4 
INTRODUCTORY 
as when he went to see the Cyclopes in order to ascertain ‘what 
sort of people they were, whether violent and savage, with no 
sense of justice, or hospitable and godfearing’. 1 Coming 
nearer to historical times, we find philosophers and statesmen 
travelling in order to benefit by all the wisdom that other 
nations with a longer history had. gathered during the cen 
turies. Thales travelled in Egypt and spent his time with 
the priests. Solon, according to Herodotus, 2 travelled e to see 
the world’ (decvpirjs dveKev), going to Egypt to the court of 
Amasis, and visiting Croesus at Sardis. At Sardis it was not 
till ‘ after he had seen and examined everything ’ that he had 
the famous conversation with Croesus ; and Croesus addressed 
him as the Athenian of whose wisdom and peregrinations he 
had heard great accounts, proving that he had covered much 
ground in seeing the world and pursuing philosophy. 
(Herodotus, also a great traveller, is himself an instance of 
the capacity of the Greeks for assimilating anything that 
could be learnt from any other nations whatever; and, 
although in Herodotus’s case the object in view was less the 
pursuit of philosophy than the collection of interesting infor- . 
nation, yet he exhibits in no less degree the Greek passion 
for seeing things as they are and discerning their meaning 
and mutual relations; ‘ he compares his reports, he weighs the 
evidence, he is conscious of his own office as an inquirer after 
truth’.) But the same avidity for learning is best of all 
illustrated by the similar tradition with regard to Pythagoras’s 
travels. lamblichus, in his-account of the life of Pythagoras, 3 
says that Thales, admiring his remarkable ability, communi 
cated to him all that he knew, but, pleading his own age and 
failing strength, advised him for his better instruction to go 
and study with the Egyptian priests. Pythagoras, visiting 
Sidon on the way, both because it was his birthplace and 
because he properly thought that the passage to Egypt would 
be easier by that route, consorted there with the descendants 
of Mochus, the natural philosopher and prophet, and with the 
other Phoenician hierophants, and was initiated into all 
the rites practised in Biblus, Tyre, and in many parts of 
Syria, a regimen to which he submitted, not out of religious 
1 Od. ix, 174-6. 2 Herodotus, i, 30. 
3 lamblichus, De vita Pythagorica, cc. 2-4.