of
inquiry in Egypt." Through Philolaus (see Grote IV, p. 395, note 2),
Pythagorean science was made known to Plato, whose views are quoted on p.
449. Grote states that, about 300 B.C., the Pythagorean philosophy nearly
died out. It is a curious fact that this date coincides, approximately,
with the destruction of Tyre (Tsar, in Phoenician,=the rock), the last
stronghold of the Phoenicians, "which had defied Assyrian, Babylonian and
Persian but at last fell," according to Prof. A. H. Sayce, "in July, B.C.
332, before the Greek conqueror Alexander. Thirty thousand of its citizens
were sold in slavery, thousands of others massacred and crucified and the
wealth of the richest and most luxurious city of the world became the prey
of an exasperated army. Its trade was inherited by its neighbor Sidon"
(_op. cit._ p. 194). It is obvious that, at this period, bands of
fugitives may well have taken refuge in traders' ships and sought safety
in flight to distant regions, where they might establish themselves and
found colonies on the pattern of Tyre or of Carthage which, in ancient
times had also been founded by fugitives and been named "the new city,"
Karthakhadasha (Sayce). While the great historical events which marked the
fourth century B.C. seem to have arrested the spread of Pythagorean
philosophy, we find that, according to Grote, "in the time of Cicero, two
centuries later, the orientalizing tendency, beginning to spread over the
Grecian and Roman world, caused it to be again revived, with little or
none of its scientific tendencies, but with more than its primitive
religious and imaginative fanaticism.... It was taken up anew by the pagan
world, along with the disfigured doctrines of Plato. Neo-Pythagorism,
passing gradually into Neo-Platonism, outlasted other more positive and
masculine systems of pagan philosophy, as the contemporary and revival of
Christianity" (_op. cit._ IV, 398). Neo-Platonism reached its height under
its chief Plotinus (A.D. 205-270) who sought to reconcile the Platonic and
Aristotelian systems with Oriental theosophy. His pantheistic and eclectic
school was the last product of the Greek philosophy.(156)

It is, at all events, remarkable, that the date tradition assigns to the
presence of Kukulcan in Yucatan and the foundation of the quadruplicate
state of Mayapan coincides with the dying out, in Europe, of pagan
philosophy, one of the features of which had been the elaboration of ideal
forms of gov