 Given the fragmentary nature of the evidence, it is unclear whether these ascetic Pythagoreans who engage in argument are the same as the Pythagorists in the other comedies, who are characterized by their filth and eccentric appearance. Certainly the latter are more reminiscent of Diodorus of Aspendus, while the former might be closer to what we know of someone like Cleinias. In the first half of the third century, the poet Theocritus still preserves a memory of these Pythagorists as “pale and without shoes” (XIV 5). The scholiast to the passage testifies to the continuing controversy about the Pythagorists by drawing a distinction between Pythagoreans who give every attention to their body and Pythagorists who are filthy (although another scholion reports that others say the opposite, see Arnott 1996, 581). A passage in Iamblichus (VP 80) similarly argues that the Pythagoreans were the true followers of Pythagoras, while the Pythagorists just emulated them.