, not to gain in discretion, but in prettiness. That is what Taurus used to say, in comparing the modern students of philosophy with the Pythagoreans of old.
9
But I must not omit this fact either—that all of them, as soon as they had been admitted by Pythagoras into that band of disciples, at once devoted to the common use whatever estate and property they had, and an inseparable fellowship was formed, like the old-time association which in Roman legal parlance was termed an undivided inheritance. See Servius on Aen. viii. 612, ercto non cito, id est, hereditate non divisa; nam citus divisus siqnificat.
10
In what terms the philosopher Favorinus rebuked a young man who used language that was too old-fashioned and archaic.
