4–6
BUYER
What you say is wonderful.
10
PYTHAGOREAN
And beside all that I have said, thou shalt learn that thou, who thinkest thyself a single individual, art one person in semblance and another in reality.
BUYER
What’s that? I am another and not this man who now talks to you!
PYTHAGOREAN
Now thou art he, but erstwhile thou didst manifest thyself in another body and under another name, and in time thou shalt again migrate into another person.
BUYER
You mean that I shall be immortal, changing into many forms? But enough of this.
How do you stand in the matter of diet?
PYTHAGOREAN
I eat nothing at all that hath life, but all else save beans.
BUYER
Why so? Do you dislike beans?
PYTHAGOREAN
Nay, but they are holy, and wonderful is their nature. First, they are nought but seed of man, and if thou open a bean while it is still green, thou wilt see that it resembleth in structure the member of a man; and again, if thou cook it and set it in the light of the moon for a fixed number of nights, thou wilt make blood. But more than this, the Athenians are wont to choose their magistrates with beans.The offices were filled by lot, and beans were used for lots. This appears to be Lucian’s own contribution to the Pythagorean mysticism, but the other particulars are not very remote from the actual teachings of the Neo-Pythagoreans, Cf. Porphyr. Vit. Pythag., 44.
