kind of solution was later abandoned; but the problem remained of
finding some coherent reality which underlay the baffling diversity
of the world (the 'manifold' as Immanuel Kant was later to call it).
Plato had his own solution to this problem, as we shall see -- a solu-
tion which depended not on physics but on logic, metaphysics and
ethics.

An important step in the direction which Plato afterwards took
may have been made by Pythagoras, of Croton in southern Italy (he
was born on the island of Samos, not far from Miletus, probably in
570 BC). Since nothing of his work remains, and the stories about
him are all suspect, it is even more difficult than usual to sieve out
his ideas from those of his later disciples, with whom Plato was
acquainted. For our purposes this does not matter; for if an idea
which we find developed in Plato could have come from a Pythagor-
ean source, it is less important whether that source was the Master
himself. The chief danger to be guarded against is that of supposing
that some idea came from the Pythagorean school to Plato, when in
fact it went from Plato to the later Pythagoreans.

We may notice at least three suggestions which Plato may have
picked up from the Pythagoreans. The first was that of a tightly-
organized community of like-minded thinkers who should not only
rule their own life together in accordance with strict principles, but
provide guidance (even governance) for the polity in which they
lived. Plato's political proposals could be said to be a result of the
combination of this Pythagorean idea with the Spartan model of
orderly government and discipline.

If the stories about Pythagoras are to be believed, he actually for a
time came near to making real the dream which Plato was later to
dream in his Republic -- the ideal of the philosopher-ruler. Even if
true, it did not last; for Pythagoras had to rely on persuasion, neither
having nor seeking the absolute and secure power which Plato
demanded for his philosopher-kings. We are told that in about 500
BC, after Pythagoras had been in Croton for some thirty years and
in a position of power for some twenty, there was a revolution; many
of his followers were killed and he himself had to flee. But twenty
years is a long period of stability by Greek standards, if not by
Plato's.

The Pythagoreans may also have been the source of the idea,

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