67

116

is that during the five centuries which elapsed
from the establishment of this brotherhood by
Pythagoras to the time when the brotherhood decided to make
public some facts about Pythagoras in order
to fill up their numbers, as we know they must have done
from the fact that then for the first time
3 Pythagoreans almost contemporaneously published
biographies of their great master, this brotherhood remained
most closely bound together with a worship of Pythagoras as
a supernatural person and communicated
by word of mouth exclusively. They therefore must
have had a tradition about their master in which
the supernatural elements were exaggerated but
which in other respects was very close to the
truth, as compared with traditions generally. Now
in our days it has been clearly established that traditions
generally, when unmixed with poetry, are apt
to be pretty close to the truth in their main
features. Iamblichus belonged to this brotherhood