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Pythagoras, in addition to his other injunctions, commanded
his pupils rarely to take an oath, and, when they did swear an oath, to abide by it under any
circumstances and to bring to fulfilment whatever they have sworn to do; and that they should
never reply as did Lysander the Laconian and Demades the Athenian,1 the former of whom once declared that boys should be cheated with dice and
men with oaths, and Demades affirmed that in the case of oaths, as in all other affairs, the
most profitable course is the one to choose, and that it was his observation that the perjurer
forthwith continued to possess the things regarding which he had taken the oath, whereas the
man who had kept his oath had manifestly lost what had been his own. For neither of these men
looked upon the oath, as did Pythagoras, as a firm pledge of faith, but as a bait to use for
ill-gotten gain and deception.Const. Exc. 4, pp. 293-295.
1 Lysander, a Spartan admiral, died in 395 B.C.; Demades, the orator, in 319 B.C. Antipater once remarked of Demades, when he was an old man, that "he was like a victim when the sacrifice was over—nothing left but tongue and guts" (Plut. Phocion, 1).
Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.
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