enthusiastic a pupil he might be, and he left Samos for Southern Italy,
the rich inhabitants of whose cities had both the leisure
and inclination to study. Delphi, far-famed for its Oracles,
was visited _en route_, and PYTHAGORAS, after a sojourn at Tarentum,
settled at Croton, where he gathered about him a great band
of pupils, mainly young people of the aristocratic class.
By consent of the Senate of Croton, he formed out of these a
great philosophical brotherhood, whose members lived apart from
the ordinary people, forming, as it were, a separate community.
They were bound to PYTHAGORAS by the closest ties of admiration
and reverence, and, for years after his death, discoveries made
by Pythagoreans were invariably attributed to the Master, a fact
which makes it very difficult exactly to gauge the extent of
PYTHAGORAS' own knowledge and achievements. The regime of the
Brotherhood, or Pythagorean Order, was a strict one, entailing "high
thinking and low living" at all times. A restricted diet, the exact
nature of which is in dispute, was observed by all members, and long
periods of silence, as conducive to deep thinking, were imposed on
novices. Women were admitted to the Order, and PYTHAGORAS' asceticism
did not prohibit romance, for we read that one of his fair pupils won
her way to his heart, and, declaring her affection for him, found it
reciprocated and became his wife.

SCHURE writes: "By his marriage with Theano, Pythagoras affixed
_the seal of realization_ to his work. The union and fusion of
the two lives was complete. One day when the master's wife was asked
what length of time elapsed before a woman could become pure after
intercourse with a man, she replied: `If it is with her husband, she
is pure all the time; if with another man, she is never pure.'"
"Many women," adds the writer, "would smilingly remark that to give