Not one of the writers just mentioned professes to have seen these famous "three books";[1] but at a later date there were at least two works which claimed to represent them. Diels has shown how a treatise in three sections, entitled Παιδευτικόν, πολιτικόν, φυσικόν, was composed in the Ionic dialect and attributed to Pythagoras. It was largely based on the Πυθαγορικαὶ ἀποφάσεις of Aristoxenos, but its date is uncertain.[2] In the first century B.C., Demetrios Magnes professes to quote the opening words of the work published by Philolaos.[3] These, however, are in Doric. Demetrios does not actually say this work was written by Philolaos himself, though it is no doubt the same from which a number of extracts are preserved under his name in Stobaios and later writers. If it professed to be by Philolaos, that was not quite in accordance with the original story; but it is easy to see how his name may have become attached to it. We are told that the other book which passed under the name of Pythagoras was really by Lysis.[4] Boeckh has shown that the work ascribed to Philolaos probably consisted of three books also, and Proclus referred to it as the Bakchai,[5] a fanciful Alexandrian title which recalls the "Muses" of Herodotos. Two of the extracts in Stobaios bear it. It must surely be confessed that the whole story is very suspicious.
141.The "Fragments of Philolaos." Boeckh argued that all the fragments preserved under the name of Philolaos were genuine; but no one will now go so far as that. The lengthy extract on the soul is given up even by those who maintain the genuineness of the
- ↑ As Bywater said (J. Phil. i. p. 29), the history of this work "reads like the history, not so much of a book, as of a literary ignis fatuus floating before the minds of imaginative writers."
- ↑ Diels, "Ein gefälschtes Pythagorasbuch" (Arch. iii. pp. 451 sqq.).
- ↑ Diog. viii. 85 (R. P. 63 b). Diels reads πρῶτον ἐκδοῦναι τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν <βιβλία καὶ ἐπιγράψαι Περὶ> Φύσεως.
- ↑ Diog. viii. 7.
- ↑ Proclus, in Eucl. p. 22, 15 (Friedlein). Cf. Boeckh, Philolaos, pp. 36 sqq. Boeckh refers to a sculptured group of three Bakchai, whom he supposes to be Ino, Agaue, and Autonoe.
