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disciplines’ and concerned that his skills and learning would desert him as he aged. He adopted a fresh strategy: Rather than teach a multitude, he chose one promising disciple.
    Iamblichus described Pythagoras’ choice as a poverty-stricken but talented young athlete, whom Pythagoras discovered playing ball in the gymnasium ‘with great aptness and facility’. They struck an agreement. Pythagoras would provide him with the necessities of life and the opportunity to continue his athletics, on condition that the young man would, in easy doses (at least by Pythagoras’ standards) allow Pythagoras to educate him. At first the youth seemed motivated mostly by rewards of three eboli for learning figures on the abacus. As time passed, Pythagoras observed that his interest became keener, so much so that Pythagoras suspected it would continue even without the eboli – even if he had to ‘suffer the extremity of want’. As a test, Pythagoras pretended to have had a catastrophic change of fortune, requiring the association to end. As Pythagoras had hoped, the youth declared that he could learn without rewards and would find a way to provide for both himself and Pythagoras. Iamblichus wrote that this young man, to honour his mentor, took the name ‘Pythagoras, son of Eratocles’ and, alone among Pythagoras’ acquaintances on Samos, eventually moved with him to southern Italy. Iamblichus did not indicate where he got this information except to mention that ‘there are said to be’ three books by Pythagoras, son of Eratocles, titled On Athletics, in which he recommended eating meat instead of dry figs. If he took this recommendation from his teacher, then the advice ran counter to information from other sources that Pythagoras was a vegetarian and required the same of his students and followers.
    A story about another pupil also conflicts with Pythagoras’ reputation as a strict vegetarian. Eurymenes was also an athlete, but he was small. It was the custom to eat only moist cheese, dry figs, and wheat bread while in training for the Olympic games. Pythagoras instead advised Eurymenes to eat meat. He also taught him not to go into the games for the sake of victory but for the exercise of training and the benefit to his body. Diet and Pythagorean sports psychology worked wonders. Eurymenes, in Porphyry’s words, ‘conquered at Olympia through his surpassing knowledge of Pythagoras’ wisdom.’ [1]
    According to Porphyry, these two athletes were not Pythagoras’ only pupils during this period. Porphyry had read of another in On the Incredible Things Beyond Thule , the book he used for information about Pythagoras’ father, insisting that its author had ‘treated Pythagoras’ affairs so carefully that I think his account should not be omitted.’ Porphyry did not say it should necessarily be believed. On a trading journey, Pythagoras’ father, Mnesarchus, discovered an infant under a poplar tree, lying on its back, looking unblinkingly at the sun and sipping dew falling from the tree through a reed pipe in its mouth. This struck Mnesarchus as divine activity, and he arranged for the child to be fostered by a friend and native of that country, later paid for his education, named him Astraeus, and reared him with his own sons. Pythagoras took this younger adopted brother as his pupil. Porphyry also mentioned a fourth pupil, Zalmoxis of Thrace, who ‘some said’ also took the name Thales. Though not an Olympian, he must have had an impressive build, for barbarians mistook him for Hercules and worshipped him.
    On the Incredible Things Beyond Thule listed the qualities Pythagoras looked for in those who came to study with him. Its author had learned (his source is not known) that Pythagoras did not agree to teach everyone who came, nor were his choices based only on intelligence or kinship. He observed a candidate’s facial expressions, body