Kitap 8
1.10
He divides man’s life into four quarters thus: Twenty years a boy, twenty years a youth, twenty years a young man, twenty years an old man; and these four periods correspond to the four seasons, the boy to spring, the youth to summer, the young man to autumn, and the old man to winter, meaning by youth one not yet grown up and by a young man a man of mature age. According to Timaeus, he was the first to say, Friends have all things in common and Friendship is equality; indeed, his disciples did put all their possessions into one common stock. For five whole years they had to keep silence, merely listening to his discourses without seeing him, Because he lectured at night;cf.§ 15 νυκτερινὴ ἀκρόασις. until they passed an examination, and thenceforward they were admitted to his house and allowed to see him. They would never use coffins of cypress, because the sceptre of Zeus was made from it, so we are informed by Hermippus in his second book On Pythagoras.
