Witness to this also are the wisest of the
Greeks : Solon, Thales, Plato, Eudoxus, Pythagoras,
who came to Egypt and consorted with the priests
1;
and in this number some would include Lycurgus
also. Eudoxus, they say, received instruction from
Chonuphis of Memphis, Solon from Sonchis of Saïs,
and Pythagoras from Oenuphis of Heliopolis. Pythagoras, as it seems, was greatly admired, and he also
greatly admired the Egyptian priests, and, copying
[p. 27]
their symbolism and occult teachings, incorporated
his doctrines in enigmas. As a matter of fact most
of the Pythagorean precepts
2 do not at all fall short
of the writings that are called hieroglyphs; such, for
example, as these : ‘Do not eat upon a stool’;
‘Do not sit upon a peck measure’; ‘Do not lop
off the shoots of a palm-tree
3
’; ‘Do not poke a fire
with a sword within the house.’
For my part, I think also that their naming unity
Apollo, duality Artemis, the hebdomad Athena, and
the first cube Poseidon,
4 bears a resemblance to the
statues and even to the sculptures and paintings with
which their shrines are embellished. For their King
and Lord Osiris they portray by means of an eye
and a sceptre
5; there are even some who explain
the meaning of the name as ‘many-eyed’
6 on
the theory that
os in the Egyptian language means
‘many’ and
iri
‘eye’ ; and the heavens, since
they are ageless because of their eternity, they portray by a heart with a censer beneath.
7 In Thebes
there were set up statues of judges without hands,
and the statue of the chief justice had its eyes closed,
to indicate that justice is not influenced by gifts or by
intercession.
8
The military class had their seals engraved with
the form of a beetle
9; for there is no such thing as a
[p. 29]
female beetle, but all beetles are male.
10 They eject
their sperm into a round mass which they construct,
since they are no less occupied in arranging for a
supply of food
11 than in preparing a place to rear their
young.