rhaps it was in
those early years, from the mother herself, that he gathered the idea,
afterward developed, that Apollo had appeared to his mother, and so
great was the beauty of the god that the woman was actually overcome, it
being the first god at which she had ever had a good look.

The ambition of a great mother centers on her son. Pythagoras was filled
with the thought that he was different, peculiar, set apart to teach the
human race.

Having compassed all there was to learn in his native place, and, as he
thought, being ill appreciated, he started for Egypt, the land of
learning. The fallacy that knowledge was a secret to be gained by word
of mouth and to be gotten from books existed then as now. The mother of
Pythagoras wanted her son to comprehend the innermost secrets of the
Egyptian mysteries. He would then know all. To this end she sold her
jewels, in order that her son might have the advantages of an Egyptian
education.

Women were not allowed to know the divine secrets--only just a few
little ones. This woman wanted to know, and she said her son would
learn, and tell her.

The family had become fairly rich by this time, and influential. Letters
were gotten from the great ones of Samos to the Secretary of State in
Egypt. And so Pythagoras, aged twenty, "the youth with the beautiful
hair," went on his journey to Egypt and knocked boldly at the doors of
the temples at Memphis, where knowledge was supposed to be in stock.
Religion then monopolized all schools and continued to do so for quite
some time after Pythagoras was dead.

He was turned away with the explanation that no foreigner could enter
the sacred portals--that the initiates must be those born in the shadows
of the temples and nurtured in the faith from infancy by holy virgins.

Pythagoras still insisted, and it was probably then that he found a
sponsor who made for him the claim that he was a son of Apollo. And the
holy men peeped out of their peep-holes in holy admiration for any one
who could concoct as big a lie as they themselves had ever invented.

The boy surely looked the part. Perhaps, at last, here was one who was
what they pretended to be! Frauds believe in frauds, and rogues are more
easily captured by roguery than are honest men.

His admittance to the university became a matter of international
diplomacy. At last, being too hard-pressed, the wise ones who ran the
mystery monopoly gave in, and Pythagoras was informed that at m