Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras

When it is considered that Pythagoras was the father of philosophy, authentic memoirs of his life cannot fail to be uncommonly interesting to every lover of wisdom, and particularly to those who reverence the doctrines of Plato, the most genuine and the best of all his disciples. And that the following memoirs of Pythagoras by Iamblichus are authentic is acknowledged by all critics, as they are for the most part obviously derived from sources of very high antiquity. Where the sources are unknown, there is every reason to believe, from the great worth and respectability of the biographer, that the information is perfectly accurate and true.

Of the biographer, Iamblichus, it is well known to every student tyro of Platonism that he was dignified by all the Platonists who succeeded him with the epithet of divine. After the praise passed on him by the acute Emperor Julian—"that he was posterior indeed in time, but not in genius, to Plato" original: "οἶδα μέν οὖν καί Πλάτωνα τὸν μέγαν, καί μετά τουτόν ἄνδρα τοις χρόνοις μέν, οὐ τῇ μήν φύσει, καταδεεστέρον, τὸν Χαλκιδέα φημι τὸν Ἰαμβλιχον, κ. λ." (I know the great Plato, and after him a man who was inferior in time, but not in nature, I mean Iamblichus the Chalcidean, etc.)—all further praise of him would be as unnecessary as the defamation of him by certain modern critics is contemptible and idle. For these homonculi Latin: "little men" or "manikins.", looking solely at his deficiency in style and not to the magnitude of his intellect, perceive only his little blemishes but have not even a glimpse of his surpassing excellence.

The celebrated Bullialdus, in his Notes on Theo of Smyrna, speaks of Iamblichus as a man of a most acute genius.