“Yes, you are quite right,” said Rhodopis.  “The inhabitants of this strange land have for thousands of years granted our weaker sex the same rights, that they demand for themselves.  Indeed, in many respects, they have given us the preference.  For instance, by the Egyptian law it is the daughters, not the sons, who are commanded to foster and provide for their aged parents, showing how well the fathers of this now humbled people understood women’s nature, and how rightly they acknowledged that she far surpasses man in thoughtful solicitude and self-forgetful love.  Do not laugh at these worshippers of animals.  I confess that I cannot understand them, but I feel true admiration for a people in the teaching of whose priests, even Pythagoras, that great master in the art of knowledge, assured me lies a wisdom as mighty as the Pyramids.”

“And your great master was right,” exclaimed Darius.  “You know that I obtained Neithotep’s freedom, and, for some weeks past, have seen him and Onuphis very constantly, indeed they have been teaching me.  And oh, how much I have learnt already from those two old men, of which I had no idea before!  How much that is sad I can forget, when I am listening to them!  They are acquainted with the entire history of the heavens and the earth.  They know the name of every king, and the circumstances of every important event that has occurred during the last four thousand years, the courses of the stars, the works of their own artists and sayings of their sages, during the same immense period of time.  All this knowledge is recorded in huge books, which have been preserved in a palace at Thebes, called the ‘place of healing for the soul.’  Their laws are a fountain of pure wisdom, and a comprehensive intellect has been shown in the adaptation of all their state institutions to the needs of the country.  I wish we could boast of the same regularity and order at home.  The idea that lies at the root of all their knowledge is the use of numbers, the only means by which it is possible to calculate the course of the stars, to ascertain and determine the limits of all that exists, and, by the application of which in the shortening and lengthening of the strings of musical instruments, tones can be regulated.

   [We agree with Iamblichus in supposing, that these Pythagorean views
   were derived from the Egyptian mysteries.]

“Numbers are the only certain things; they can neither be controlled nor perverted.  Every nation has its own ideas of right and wrong; every law can be rendered invalid by circumstances; but the results obtained from numbers can never be overthrown.  Who can dispute, for instance, that twice two make four?  Numbers determine the contents of every existing thing; whatever is, is equal to its contents, numbers therefore are the true being, the essence of all that is.”

“In the name of Mithras, Darius, do leave off talking in that style, unless you want to turn my brain,” interrupted Zopyrus.  “Why, to hear you, one would fancy you’d been spending your life among these old Egyptian speculators and had never had a sword in your hand.  What on earth have we to do with numbers?”