tory
runs, he offered to pay an artisan if he would but learn geometry. The
man accepted, and later, when PYTHAGORAS pretended inability any longer
to continue the payments, he offered, so fascinating did he find
the subject, to pay his teacher instead if the lessons might only be
continued. PYTHAGORAS no doubt was much gratified at this; and the
motto he adopted for his great Brotherhood, of which we shall make the
acquaintance in a moment, was in all likelihood based on this event. It
ran, "Honour a figure and a step before a figure and a tribolus"; or, as
a freer translation renders it:--

"A figure and a step onward Not a figure and a florin."

"At all events," as Mr FRANKLAND remarks, "the motto is a lasting witness
to a very singular devotion to knowledge for its own sake."(1)

(1) W. B. FRANKLAND, M.A.: _The Story of Euclid_ (1902), p. 33

But PYTHAGORAS needed a greater audience than one man, however
enthusiastic a pupil he might be, and he left Samos for Southern
Italy, the rich inhabitants of whose cities had both the leisure and
inclination to study. Delphi, far-famed for its Oracles, was visited _en
route_, and PYTHAGORAS, after a sojourn at Tarentum, settled at Croton,
where he gathered about him a great band of pupils, mainly young people
of the aristocratic class. By consent of the Senate of Croton, he formed
out of these a great philosophical brotherhood, whose members lived
apart from the ordinary people, forming, as it were, a separate
community. They were bound to PYTHAGORAS by the closest ties of
admiration and reverence, and, for years after his death, discoveries
made by Pythagoreans were invariably attributed to the Master, a fact
which makes it very difficult exactly to gauge the extent of PYTHAGORAS'
own knowledge and achievements. The regime of the Brotherhood, or
Pythagorean Order, was a strict one, entailing "high thinking and low
living" at all times. A restricted diet, the exact nature of which is
in dispute, was observed by all members, and long periods of silence, as
conducive to deep thinking, were imposed on novices. Women were admitted
to the Order, and PYTHAGORAS' asceticism did not prohibit romance,
for we read that one of his fair pupils won her way to his heart, and,
declaring her affection for him, found it reciprocated and became his
wife.

SCHURE writes: "By his marriage with Theano, Pythagoras affixed _the
seal of realization_ to his work. The union and fusion of the t