Crossword-Solution: ARCHYTAS 8 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 16

LXXXVIII Of her the good archangel made demand What way in search of Silence to pursue: Who said; "He with the Virtues once was scanned Nor dwelt elsewhere; aye guested by the crew Of Benedict, or blest Elias' band, When abbeys and when convent-cells were new; And whilom in the schools long time did pass, With sage Archytas and Pythagorus.

Thus, as long ago as the days when Xenophon was leading back his warriors to the shores of the Black Sea, and ere the Gauls had first burned Rome, there was a philosopher, Archytas, who invented a pigeon which could fly, partly by means of mechanism, and partly also, it is said, by aid of an aura or spirit.

There may yet arise one credulous enough to state that the mysterious spirit was precursor of the internal combustion engine, but, however that may be, the pigeon of Archytas almost certainly existed, and perhaps it actually glided or flew for short distances--or else Aulus Gellius was an utter liar, like Cassiodorus and his fellows.

This engine may be contrived from the same principles by which Archytas made a wooden dove, and Regiomontanus a wooden eagle.

Long after the dissolution of the Order, eminent Pythagoreans, such as Archytas of Tarentum, retained their political influence over the cities of Magna Graecia.