A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

Pythagoras 149
body, easy in his circumstances, and well-instructed in
mind."
VII.
Pythagoras
The Pythagoreans called music philosophy. They
maintained that the world subsisted by harmony, and
considered every kind of music to be the work of the gods.
It is thus that the muses are regarded as deities, and Apollo
has the name of President of the Muses, and all poetry
is divine, being conversant about the praises of the gods.
Thus also they ascribe to music the formation of manners,
as everything which refines the mind approximates to the
power of the gods.
And as he was a young man, and devoted to learning,
he quitted liis country, and got initiated into all the
Grecian and barbarian sacred mysteries. Accordingly,
he went to Egypt, on which occasion Polycrates gave him
a letter of introduction to Amasis; and he learned the
Egyptian language, as Antiphon tells us, in his treatise
on those men who have been conspicuous for virtue, and
he associated with the Chaldeans and with the Magi.
Afterward he went to Crete, and in company with Epimenides,
he descended into the Idaean cave, and in Egypt
he entered into the holiest parts of their temples, and
learned all the most sacred mysteries that relate to their
gods. Then he returned again to Samos; and finding his
country reduced under the absolute dominion of Polycrates,
he set sail, and fled to Croton in Italy. And there,
having given laws to the Italians,
he gained a very high
reputation, together with his scholars, who were about
three hundred in number, and governed the republic in a
most excellent manner; so that the constitution was very
nearly an aristocracy.
His theory
of music.
Strabo x. 3.
10.
Greece, 95;
Ancient
World, 155.
His travels.
Diogenes
Laertius,
Pythagoras,
3-
There is some
doubt as to
his travelling
so extensively.
Initiated into
the Oriental
mysteries.
lb.
He founds a
school.