ive is a ball which moves in space
and which may be habitable on every side.

A strange development that for a stripling pugilist. But we must not
forget that in the Greek world athletics held a peculiar place. The
chief winner of Olympian games gave his name to an epoch (the ensuing
Olympiad of four years), and was honored almost before all others in the
land. A sound mind in a sound body was the motto of the day. To excel
in feats of strength and dexterity was an accomplishment that even
a philosopher need not scorn. It will be recalled that aeschylus
distinguished himself at the battle of Marathon; that Thucydides, the
greatest of Greek historians, was a general in the Peloponnesian War;
that Xenophon, the pupil and biographer of Socrates, was chiefly famed
for having led the Ten Thousand in the memorable campaign of Cyrus
the Younger; that Plato himself was credited with having shown
great aptitude in early life as a wrestler. If, then, Pythagoras the
philosopher was really the Pythagoras who won the boxing contest, we may
suppose that in looking back upon this athletic feat from the heights of
his priesthood--for he came to be almost deified--he regarded it not as
an indiscretion of his youth, but as one of the greatest achievements of
his life. Not unlikely he recalled with pride that he was credited
with being no less an innovator in athletics than in philosophy. At all
events, tradition credits him with the invention of "scientific"
boxing. Was it he, perhaps, who taught the Greeks to strike a rising
and swinging blow from the hip, as depicted in the famous metopes of the
Parthenon? If so, the innovation of Pythagoras was as little heeded in
this regard in a subsequent age as was his theory of the motion of the
earth; for to strike a swinging blow from the hip, rather than from the
shoulder, is a trick which the pugilist learned anew in our own day.

But enough of pugilism and of what, at best, is a doubtful tradition.
Our concern is with another "science" than that of the arena. We
must follow the purple-robed victor to Italy--if, indeed, we be not
over-credulous in accepting the tradition--and learn of triumphs of a
different kind that have placed the name of Pythagoras high on the list
of the fathers of Grecian thought. To Italy? Yes, to the western limits
of the Greek world. Here it was, beyond the confines of actual Greek
territory, that Hellenic thought found its second home, its first home
being, as we h