compete for the prize and others went with wares to sell, but the best as spectators ; for similarly, in life, some grow up with servile natures, greedy for fame and gain, but the philosopher seeks for truth. Thus much for this part of the subject. The contents in general of the aforesaid three treatises of Pythagoras are as follows. He forbids us to pray for ourselves, because we do not know what will help us. Drinking he calls, in a word, a snare, and he discountenances all excess, saying that no one should go beyond due proportion either in drinking or in eating. Of sexual indulgence, too, he says, " Keep to the winter for sexual pleasures, in summer abstain ; they are less harmful in autumn and spring, but they are always harmful and not conducive to health." Asked once when a man should consort with a woman, he replied, " When you want to lose what strength you have." He divides man's life into four quarters thus : " Twenty years a boy, twenty years a youth, twenty years a young man, twenty years an old man ; and these four periods correspond to the four seasons, the boy to spring, the youth to summer, the young man to autumn, and the old man to winter," meaning by youth, one not yet grown up and by a young man a man of mature age. According to Timaeus, he was the first to say, " Friends have all things in common " and " Friendship is equality " ; indeed, his disciples did put all their possessions into one common stock. For five whole years they had to keep silence, merely listening to his discourses without seeing him, a until they passed an examination, and thenceforward they Mere admitted to his house and allowed to see him. They would never