Vat.lat.5953

marveling at his difference from other youths, because he was greater and more eminent. Already bringing glory to his title original Greek: την προσηγοριαν (tēn prosēgorian); refers to the name "Pythagoras," which was said to signify "one who speaks like the Pythian oracle" and passing on as much doctrine as he could, Thales, pleading his own old age and weakness, urged him to sail across to Egypt. He advised him to meet with the priests who were in Memphis, and especially the priests of Jupiter referring to the Egyptian god Amun, whom the Greeks and Romans identified with Zeus/Jupiter; for it was by them that he could be introduced to many things, and he would be thought wise by everyone. Thales admitted that he himself was a partaker of such great privileges neither by nature nor by long practice. He told Pythagoras to perceive what he might see. For this reason, Thales announced that if he met with the aforementioned priests, he would become the wisest and most divine among all men.

Having been educated by Thales, and aided and admonished to be frugal in all things and especially in the use of time, he was taught for this reason to abstain from the drinking of wine and the eating of meat, and much earlier, from excessive eating; this was so that he might despise feasting and easy fodder. From this, having attained a slender and rustic diet, a purity of soul, and a most sincere health and a blameless condition of the body, he sailed to Sidon. He believed this to be his own fatherland, beautifully judging that from there, the passage into Egypt would be easy. Here, however, meeting with the descendants of the prophet Mochus Mochus of Sidon was a legendary Phoenician sage and natural philosopher, sometimes credited by Renaissance scholars with the invention of the atomic theory and with other Phoenician priests, he was initiated into all their mysteries in Byblos and Tyre, and in many other places considered sacred. He did not enter into these for the sake of sustaining prosperity, as one might simply suppose, but much more out of a love and appetite for contemplation, and out of a caution lest any matter worthy of knowledge among the secrets held in the custody of the gods should escape him. And when he had learned beforehand that the dogmas which were there had somehow descended and been produced from the sacred rites of the Egyptians, he hoped that by this he might participate in the beautiful, divine, and supreme teachings in Egypt, being delighted by the admonitions of Thales.