Miscellanies 1.16.80

Draco too, also a lawgiver, is found to have lived about the thirty-ninth Olympiad. Antilochus, who wrote about the sages, reckons from the age of Pythagoras to the death of Epicurus, which occurred on the tenth of Gamelion, three hundred and twelve years in all. They also say that Phanothea, the wife of Icarius, invented the heroic hexameter; others, Themis, one of the Titanesses. Didymus, in his work on Pythagorean philosophy, relates that Theano of Croton was the first woman to philosophize and write poems. Greek philosophy, then, as some say, lays hold of the truth by chance in some way, dimly and not of the whole; as others would have it, it gets its impulse from the devil. Some have supposed that certain inferior powers inspired all philosophy. But even if Greek philosophy does not comprehend the greatness of the truth, and further is too weak to carry out the Lord's commandments, yet it prepares the way for the most royal teaching, in some way making one self-controlled, molding the character beforehand, and preparing the one who believes in providence to receive the truth.