Pythagoras 畢達哥拉斯 · Πυθαγόρας

🔊There he founded a community that was at once a school, a religious order, and for a time a governing party. Diogenes Laertius reports that its members, about three hundred in number, ran the city so well that its constitution was “in effect a true aristocracy.” Asked by a ruler what he was, Pythagoras is said to have answered, “A philosopher,” and to have compared life to the great games. Some come to compete and some come to sell, “but the best as spectators.” If the story is true, this is the first use of the word.

他在那裡創立了一個團體；它同時是一所學校、一個宗教修會，並且有一段時間是執政的黨派。第歐根尼・拉爾修記載：它的成員大約三百人，把這座城市治理得很好，使它的政體「實際上成了真正的貴族政治」。有一位統治者問畢達哥拉斯他是什麼人；據說他回答：「一個愛智者（philosopher）。」並且把人生比作盛大的競技會：有些人來比賽，有些人來做買賣，「而最好的人是來觀看的」。如果這個故事是真的，這就是這個詞第一次被使用。

🔊The community lived by rule. Members held their property in common, and the saying “Friends have all things in common” was attributed to the founder. A newcomer kept silence for five years, listening to the master’s teaching without seeing him, and was admitted to his presence only after an examination. Women were admitted as well as men, which was unusual in Greece. There were rules about food, the most famous being the ban on beans, for which ancient writers gave a dozen conflicting reasons. Teachings were handed down by word of mouth and introduced with the phrase that became a proverb in Latin: ipse dixit, “he himself said it.”

這個團體依規矩生活。成員的財產共有；「朋友之間一切共有」這句話被歸給創立者。新來的人要守五年的靜默，只聽老師的教導而見不到他；通過考核之後，才獲准見他的面。女性與男性一樣可以加入，這在希臘很不尋常。飲食上有種種規定；最出名的是不准吃豆子，而古代的作者為此給出了十幾個互相衝突的理由。教導是口耳相傳的，並且用一個後來在拉丁文裡成了諺語的說法來起頭：ipse dixit，「他親口說的」。

🔊The doctrine for which he was best known in his own time was the rebirth of the soul. He claimed, the story goes, to remember his former lives, among them that of a Trojan warrior named Euphorbus. His contemporary Xenophanes made fun of this in verses that are the earliest surviving reference to him. Passing a man who was beating a puppy, Pythagoras cried: “Stay, smite not! ’Tis a friend, a human soul; I knew him straight whenas I heard him yelp!” The joke is evidence. Within his lifetime he was known for teaching that souls pass between humans and animals, and for acting on it.

在他自己的時代，他最出名的教義是靈魂的轉生。傳說他宣稱記得自己的前世，其中一世是一位名叫歐福耳玻斯的特洛伊戰士。與他同時代的色諾芬尼用詩句取笑這件事；那是現存最早提到他的文字。畢達哥拉斯經過一個正在打小狗的人身邊，喊道：「住手，別打了！那是一位朋友，一個人的靈魂；我一聽到牠叫，就認出他來了！」這個笑話是一項證據。在他有生之年，人們就知道他教導「靈魂在人與動物之間往來」，並且知道他照著這個教導行事。

🔊The brotherhood’s power made enemies. About 500 BCE a man who had been refused admission, or in another version the citizens of Croton fearing a tyranny, set fire to the house where the Pythagoreans were meeting. The accounts of the founder’s death disagree. In the best-known one he escaped the flames and ran until he came to a field of beans. He stopped, saying that he would be captured sooner than cross it, and his pursuers cut his throat. In another he reached the temple of the Muses at Metapontum and starved there after forty days.

這個兄弟會的權勢樹立了敵人。大約公元前 500 年，一個被拒絕入會的人（另一個版本說是害怕出現僭主政治的克羅頓公民）放火燒了畢達哥拉斯派聚會的房子。關於創立者之死的記述並不一致。在最出名的那個版本裡，他逃出了火場，一路跑到一片豆田前面。他停了下來，說他寧可被抓，也不穿過去；追他的人割斷了他的喉嚨。在另一個版本裡，他逃到了梅塔龐托的繆斯神廟，在那裡絕食四十天而死。

🔊The communities were broken up, and the survivors scattered across the Greek world. They split into those who kept the rules and sayings and those who pursued mathematics and the study of nature. It was the second group, a century later, that impressed Plato, and through Plato the Pythagorean conviction that reality is mathematical entered the main line of European thought.

那些團體被打散了，倖存者流散到希臘世界各地。他們分成了兩派：一派保守著規矩與格言；另一派從事數學與自然的研究。一個世紀之後，打動柏拉圖的是第二派；而經由柏拉圖，畢達哥拉斯派的那個信念——實在是數學的——進入了歐洲思想的主流。