Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)

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Philolāus

（Φιλόλαος). A distinguished Pythagorean philosopher. He was a native of Croton or Tarentum, a contemporary of Socrates, and the instructor of Simmias and Cebes at Thebes, where he appears to have lived many years. Pythagoras and his earliest successors did not commit any of their doctrines to writing, and the first publication of the Pythagorean doctrines is pretty uniformly attributed to Philolaüs. He composed a work on the Pythagorean philosophy in three books, which Plato is said to have procured at the cost of 100 minae through Dion of Syracuse, who purchased it from Philolaüs, who was at the time in deep poverty (Gell. iii. 17). Other versions of the story represent Plato as purchasing it himself from Philolaüs or his relatives when in Sicily. Plato is said to have derived from this work the greater part of his Timaeus.