Читать книгу The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers - Diogenes Laertius - Страница 34

The limit of all wisdom is in me;

And would be, were it larger. But report

To my Pythagoras that he’s the first

Of all the men that tread the Grecian soil;

I shall not speak a falsehood, saying this.

And Ion, the Chian, says of him:—

Adorned with valour while alive, and modesty,

Now that he’s dead he still exists in peace;

For, like the wise Pythagoras, he studied

The manners and the minds of many nations.

And I myself have composed an epigram on him in the Pherecratean metre:—

The story is reported,

That noble Pherecydes

Whom Syros calls her own,

Was eaten up by lice;

And so he bade his friends,

Convey his corpse away

To the Magnesian land,

That he might victory give

To holy Ephesus.

For well the God had said,

(Though he alone did know

Th’ oracular prediction),

That this was fate’s decree.

So in that land he lies.

This then is surely true,

That those who’re really wise

Are useful while alive,

And e’en when breath has left them.

VIII. And he flourished about the fifty-ninth Olympiad. There is a letter of his extant in the following terms:—