“Is the governor positioning himself for a White House run in 2024?”–Politico, June 23, 2022
Theognis, 933-938
Excellence and beauty attend few men.
Blessed is the one to whom fate grants both.
Everybody honors him: Gen Y, his peers,
And old boomers all make way for him.
With age he becomes more distinguished
Among his countrymen, and none of them
Wants to disrespect or cost him his due.
“Is the governor positioning himself for a White House run in 2024?”–Politico, June 23, 2022
Theognis, 933-938
Excellence and beauty attend few men.
Blessed is the one to whom fate grants both.
Everybody honors him: Gen Y, his peers,
And old boomers all make way for him.
With age he becomes more distinguished
Among his countrymen, and none of them
Wants to disrespect or cost him his due.
“It is understandable that he brought a prejudice on the highest offices in the land, which would no longer allow people to return the characters they started with, but instead could make them mean, boastful, and inhumane. Whether this is a movement or a change of nature because of chance or it is an unmasking of the truth when there is evil in authority, some other investigation will discover.”
N.B This is a different Pythagoras from the one with the theorem.
Suda, s.v. Pythagoras of Ephesos
“Pythagoras of Ephesos. Once he overthrew the government called the reign of the Basilidai, Pythagoras became the harshest tyrant. He seemed and sometimes was very kind to the people and the masses, increasing their hopes, but under-delivering on their profits. Because he despoiled those in high esteem and power and liquidated their property, he was not at all tolerable.
He did not hesitate to impose the harshest punishments or to mercilessly kill those who had done no wrong—for he had gotten just this crazy. His lust for money was endless. He was also quickest to anger in response to any insults to those near to him. On their own, these things would have been enough reason for people to kill him in the worst way, but he also was contemptuous of the divine. Indeed, many of his previously mentioned victims he actually killed in temples.
When the daughters of one man took refuge in a temple, he did not dare to extract them forcefully, but he waited them out so long that the girls resolved their hunger with a rope. A plague then afflicted the people along with a famine and Pythagoras, who was worried for himself, sent representatives to Delphi, requesting relief from these sufferings. She said that he needed to build temples and take care of the dead. He lived before Cyrus of Persia, according to Batôn.”
“It is understandable that he brought a prejudice on the highest offices in the land, which would no longer allow people to return the characters they started with, but instead could make them mean, boastful, and inhumane. Whether this is a movement or a change of nature because of chance or it is an unmasking of the truth when there is evil in authority, some other investigation will discover.”
N.B This is a different Pythagoras from the one with the theorem.
Suda, s.v. Pythagoras of Ephesos
“Pythagoras of Ephesos. Once he overthrew the government called the reign of the Basilidai, Pythagoras became the harshest tyrant. He seemed and sometimes was very kind to the people and the masses, increasing their hopes, but under-delivering on their profits. Because he despoiled those in high esteem and power and liquidated their property, he was not at all tolerable.
He did not hesitate to impose the harshest punishments or to mercilessly kill those who had done no wrong—for he had gotten just this crazy. His lust for money was endless. He was also quickest to anger in response to any insults to those near to him. On their own, these things would have been enough reason for people to kill him in the worst way, but he also was contemptuous of the divine. Indeed, many of his previously mentioned victims he actually killed in temples.
When the daughters of one man took refuge in a temple, he did not dare to extract them forcefully, but he waited them out so long that the girls resolved their hunger with a rope. A plague then afflicted the people along with a famine and Pythagoras, who was worried for himself, sent representatives to Delphi, requesting relief from these sufferings. She said that he needed to build temples and take care of the dead. He lived before Cyrus of Persia, according to Batôn.”
N.B This is a different Pythagoras from the one with the theorem.
Suda, s.v. Pythagoras of Ephesos
“Pythagoras of Ephesos. Once he overthrew the government called the reign of the Basilidai, Pythagoras became the harshest tyrant. He seemed and sometimes was very kind to the people and the masses, increasing their hopes, but under-delivering on their profits. Because he despoiled those in high esteem and power and liquidated their property, he was not at all tolerable.
He did not hesitate to impose the harshest punishments or to mercilessly kill those who had done no wrong—for he had gotten just this crazy. His lust for money was endless. He was also quickest to anger in response to any insults to those near to him. On their own, these things would have been enough reason for people to kill him in the worst way, but he also was contemptuous of the divine. Indeed, many of his previously mentioned victims he actually killed in temples.
When the daughters of one man took refuge in a temple, he did not dare to extract them forcefully, but he waited them out so long that the girls resolved their hunger with a rope. A plague then afflicted the people along with a famine and Pythagoras, who was worried for himself, sent representatives to Delphi, requesting relief from these sufferings. She said that he needed to build temples and take care of the dead. He lived before Cyrus of Persia, according to Batôn.”
Have you heard that Valerius Licinianus is teaching in Sicily. I don’t think you have since the news just reached me. This Praetorian Senator was only just recently considered among the most eloquent advocated in Rome. But he has fallen to this: an exile from the Senate and a professor of rhetoric.
Thus, in his first lecture, he spoke these words soulfully: “What games do you play with us, Fortune? You make professors from senators, and senators from professors!” So much bile, so much bitterness—perhaps he got himself made a teacher just to say it! When he entered wearing a Greek cloak—since those who have been exiled are forbidden the toga—he composed himself, looked himself over, and announced, “I will lecture in Latin!”
C. Plinius Cornelio Miniciano Suo S.
Audistine Valerium Licinianum in Sicilia profiteri? nondum te puto audisse: est enim recens nuntius. Praetorius hic modo inter eloquentissimos causarum actores habebatur; nunc eo decidit, ut exsul de senatore, rhetor de oratore fieret. Itaque ipse in praefatione dixit dolenter et graviter: “Quos tibi, Fortuna, ludos facis? facis enim ex senatoribus professores, ex professoribus senatores.” Cui sententiae tantum bilis, tantum amaritudinis inest, ut mihi videatur ideo professus ut hoc diceret. Idem cum Graeco pallio amictus intrasset (carent enim togae iure, quibus aqua et igni interdictum est), postquam se composuit circumspexitque habitum suum, “Latine” inquit “declamaturus sum.”