The Pythagorean Sentences open under Pythagoras: do not take piety from a temple, nor truth from a friendship. The life of the money-lovers is like a corpse’s feast: it has everything except the one who would be glad. Logos has the same power as a rudder: it turns life toward the saving side like a boat. Fortune’s goodwill, like a hetaira’s, must be judged by time. Life, like coin, if counterfeit at the start, is uncurrent for all time. To benefit the ungrateful and to perfume a corpse lie in the same case.
In war iron is better than gold for safety; in living, logos is better than wealth. The educated, like men from the palaestra, even if they fall, get up quickly from misfortune. Choose the smoothest road and the least painful life. Take praise, like myrrh, sparingly. Do not seek a voice among fish or virtue among the uneducated. Under Epictetus: moor neither a ship from one small anchor nor a life from one hope.
The slot is that gnomic booklet, not a missing Pythagorean brotherhood.
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