Lucian of Samosata Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1820 Excerpt: ...second epistle to Dionysius of Syracuse, iinmediately at the beginning. The divine Pythagoras, though he has not been pleased to leave to posterity any written memorial of his doctrines and opinions; yet, as far as can be gathered from Ocellus Lucanus, Archytas, and others of his followers, did not use the formulary eu prattein, but insisted upon beginning with the word hygiainein to be well in place of it. Accordingly those of his school, in the letters of any consequence which they write to one another, begin with this wish as the best adapted both to the body and mind, and comprising in the single word Health all that is good for man. Thence their triple triangle, or pentagram, one of the private signs by which the pythagoreans recognize one another, is in their symbolical language styled Hygeia Health, According to them, in the notion of health is comprised at once to live well, and to rejoice: but not contrariwise t. There are pythagoreans (the celebrated Philolaus was one of them) who call the tetraktys the number /owr, their most solemn oath, which according to their arithmetic, forms the perfect number, the principle of health. This pentagram, likewise called pentalpha, is the famous figure which arises, when all the sides of a regular pentagon are prolonged till they intersect one another. As this figure unites in itself the mystery of the holy number, it was one of the principal symbols of the pythagoric order, of which the more modern secret societies did not fail to avail themselves. The pythagoreans (says the vossian scholiast of Lucian) put his mark, instead of the ordinary greeting, at the head of their epistles. This superstition was retained both among jews and Christians. In Upper Germany this pentagon is named den Drulden fuss, by corrupt...