This is also confirmed by the most learned of the
Greeks (such as Solon, Thales, Plato, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, and as some say, even Lycurgus) going to Egypt and
conversing with the priests; of whom they say Eudoxus
was a hearer of Chonuphis of Memphis, Solon of Sonchis of Sais, and Pythagoras of Oenuphis of Heliopolis.
Whereof the last named, being (as is probable) more than
ordinarily admired by the men, and they also by him,
imitated their symbolical and mysterious way of talking,
obscuring his sentiments with dark riddles. For the greatest
[p. 73]
part of the Pythagoric precepts fall nothing short of
those sacred writings they call hieroglyphical, such as, Do
not eat in a chariot; Do not sit on a choenix (or measure);
Plant not a palm-tree; Stir not fire with a knife within the
house. And I verily believe, that their terming the unit
Apollo, the number two Diana, the number seven Minerva,
and the first cube Neptune, refers to the columns set up in
their temples, and to things there acted, aye, and painted
too. For they represent their king and lord Osiris by an
eye and a sceptre. There are some also that interpret his
name by many-eyed, as if os in the Egyptian tongue signified many, and iri an eye. And the heaven, because by
reason of its eternity it never grows old, they represent by
a heart with a censer under it. There were also statues
of judges erected at Thebes, having no hands; and the
chief of them had also his eyes closed up, hereby signifying
that among them justice was not to be solicited with either
bribery or address. Moreover, the men of the sword had
a beetle carved upon their signets, because there is no
such thing as a female beetle; for they are all males, and
they generate their young in certain round pellets formed
of dirt, being herein as well providers of the place in
which they are to be engendered, as of the matter of their
nutrition.
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