Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras

With respect to the collection of Pythagoric Sentences in this volume, it is almost needless to observe that they are incomparably excellent. It is deeply to be regretted that, because the Greek original of the Sentences of Sextus1 is lost, the fraudulent Latin version of them by the Presbyter Ruffinus alone remains. I call it a fraudulent version because Ruffinus, wishing to persuade the reader that these Sentences were written by a bishop named Sixtus, has in many places perverted and contaminated the meaning of the original. In the selection I have made from these Sentences, however, I have endeavored—and I trust not in vain—to provide the genuine sense of Sextus, unmingled with the barbarous and polluted interpolations of Ruffinus. If the English reader possesses my translation of the Sentences of Demophilus, and Mr. Bridgman’s translation of the Golden Sentences of Democrates and the Similitudes of Demophilus,2 he will then be in possession of all the Pythagoric Sentences that are extant, with the sole exception of those of Sextus, which I have not translated in consequence of the very impure and spurious state in which they currently exist.

I also deem it necessary to observe that the Pythagoric life delineated here is a specimen of the greatest perfection in virtue and wisdom that can be attained by man in this present state. Hence, it exhibits piety unadulterated by folly, moral virtue uncontaminated by vice, science unmingled with sophistry, and dignity of mind and manners unaccompanied...

1 This Sextus is probably the same person that Seneca so greatly extols, and from whom he derives many of those admirable sentences with which his works abound. See Seneca’s Epistles, 59, 64, 98, and Book 2 of On Anger, ch. 36, and Book 3, ch. 36.

2 All these were published in one volume, 12mo, by Mr. Bridgman under the title Translations from the Greek in the year 1804, and they well deserve to be perused by the liberal reader.