Were suffered to dine with King Pluto, which was for their piety's sake. b. What an ill-tempered god for whom such swine, such creatures good company make ; and in the same later : Their food is just greens, and to wet it pure water is all that they drink And the want of a bath, and the vermin, and their old threadbare coats so do stink That none of the rest will come near them. Pythagoras met his death in this wise. a As he sat one day among his acquaintances at the house of Milo, it chanced that the house was set ablaze out of jealousy by one of the people who were not accounted worthy of admittance to his presence, though some say it was the work of the inhabitants of Croton anxious to safeguard themselves against the setting-up of a tyranny. Pythagoras was caught as he tried to escape ; he got as far as a certain field of beans, where he stopped, saying he would be captured rather than cross it, and be killed rather than prate about his doctrines ; and so his pursuers cut his throat. 5 So also were murdered to the same trusty pair, Myllias and Timycha). The story in Iamblichus represents a band of Pythagoreans pursued by a tyrant's myrmidons and caught in a plain where beans were growing, all of them preferring to die where they stood rather than trample on the beans ; but this story might be located anywhere. It has nothing inherently to do with the end of Pythagoras. What remains, tov be II. vara- \r)<pdr)vai 5te£i6jra, may be compared with Porphyry, Vit. Pyth. § 57, where we are told that the disciples made a bridge of their own bodies over the tire and thus the master escaped from the burning house but, in despair at the extinction of his school, chose a voluntary death. The words ovtoj <5e which follow come in awkwardly, as they are separated from the sentence about the fire. S55