And, indeed, it is also clear that poetry was in fashion from the laws of the Twelve Tables, wherein it is provided that no song should be made to the injury of another.

Another argument of the erudition of those times is, that they played on instruments before the shrines of their Gods, and at the entertainments of their magistrates; but that custom was peculiar to the sect I am speaking of.

To me, indeed, that poem of Appius Caecus, which Panaetius commends so much in a certain letter of his which is addressed to Quintus Tubero, has all the marks of a Pythagorean author.

We have many things derived from the Pythagoreans in our customs, which I pass over, that we may not seem to have learned that elsewhere which we look upon ourselves as the inventors of.

But to return to our purpose.