Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras

the same time, as we have already observed, they shared their possessions in common. Such was their reverence for Pythagoras that they numbered him among the gods, as a beneficent and highly philanthropic spirit. Some celebrated him as the Pythian or Hyperborean Apollo. Others considered him to be PaeonThe physician of the Olympian gods., while others saw him as one of the spirits that inhabit the moon. Others still celebrated him as one of the Olympian gods who, in order to benefit and reform mortal life, appeared to the people of that era in human form to extend the salutary light of happiness and philosophy.

Indeed, a greater good never came, nor will ever come, to mankind than that which was imparted by the gods through this Pythagoras. Hence, even now, the proverb "the long-haired Samian" is applied to the most venerable man. Aristotle relates, in his treatise On the Pythagoric Philosophy, that the following distinction was preserved by the Pythagoreans among their primary mysteries: that of rational beings, one kind is a god, another is man, and another is one such as Pythagoras.

¹ From what has been noted regarding the divine origin of Pythagoras, it follows that he was a terrestrial hero belonging to the lineage of Apollo. Thus, the Asclepius who once lived on earth as the inventor of medicine proceeded, according to ancient mythology, from the god Asclepius who subsists in Apollo, just as the hero Bacchus proceeded from the Bacchus who subsists in Jupiter. Hence, the Emperor Julian says of Asclepius: "I had almost forgotten the greatest of the gifts of Jupiter and the Sun, but I have very properly reserved it to the last. For it is not peculiar to us only, but is common also, I think, to our kindred the Greeks. For Jupiter, in the realm of intelligence, generated Asclepius from himself; but he was unfolded into light on earth through the prolific light of the sun. Therefore, proceeding from heaven to earth, he appeared uniformly in a human shape near Epidaurus. Thence, becoming multiplied in his progress, he extended his saving right hand to all the earth. He came to Pergamus, to Ionia, to Tarentum, and afterwards to Rome. Thence he went to the island of Cos, afterwards to Aegae, and at length to wherever there is land and sea. Nor did we experience his beneficence individually, but collectively. At one and the same time, he corrected souls that were wandering in error and bodies that were infirm."