The Golden Verses of Pythagoras

This 91-page book begins with a table of contents, followed by a preface, a foreword, and an introduction. Chapter 1, the actual “Golden Verses of Pythagoras”, are arranged into 71 lines, each line acting more like a stanza, rather than a sentence. Some stanzas are standalone ideas, while others rely upon those notions placed in front and behind, to create a complete thought or sentence. (It is this reader’s opinion that the editor of this book, Florence Firth, separated the verses, line-by-line, so as to allow the general readership time to pause, to ponder each of the ideas presented—for the ideas are dense.) The verses, more like Commandments, are a list of “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots”—perhaps the rules of conduct for all pupils entering the Pythagorean School of Thought. Chapters 2 through 8 contain six subsequent philosophers’ interpretations of Pythagoras’s work, each with their own, unique spin: Democrates, Demophilus, Stobaeus, Sextus, and Iamblichus. Chapter 9 contains 39 symbols (or fractions of virtues). Each symbol is followed with an explanation of its meaning.