Meaning henceforth, speedily.[1] Aristophanes in Clouds [writes]: “you would shun the wicked by this time”.[2]
And Iamblichus [writes]: “For already I pity you, because I am unlucky in the same things as you”.[3]
Meaning near the present [time].[4]
And again: “if by this time Antonius repents of these actions, I also agree that to join in friendship with the Romans is not hateful”.[5]
Concerning Pythagoras: “for often before now I have seen clever men die in false report; then, when they return home, they are held in greater honour”.[6] Likewise Pythagoras shut himself in a cellar and ordered his mother to tell the tale he was dead. After that, when he reappeared, he started tell stories about reincarnation and about the ones in the Underworld, explaining to men the characteristic aspects which he said they would find in the Underworld. On the basis of these stories, he created around himself the reputation that, before the Trojan War, he supposedly was Aethalides the son of Hermes, then Euphorbos,[7] then Hermotimus of Samos, then Pythios of Delos,[8] then last of all Pythagoras.[9]