Fabre d’Olivet, a French scholar and esotericist of the Revolutionary years, opens with a discourse on the essence and form of poetry, then gives his own verse translation of the Golden Verses, the short moral poem attributed to the Pythagoreans, and a long commentary that reads each precept as part of an ancient mystical wisdom. His speculations are those of an occultist, not a historian.
A classic of the esoteric tradition, for readers interested in mysticism and its sources. Download the free EPUB.