Ueberweg, Friedrich 1889. History of Philosophy, from Thales to the present time. Vol. 1. Translated by George Sylvester Morris, with additions by Noah Porter. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. [Internet Archive]
The word philosophy (φιλοσοφία, love of wisdom) and its cognates do not occur in Homer and Hesiod. Homer uses σοφίη, the second word in the compound (Il. XV. 412) with reference to the carpenter's art. In like manner, Hesiod speaks of one who is ναυτιλίης σεσοφισμένος (Op. 651). Later writers use σοφία also for excellence in music and poetry. With Herodotus any one is σοφός who is distinguished from the mass of men by any kind of art or skill. The so-called seven wise men are termed by him σοφισταί, "sophists" (I. 30 et al.), and the same designation is given by him to Pythagoras (IV. 95). (Ueberweg 1889: 1)
That a "sophist" originally stood for anyone who is skilled in any craftmanship we were told about in the very first lecture on the history of philosophy. Now I have the specifics down in writing.
Thucydides represents Pericles as saying in the Funeral Oration (II. 40): φιλοκαλοῡμεν μετ' εὐτελείας καί φιλοσοφοῦμεν ἂνευ μαλακίας, wherein φιλοσοφεῖν (philosophizing) signifies the striving after intellectual and, more especially, after scientific culture. Thus is confirmed for this period the allegation of Cicero: "Omnis rerum optimarum cognitio atque in iis exercitatio philosophia nominata est." This more general signification, in which the "philosopher" is identified with him who μετείληφε παιδείας διαφόρου καί περιττῆς, or who is educated above the mass of men, was long afterwards retained by the word side by side with that given to it as a term of art. (Ueberweg 1889: 2)
Not bad: the philosopher is cultured and educated above the common lot.
Pythagoras is cited as the first to designate by the word φιλοσοφία philosophy as science. The statement is regarded to this point, which we find in Cicero (Tusc. V. 3), Diogenes Laërtius (I 12, VIII. 8), and others, and which (according to Diog. L. VIII. 8), was also contained in a work (διαδοχαί), now no longer extant, written by Sosicrates of Alexandria, is derived from Heraclides of Pontus, a scholar of Plato. Cicero represents Pythagoras as saying, in a conversation with Leon, the rules of Phlius: "Raros esse quosdam, qui ceteris omnibus pro nihilo habitis rerum naturam studiose intuerentur: hos se appellare sapiantiae studiosos (id est enim philosophos)." Diog. Laërt. (I. 12) adds, as the reason given by Heraclides for this designation, "that no man, but only God, is wise." (Ueberweg 1889: 2)
Google translation of Cicero's quote: "that some are rare, who, with all other considerations considered as nothing, would earnestly regard the nature of things; these they called themselves earnest of wisdom (for that is, philosophers)." - The philosopher is the rare man who cares for little else than the honest pursuit after the true nature of things. As to Heraclides' quote, Ritter specifies: "Heraclitus was acquainted with the doctrines of anterior poets and philosophers; for whom, however, he expressed an unqualified contempt, as having mere erudition for their object, and not wisdom" (Ritter 1836: 231); and again: "Philolaus ascribed nothing more than virtue to human life upon earth, but attributed wisdom to the higher existence in Cosmus" (Ritter 1836: 404).
Whether the narrative is historically true, is uncertain; Meiners (Gesch. der Wiss. in Griech. u. Rom. I. 119), and more recently Haym (in Ersch and Gruber's Allgem. Encycl. der Wiss u. Künste, Leips. 1848, III. 24, p. 3), Zeller (Philos. der Griechen, 3d ed., Vol. I., 1856, p. 1), and others have doubted it; probably it is only a Socratic and Platonic thought (see below) transferred by Heraclides to Pythagoras (perhaps as a poetic fiction, which subsequent writers took to be historical). (Ueberweg 1889: 2)
As always with pythagoreanism, we have no other recourse but to rely on second-hand reports, which may very well err.
The modest disclaimer of Socrates in regard to the possession of wisdom, and the preference given by Plato and Aristotle to pure theory above all praxis and even above all ethico-political activity, are scarcely in accord with the unbroken confidence of Pythagoreanism in the power of scientific investigation and with the undivided unity of the theoretical and practical tendencies of that philosophy. (Ueberweg 1889: 2)
The point being that "no man, but only God, is wise" does not jive well with everything else we know of the pythagoreans. Why, indeed, can man not have wisdom if nature is everywhere uniform?
The natural philosophers who call the universe κόσμος (which, according to Diog. Laërt. VIII. 48, the Pythagoreans were the first to do), are in Xenophon (Memor. I. 1. 11) called σοφισταί, in Plato (Gorg., p. 508a, ed. Steph.), "wise men" (σοφοί), without the least intimation that the Pythagoreans would themselves have desired to be named, not wise, but lovers of wisdom. It is also noticeable, though without demonstrative force, that in the preserved fragments of the probably spurious work ascribed to Philolaus the Pythagorean and devoted to the description of the astronomical and philosophical knowledge of the order which reigns in the universe, σοφία, not φιλοσοφία, is used (Strob. Ecl. I. 23; cf. Boeckh, Philolaos, pp. 95 and 102f.) (Ueberweg 1889: 2)
That the pythagoreans were the first to call the universe "universe" (cosmos) I've met before but cannot point exactly where. Ritter called Aristotle's book on pythagoreans probably spurious, likewise the writings of Archytas and Timaeus. Now it turns out that Philolaus' may also be spurious. Everything is spurious.
Plato expresses in various places (Phædr. p. 278d, Conviv. p. 203e; cf. Lysis, p. 218a, ed. Steph.) the sentiment ascribed by Heraclides of Pontus to Pythagoras, that wisdom belongs only to God, while it belongs to man to be rather a lover of wisdom (φιλόσοφος). In the Convivium (and the Lysis) this thought is developed to the effect that neither he who is already wise (σοφός), nor he who is unlearned (ἀμαθής), is a philosopher, but he who stands between the two. The terminology becomes most distinct and definite in two dialogues of late origin, probably composed by one of Plato's disciples, namely, in the Sophistes (p. 217a) and the Politicus (p. 257a, b), where the Sophist, the statesman, and the philosopher (ό σοφιστής, ό πολιτικός, and ό φιλόσοφος) are named in the preceding order, as the advancing order of their rank. Wisdom itself (σοφία), according to Plato (Theatet. p. 145e), is identical with ἐπιστήμη (true knowledge), while philosophy is termed in the dialogue Euthydemus (p. 228d) the acquisition of such knowledge (κτῆσις ἐπιστἠμης). Knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) respects the ideal, as that which truly is, while opinion or representation (δόξα) is concerned with the sensuous, as with that which is subject to change and generation (Rep. V. p. 477a). Accordingly Plato defines (Rep. 480b) those as philosophers, "who set their affections on that, which in each case really exists" (τοὐς αὐτὀ ἂρα ἒκαστον τὀ άσπαζομένους φιλοσόφους κλητέον), or (Rep. VI. 484a) who "are able to apprehend the eternal and immutable" (φιλόσοφοι οί τοῦ ἀεἰ ταὐτἀ ὠσαύτως ἒχοντος όυνάμενοι ἐφάπτεσουναι). In a wider sense Plato uses the term philosophy so as to include under it the positive sciences also (Theaet. p. 143d): περἰ γεωμετρίαν ἢ τινα ἂλλην φιλοσοφίαν. (Ueberweg 1889: 3)
The "philosopher" is rather still striving after knowledge of the "eternal and immutable".
D. Tiedemann, Griechenlands erste Philosophen oder Leben und Systeme des Orpheus, Pherecydes, Thales, und Pythagoras, Leipsic, 1781. (Ueberweg 1889: 22)
There's a pretty good color scan on Google Books but this does not negate the fact that it is in German.
The first period of Greek Philosophy includes, 1) the earlier Ionic Natural Philosophers, 2) the Pythagoreans, 3) the Eleatics, 4) the later Natural Philosophers. The Ionic "physiologists," predisposed thereto by their racial character as Ionians, directed their attention to the sphere of sensible phenomena and inquired after the material principle of things and the manner of their generation and decay; for them, matter was in itself living and psychically endowed. The Pythagoreans, whose doctrines flourished chiefly among the Greeks of Doric race, especially in Lower Italy, sought or a principle of things which should account at once for their form and substance, and found it in number and figure. The philosophy of the Eleatic turned on the unity and immutability of being. The later natural philosophers were led by the antithesis in which the Eleatic speculation stood to the [|] earlier natural philosophy, to attempt a mediation; to this end, they admitted, on the one hand, the Eleatic doctrine of the immutability of being, but affirmed, on the other, with the Pre-Eleatic philosophers, its plurality, and explained its apparent changes as due to the combination or severance of immutable, primitive elements. With the last representatives of natural philosophy and, especially, in the doctrine of Anaxagoras concerning the independent existence and world-disposing power of the divine mind (Νοῦς), the way was already being prepared for the transition to the following period. (Ueberweg 1889: 29-30)
A neat little breakdown of the "First (Prevailingly Cosmological) Period of Greek Philosophy", i.e. "Pre-Sophistic Philosophy". I find it odd that the world-disposing power of the divine mind is attributed to Anaxagoras, as if such a concept would have been a stranger to the pythagoreans.
As a result of the peculiar cosmological principles adopted by the Pythagoreans and Eleatics, Ethics appeared already in germ among the former and Dialectic among the latter. Yet the Pythagorean and Eleatic philosophies are scarcely, for that reason, to be termed (with Schleiermacher) respectively ethical and dialectical in their fundamental character. These philosophies are, rather, like the speculation of the Ionians, essentially cosmological, and their ethical and dialectical tendencies result only from the manner in which they seek to solve the cosmological problem. The Pythagoreans brought, not ethics, but only the mathematico-philosophical theory of nature under a scientific form, and the Eleatics produced no theory of dialectics. (Ueberweg 1889: 30)
"What, it [|] is said, they taught of particular virtues, is for the most part questionable or worthless; in the case of justice alone we are credibly informed that they said it was a "similarly similar number;" by which they meant to convey the maxim, that it is just that every one should receive according to his deserts. No one will wonder to find so rude a notion in the infancy of ethics." (Ritter 1838: 414-415); "But it is not so much in any particular dogma, as in their general view, that the ethicas character of the theory is most strikingly exhibited" (Ritter 1838: 417).
In his work entitled Philolaos des Pythagoreers Lehren (Berlin, 1819, p. 40 sq.), Boeckh compares the different types of Greek philosophy in the first period with the characteristics of the races, in which the several types were developed, with the following result. In the materialistic view of the principles of things and of the manifold life and activity of the material elements, as held by the Ionic philosophers, Boeckh finds an expression of the sensuousness of the Ionians, of their attachment to the external, of their sensibility to external impressions, and of their lively, mobile disposition. The Doric character, on the contrary, was marked by that inward depth, from which springs vigorous action, and by a quiet but persistent adherence to fixed and almost indestructible forms. This character manifests itself in the tendency to ethical reflection and speculation - although the latter never rose to the form of a developed theory - and more especiallly in the circumstance, that the Doric thinkers sought to explain the nature of things by adducing, not a material, but a formal principle, a principle which should account for their unity and order. (Ueberweg 1889: 30)
Ritter referred to this book and this viewpoint frequently. There are wholly three scans of it available on Google Books.
Thus Pythagoras was said to be the first to call the world Cosmos, and, in conformity with the peculiarity of the Doric character, in conformity even with the spirit of [|] the government under which they lived, the philosophy of the Dorians assumed, externally, the form of a confederation or order. Philosophy, says Boeckh, from its sensuous beginning among the Ionians, passed through the intermediate stage of Pythagoreanism (mathematical intuition) to the non-sensuous doctrine of Plato, who had in the Eleatics able but too one-sided predecessors, and who, by the Socratic method of criticism, limiting and correcting not only the Eleatic philosophy, but also the other philosophies, the one by the other, evolved from them the most perfect system which the Hellenic mind was capable of producing. (Ueberweg 1889: 30-31)
What's the connection between deep thinking on formal principles and having a political confederation? It is also curious that the pythagorean philosophy should occupy a nearly "harmonious" interposition between the materialist/sensuous and the idealist/non-sensuous.
Boeckh draws the following parallel between the successive theories held in regard to the principles of things, and the derees of the dialectical scale given by Plato [...]: the poetic-mythical symbols of the period previous to the existence of philosophy proper, correspond with εἰκασία, the Ionians investigate the realm of things sensible, the αἰσθητά, the Pythagoreans investigate the mathematical order of things, the διανοητά, and the Eleatics the purely spiritual, intelligible, the νοητά. (Ueberweg 1889: 31)
If I'm not mistaken, this is dianoia. Wiktionary even gives an interesting example-quote (Republic 511d): "You seem to call the habit of geometers and others like them understanding and not reason, as understanding is something intermediate between reason and opinion."
It is certain, however, that the Greeks did not meet with fully developed and completed philosophical system among the Orientals. The only question can be whether and in what measure Oriental religious ideas occasioned in the speculation of Grecian thinkers (especially on the subject of God and the human soul) a deviation from the national type of Hellenic culture and gave it its direction toward the invisible, the inexperimental, the transcendent (a movement which culminated in Pythagoreanism and Platonism). In later antiquity, Jews, Neo-Pythagoreans, Neo-Platonists, and Christians unhistorically over-estimated the influence of the Orient in this regard. (Ueberweg 1889: 31)
The question of metempsychosis and immortality of the soul, and whether the earliest Greek philosophers had to have travelled to Egypt to espouse such views, or whether they were spawned from the Greek mind itself.
Gladisch concerns himself, primarily, rather with the comparison of Greek philosophemes with Oriental religious doctrines, than with the demonstration of their genesis; so far as he expresses himself in regard to the latter, he does not affirm a direct transference of the Oriental element in the time of the first Greek philosophers, but only maintains that this element entered into Greek philosophy through the medium of the Greek religion; Oriental tradition, he argued, must have been received in a religious form by the Hellenes in very early antiquity, and so become blended with their intellectual life; the regeneration of the Hindu consciousness in the Eleatics, of the Chinese in the Pythagoreans, etc., was, however, proximately an outgrowth from the Hellenic character itself. But this theory has little value. (Ueberweg 1889: 31)
This connection is very weird: August Gladisch's Die alten Schinesen und die Pythagoreer, too, is available on Google Books.
The hypothesis of a direct reception of Chinese doctrines by Pythagoras, or of Hindu doctrines by Xenophanes, would indeed belong to the realm of the fanciful. But that Pythagoras, and perhaps also Empedocles, appropriated to themselves Egyptian doctrines and usages directly from Egypt, that possibly Anaxagoras, or perhaps even Hermotimus, his predecessor, came in contact with Jews, that Thales, and also, at a later epoch, Democritus, sought and found in Egypt or in Babylonia material for scientific theories, that Heraclitus was led to some of his speculations by a knowledge of Parseeism, and that therefore the later philosophers, so far sa they join on to these, were indirectly (Plato also directly) affected in the shaping of their doctrines by Oriental influences, is quite conceivable, and some of these hypotheses have no slight degree of probability. (Ueberweg 1889: 32)
Indeed.
According to Diog. L., I. 24 sq., the proposition, that the angle inscribed in a semicircle is a right angle, was by some attributed to Thales, by others to Pythagoras. (Ueberweg 1889: 35)
A specific geometrical proposition. I'm sure I'll find the exact place in Diogenes Laertios when I comb through his Lives.
Heraclitus of Ephesus was probably younger than Pythagoras and Xenophanes, whom he names and combats, but older than Parmenides, who on his part makes reference to Heraclitus, and seems to have arrived at his own metaphysical principle while arguing against him. (Ueberweg 1889: 38)
Deciding when someone might live according to whom he cites.
Pythagoras of Samos and the Pythagoreans [pp. 42-49]
Pythagoras of Samos, the son of Mnesarchus, was born about Ol. 49.3 = 582 B.C. According to some accounts he was a pupil of Pherecydes and Anaximander and acquainted with the doctrines of the Egyptian priests. At Crotona, in Lower Italy, where he settled in Ol. 62.4 = 529 B.C., he founded a society, whose aims and character were at once political, philosophical, and religious. (Ueberweg 1889: 42)
Gently skirting the issue of how exactly Pythagoras might have come into contact with Egyptian doctrines. That the pythagorean school was simultaneously "political, philosophical, and religious" is a running theme.
All that can be traced back with certainty to Pythagoras himself is the doctrine of metempsychosis and the institution of certain religious and ethical regulations, and perhaps also the commencement of that mathematico-theological form of speculation, which was subsequently carried to a high degree of development. (Ueberweg 1889: 42)
Of everything we know, we know that Pythagoras must have taught metempsychosis most certainly.
Philolaus, a contemporary of Socrates, passes for the first Pythagorean who made public (in a written work) the philosophical system of the school. Of this work considerable fragments are still extant; yet it is very doubtful whether the work is genuine or a counterfeit, dating at the latest from the last century before Christ, and only possessing a certain importance as an authority in regard to ancient Pythagoreanism, from its having been partially founded on earlier authorities. (Ueberweg 1889: 43)
Can't wait to see those fragments myself. The best sources might be Carl A. Huffman's Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Presocratic (Cambridge University Press, 1993) [Google Books] or Daniel W. Graham's The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics, Part 2 (Cambridge University Press, 2010) [Google Books]. Both are available online if you know where to look.
Of the earlier Pythagoreans, the most celebrated, beside Philolaus, were his disciples Simmias and Cebes (who, according to Plato's Phaedo, were friends of Socrates), Ocellus the Lucanian, Timæus of Locri, Echecrates and Acrio, Archytas of Tarentum, Lysis, and Eurytus. Alcmæon of Crotona (a younger contemporary of Pythagoras), who held with the Pythagoreans the doctrine of contraries, Hippasus of Metapontum, who saw in fire the material principle of the world, Ecphantus, who combined the doctrine of atoms with the doctrine of a world-ordering spirit, and tought the revolution of the earth on its axis, Hippodamus of Miletus, an architect and politician, and others, are named as philosophers, whose doctrines were related to those of Pythagoreanism. The comic poet Epicharmus, who occasionally alludes to disputed questions in philosophy, appears to have come under the influence of various philosophies, and among them, in particular, of Pythagoreanism. (Ueberweg 1889: 43)
A quick run-down of the early pythagoreans. Uebeweg is surprisingly generous. Ritter was certain only about Philolaus, Lysis, Clinias, Eurythus and Archytes (cf. 1836: 347-348).
The reputed writings of Pythagoras are spurious (Carmen Aureum, ed. K. E. Günther, Breslau, 1816; Th. Gaisford, in Poetae Minores Graeci, Oxford, 1814-20, Leipsic, 1823; Schenceberger, Die goldenen Sprüche des Pythagoras - German translation, with introduction and annotations - Münnerstadt, 18620. So are also the works ascribed to Ocellus Lucanus (De Rerum Natura, ed. A. F. Guil. Rudolph, Leips. 1801; ed. Mullach, in Aristot. de Melisso, etc., Berlin, 1845) and Timæus Locrus (who is credited with a work περἰ φυχᾶς κόσμω, which is only an abstract of Plato's Timaeus, of late origin, ed. J. J. de Gelder, Leyden, 1836; cf. G. Anton, De Origine Lib. inser. περἰ φυχᾶς κόσμω καί φύσεως, Berlin, 1852), and, most probably, also all the philosophical fragments of Archytas of Tarentum [...] (Ueberweg 1889: 43)
The Garmen Aureum (Golden Verses) I've already visited, despite their evident spuriousness (some parts appear to be ripped straight out of Diogenes Laertios). Ocellus Lucanus' On the Nature of the Universe was published, along with some other short pieces by other authors, by Thomas Taylor (Google Books). It looks like a fairly short read. From and on Archytas we have Huffman's Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher and Mathematician King (Cambridge University Press, 2005) [Google Books, also l-g] and Political Fragments of Archytas, Charondas, Zaleucus, and other Ancient Pythagoreans by Thomas Taylor (Google Books). The evidently spurious work of Timaeus sounds interesting only because Plato's Timaeus is reportedly also his most pythagorean dialogue. On the following page, Ueberweg gives an extensive literature "Of the more modern writers on Pythagoreanism in general and on individual Pythagoreans" (ibid, 44), but all except Grote are either in German or Latin. The English-language literary-scholarly landscape of the same period looks dismally barren in comparison.
Heraclitus says (ap. Diog. L., VIII. 6): "Of all men, Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, most practiced inquiry (ιστορίην ἢσκησεν); his own wisdom was eclectic and nothing better [|] than polymathy and perverted art." (Ueberweg 1889: 44-45)
This quote appears everywhere. I should start collecting alternative translations. This one here looks like one of the better ones.
Herodotus (II. 81 and 123) traces the doctrine of metempsychosis and certain religious regulations of the (Orphists and) Pythagoreans back to the Egyptians, thus implying, apparently, that Pythagoras visited the Egyptians. Isocrates (Laud. Busir., 28) is the first who expressly mentions such a visit. Cicero says of Pythagoras (De Fin., V. 29, 87): "Aegyptum lustravit." For the fact that the mathematical sciences originated in Egypt and were there cultivated by the priests, we have Aristotle's testimony (Met., I. 1). From the country Pythagoras, according to the evidence of Callimachus (ap. Diodorus Siculus, in the Vaticanische excerpte, VII.-X. 35), brought much of his mathematical knowledge and transplanted it into Hellas, while other portions of it were discovered by himself. Among other things, the discovery of the relation between the hypothenuse and the sides of the right-angled triangle is ascribed to him by Diogenes Laërtius (VIII. 12), on the authority of a mathematician named Apollodorus. (Ueberweg 1889: 45)
A run-down of the earliest claims about Pythagoras' connection with Egypt.
Whether Pythagoras really traveled into Egypt is a matter not wholly free from doubt. It may, nevertheless, be considered as very probable that he did. Many of the embellishments added by later writers to their accounts of the life and journeys of Pythagoras, are easily recognized as fables. (Ueberweg 1889: 45)
This includes Iamblichus.
According to Cicero (Rep., II. 15; cf. Tuscul., I. 16), Pythagoras came to Italy in Ol. 62.4 (529 B.C.). He united himself to the aristocratic party in Crotona, where, as we are told, the depression caused by a defeat, suffered not long before in a contest with the Locrians and Rhegians on the river Sagra, had made the population susceptible to moral influences, and he secured that party for his project of an ethical and religious reform. By this means the intimacy of the union of the members of the aristocratic party and their power in the state were very considerably increased. (Ueberweg 1889: 45)
Thus, the frequently-mentioned connection with aristocracy rests on the authority of Cicero.
The members of the Pythagorean society were subjected to a rigid ethico-religious regimen (the Πυθαγόρειος τρόπος τοὐ βιου, which is mentioned already by Plato, Rep., X. p. 600b). An examination as to fitness preceded admission. Disciples were bound for a long time to mute obedience, and unconditional submission to the authority of the doctrine propounded to them. Rigorous daily self-examination was required for all; the propagation among the people of the doctrines (in particular, probably, the theosophic speculations) of the school was prohibited. Further requirements imposed on members were moderation in the use of articles of food and simplicity in personal attire. (Ueberweg 1889: 45)
The physiognomic examination, the 3-5 years of imposed silence, the "authos epha", and the daily pre-sleep consideration of where one transgressed, what was achieved, and what duties were left undone (as per the Golden Verses).
The use of animal food was permitted, under certain limitations, - a fact attested by Aristotle and by Aristoxenes (ap. Diog. L., VIII. 19 and 20); Heraclides of Pontus incorrectly assumes the contrary; but certain Orphists and later Pythagoreans abstained wholly from the use of animal food. Aristoxenus (ap. Gellius, IV. 11) disputes the assertion that Pythagoras forbade the use of beans for food. According to Herod., II. 81, burial in woolen garments was forbidden in the Orphic-Pythagorean mysteries. (Ueberweg 1889: 45)
Dietary restrictions still exceedingly murky.
The democratic party (perhaps also, at times, an unfriendly aristocratic fraction) reacted against the growing power of the society. It is related of Pythagoras that, after having lived in Crotona nearly twenty years, and soon after the victory gained in 510 B.C. by the Crotoniates, on the river Traeis, over the Sybarites, who were living under the monachical rule of Telys, he was banished by an opposition party under Cylon, and that he removed to Metapontum and soon afterward died there. Pythagoreanism found acceptance among the aristocracy of numerous Italian cities, and gave to their party an ideal point of support. (Ueberweg 1889: 45)
This account, unlike Ritter's (1836: 345), neglects to mention that the dispute might have arisen over the divviying up of the spoils of war.
But the persecutions were also several times renewed. In Crotona, as it appears, the partisans of Pythagoras and the "Cylonians" were, for a long time after the death of Pythagoras, living in oppositions as political parties, till at length, about a century later, the Pythagoreans were surprised by their opponents while engaged in a deliberation in the "house of Milo" (who himself had died long before), and, the house being set on fire and surrounded, all perished, with the exception of Archippus and Lysis of Tarentum. (According to other accounts, the burning of the house, in which the Pythagoreans were assembled, took place on the occasion of the first reaction against the society, in the life-time of Pythagoras.) (Ueberweg 1889: 46)
I was just thinking that this is the first I'm hearing of nearly a whole century passing between the initial dispute and the burning of Milo's house, where those "other accounts" reportedly place Pythagoras stepping over the bodies of his followers in order to escape.
Lysis went to Thebes, and was there (soon after 400 B.C.) a teacher of the youthful Epaminondas. Diog. L. (VIII. 7) ascribes to him the authorship of a work commonly ascribed to Pythagoras. This work, according to Mullach's conjecture (Fragm. Ph. Gr., I. 413), was the "Carmen Aureum," a poem which, however, at least in its present form, is probably of later origin. (Ueberweg 1889: 46)
Likewise, the first I'm hearing of Epaminondas being the author of the Golden Verses.
Among the authorities for the doctrine of the Pythagoreans, the indications furnished by Aristotle are the most important. Of still greater value for our knowledge of the Pythagorean system would be the fragments (collected by Boeckh) of the work of Philolaus, a contemporary of Socrates, in case their authenticity were assured. All other pretended philosophical writings and fragments of writings by ancient Pythagoreans, are decidedly spurious. The contents of the fragments attributed to Philolaus agree in many respects quite well with the testimony of Aristotle, and afford besides a much more concrete conception of the Pythagorean system; yet with them is mingled much that is of extraneous and later origin, and which is yet scarcely to be placed to the account of the authors in whom the fragments are found. Plato and Aristotle seem to have had no knowledge of any other than oral utterances of Philolaus. Only their statements and, in part, those of the earliest Aristotelians, but no later ones, are perfectly trustworthy. (Ueberweg 1889: 46)
"Even of the philosophical doctrines of Philolaus little has been expressly quoted; and of all the Pythagoreans, he alone presents himself before us in any degree of distinct personality." (Ritter 1836: 356-357)
Timon the Sillograph (writer of satires, see below, §60) says (Gell., Noct. Att., III. 17) that Plato bought for much money a small book, on which he founded his dialogue Timaeus (containing his natural philosophy); but it is very doubtful what work is meant (perhaps a work of Archytas). A spurious letter from Plato to Dio contains the commission to buy Pythagorean books. Neanthes of Cyzieus ascribes the first publication of Pythagorean doctrines to Philolaus and Empedocles. Hermippus says that Philolaus wrote a book which Plato bought in order to copy from it his Timaeus; Satyrus speaks of three books. The three books, of which the fragments above mentioned have come down to us, are (as Schaarschmidt has shown) probably spurious, as also are the alleged writings of other ancient Pythagoreans and of Pythagoras himself. (Ueberweg 1889: 46)
This story became very popular later in the 20th century. "But the ancients regarded Plato as less original. They freely accused him of shameless and persistent plagiarism. The Republic was a theft from Protagoras, the Timæus from the Three Books bought from Philolaus." (Stocks 1915: 208)
Charmed by the apodictical nature of that knowledge which we have of the mathematical order immanent in things, the Pythagoreans exaggerated the power of the mathematical principle in their numerical speculation - a speculation which overstepped the limits of exact mathematical science. (Ueberweg 1889: 46)
This "numerical speculation" is elsewhere, later, called the pythagorean "number symbolism".
The principles of numbers, limit and the unlimited, were viewed by the Pythagoreans, according to Aristotle, not as predicates of another substance, but as themselves the substance of things; at the same time things were looked upon as images of these principles immanent in them. It does not appear that these two statements are to be referred to different fractions of the Pythagoreans; perhaps the mode of speech of some suggested the one interpretation, that of others the other. Yet the same persons might in a certain sense hold both of these doctrines. It is hardly supposable that any one of the ancient [|] Pythagoreans made use of the exact phraseology employed by Aristotle. Aristotle seems, rather, at times to be expressing in his own language conceptions which he only found implied in their doctrines. The scale of created objects was symbolized by the series of numbers, the numbers four (τετρακτύς) and ten (δεκάς) playing an especially prominent role. (Ueberweg 1889: 46-47)
Hmm. That "limit" and "unlimited" were the principles or essences of number was discussed by Ritter at length. That Aristotle may have produced an unfaithful version of the table of opposites seems probable - what with "right" being in the left column.
Of the special doctrines of the Pythagoreans, their astronomical and musical doctrines are the most worthy of remark. That the theory of a counter-earth (ἀντίχθων) under the earth and the motion of both around the central fire, really belongs to the older Pythagoreans, we know (apart from the at least doubtful Philolaus-Fragments) from Aristotle (De Coelo, II. 13, and Metaph., I. 5). Diog. Laërt. says (VIII. 85) that the circular motion of the earth was first taught by Philolaus, thought others ascribed the doctrine to Hicetas. The doctrine of the earth and the counter-earth is ascribed to the Pythagorean Hicetas by Pseudo-Plutarch (Plac. Ph., III. 9(; Cicero (Acad., II. 39) attributes to him, on the authority of Theophrastus, the doctrine that the earth moves circum axem. The rotation of the earth on its axis is also ascribed (Plac., III. 13; Hippol., Adv. Haer., I. 15) to Ecphantus (according to Boeckh's supposition, a pupil of Hicetas), who assigned to the material atoms magnitude, figure, and force, attributing their arrangement to God; also to Plato's disciple, Heraclides of Heraclea on the Euxine, who (according to Stob., Ecl., I. 440) held the world to be infinite. (Ueberweg 1889: 47)
Ueberweg continues with his succinct but well-informed run-downs. Nothing here frankly surprises, but it is worth recording whence certain pieces of information originate from.
The doctrine of the harmony of the spheres (Arist., De Coelo, II. 9) was grounded on the assumption that the celestial spheres were separated from each other by intervals corresponding with the relative lengths of strings, arranged to produce harmonious tones. (Ueberweg 1889: 47)
A harmonious universe, that.
The soul was, according to the Pythagoreans, a harmony; chained to the body as a punishment, it dwelt in it as in a prison (Plat., Phaedo, p. 62b). (Ueberweg 1889: 47)
The same thing is discussed in Cratyl. p. 400 (cf. Ritter 1836: 343, fn1). It is possible that various aspects of pythagoreanism are discussed diffusely throughout the later dialogues.
According to the statement of Eudemus, the Aristotelian, in his lectures on Physics (reported by Simplicius, Ad. ARist. Phys., 173a), the Pythagoreans taught that in various cosmical periods the same persons and events return or are repeated: εἰ δέ τις πιστείνσειε τοίς Πυθαγορείοις ὠς πάλιν τἀ αὐτἀ ἀπιθμῷ κἀγὠ μυθολογήσω τὀ ῤαβδἰον ἒχων καθημένοις οὒτω, καἰ τἀ ἂλλα πάντα όμοίως ἐζει. (Ueberweg 1889: 47)
"[...] Eubulides the Pythagorean, and Aristoxenus, and Hippobotus, and Neanthes, who have written on the subject of Pythagoras, have declared that the reincarnations which befell him happened at interval of 216 years" (Dillon 1969: 274-275).
Ethical notions bore among the Pythagoreans a mathematical form, symbols filling the place of definitions. Justice was defined by them (according to Arist., Eth. Nic., V. 8; cf. Magn. Moral. I. 1; I. 34). as ἀριθμὀς ἰσάκις ἰσος (square-number), by which it was intended to express the correspondence between action and suffering (τὀ ἀντιπεπονθός, i.e. ἂ τις ἐποίησε, ταὐτ' ἀντιπαθεἰν), or, in other words, retribution. (Ueberweg 1889: 47)
This "square-number" must be what Ritter "similarly similar number" means.
Some of the Pythagoreans (according to Arist., Met., I. 5) set forth a table of fundamental contraries, headed by that of limit and illimitation. The conceptions included in it [|] are not properly cotegories, because not absolutely universal, i.e., formal ground-conceptions, equally applicable to nature and mind. The table is as follows: -(Ueberweg 1889: 47-48)
Limit. Illimitation. Odd. Even. One. Many. Right. Left. Male. Female. At rest. In motion. Straight. Bent. Light. Darkness. Good. Bad. Square. Oblong.
At some point I can juxtapose a bunch of versions. Here, as alsewhere, the column containing "Light" and "Right" is on the left.
Alcmæon, the Crotoniate, was a physician, who (according to Arist., Metaph., I. 5) "was in the flower of his age when Pythagoras was an old man," and taught that the majority of human things were in twos [in contraries] (εἰναι δύο τἀ πολλἀ τών ἀνθρωπίνων), yet did not fix on a specific number of contraries, but only gave in each case those which happened to occur to him. He taught that the soul was located in the brain, whither all sensations were conducted through canals from the organs of sensation (Theophr., De Sensu, 25; Plut., Plac. Ph., IV. 16, 17), and that the soul, like the stars, was the subject of eternal motion (Arist., De An., I. 2). (Ueberweg 1889: 48)
The statement about the soul would actually make sense if understood in a very materialist perspective as the collective firing of nerve cells. In this case even locating the soul between the head and the heart would make sense - the brain and what they call intercostal nerves.
Eurythus is mentioned, together with Philolaus, as among the Pythagoreans whom Plato met in Italy (D. L., III. 6). The system of numerical symbolism was further developed by Eurythus, whose speculations appear to have been delivered only orally (Ar., Met., XIV. 5, 1092b, 10). Philolaus and Eurythus are spoken of as residents of Tarentum (Diog. L., VIII. 46); Xenophilus, of Chalcis in Thrace, and the Phliasians Phanto, Echecrates, Diocles, and Polymnastus, pupils of Philolaus and Erythus, and all personally known to Aristoxenus the Aristotelian, are said to have been the last of the Pythagoreans. Xenophilus is reported to have taught in Athens and to have died at an advanced age. The school disappeared (until the rise of Neo-Pythagoreanism), although the Orphic-Pythagorean Orgies were continued. (Ueberweg 1889: 48)
Out of sync: "Philolaus was the teacher at Thebes of Simmias and Cebes, before they came to Socrates at Athens" (Ritter 1836: 348).
Hippodamus of Miletus, a contemporary of Socrates, was (according to Arist., Polit., II. 8), like Phaleas, the Chalcedonian (Ar., Pol., II. 7), and (according to Diog. L., III. 37 and 57) Protagoras, the Sophist, a forerunner of Plato in the construction of political theories. According to Aristotle, Hippodamus was the first private citizen who undertook to say any thing respecting the best form of constitution for the state. The territory of the state, he taught, should be divided into three portions: a sacred portion for the service of the gods, a common domain for the support of the military order, and a third portion to be held as private property. The various courts of justice should be subject to one court of appeal. Whether, or to what extent, Hippodamus was connected with the Pythagorean school, are doubtful questions. Among the later forgeries under the names of early Pythagoreans, was one bearing the name of "Hippodamus the Pythagorean," and another ascribed to "Hippodamus the Thurian," by which the same person seems to be intended. Fragments of these forgeries are preserved in Stobæus (Florileg., XLIII. 92-94, and XCVIII. 71). (Ueberweg 1889: 48)
I'm wondering about the connection with pythagoreanism as well. Wikipedia says he had written, among other books, one on "Πυθαγορίζουσαι Θεωρίαι (Pythagoras Theorems)", but also that "He evidently had a reputation as a lover of attention", which doesn't sound very pythagorean. Thomas Taylor included the fragments/forgeries from Stobæus in his translation of the Life of Pythagoras, in fact began the section of pythagorean ethicas fragments with him.
Phaleas desired that inequality of possessions among citizens should be prevented, affirming that it easily led to revolutionary movements; indeed, he is the first who expressly demanded that all citizens should have equal possessions (Arist., Pol., II. 7. 1266b, 40). (Ueberweg 1889: 48)
The first communist, perhaps. But a pythagorean?
The author of the work ascribed to Philolaus sees in the principles of numbers the principles of things. These principles are the limiting and illimination. They converge to harmony, which is unity in multiplicity and agreement in heterogeneity. Thus they generate in succession, first, unity, then the series of arithmetical or "monadic" numbers, then the "geometrical numbers," or "magnitudes," i.e., the forms of space: point, line, surface, and solid; next, material objects, then life, sensuous consciousness, and the higher physical forces, as love, friendship, mind, and intelligence. (Ueberweg 1889: 49)
Very harsh towards the pseudo-Philolaus. The list looks slightly different from the one given by Ritter (cf. 1836: 403). For example, "love, frinedship, mind, and intelligence" he seems to have neglected completely. No worries, I will most likely meet many opinions on this question in the future.
Like is known by like, but it is by number that things are brought into harmonious relations to the soul. The understanding, developed by mathematical study, is the organ of knowledge. (Ueberweg 1889: 49)
This "like is known by like" reminds me of the saying it takes one to know one. It calls to mind Bolus' On Sympathies and Antipathies (cf. Kingsley 1994: 7), i.e. the beginnings of alchemy. Understanding qua organ of knowledge may have something to do with dianoia.
The five regular solids - the cube, the tetrahedron, the octahedron, the icosahedron, and the dodecahedron - are respectively the fundamental forms of earth, fire, air, water, and the fifth element, which encompasses all the rest. (Ueberweg 1889: 49)
That the fifth element should encompass all the rest is news to me.
From the Hestia, i.e.., from the central fire, around which earth and counter-earth daily revolve, the soul of the world spreads through the spheres of the counter-earth, the earth, the moon, the sun, the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the fixed stars to "Olympus," the last sphere which includes all the others. The world is eternal, and ruled by the One, who is akin to it, and has supreme might and excellence. The director and ruler of all things is God; he is one and eternal, enduring and immovable, even like himself, and different from all things beside him. He encompasses and guards the universe. (Ueberweg 1889: 49)
Likewise, did not know the identity of Hestia and the central fire. Even less could I have guessed that like the fifth element, there's a specific last sphere encompassing the rest.
Apollodorus (ap. Clem. Al., Strom., I. 301e) gives Ol. 40 (620 B.C.) as the time of his [Xenophanes'] birth; more probable is the report (ap. Diog. L., IX. 20) that he flourished Ol. 60 (540 B.C.). He outlived Pythagoras, whom he mentions after the death of the latter; he is himself named by Heraclitus. (Ueberweg 1889: 51)
Who mentioned whom.
Aristoxenus of Tarentum, the "Musician," is said to have renewed the theory condemned by Plato, but which received an essentially new signification through Aristotle's conception of entelechy, namely, that the soul is the harmony of the body (animam ipsius corporis intentionem quandam esse; velut in cantu et fidibus quae harmonia dicitur, sic ex corporis totius natura et figura varios motus cieri tamquam in cantu sonos, Cic., Tusc., I. 10. 20). He is chiefly of significance on account of his theory of music, which, however, was not founded on philosophico-mathematical speculations, but on the acute perceptions of the ear. Besides his Elements of Harmonics, he wrote, among other things, biographies of philosophers, particularly of Pythagoras and Plato. (Ueberweg 1889: 183)
On the territory of "for man is, as it were, a third substance formed out of two heterogeneous substances" (Arnett 1904: 173).
Dicæarch of Messene (in Sicily) gave the preference to the practical as compared with the theoretic life (Cic., Ad Att., II. 76). He devoted himself more to empirical investigation than to speculation. His Βίος 'Ελλάδος, of which some fragments have been preserved, was a geographico-historical description of Greece. According to Dicærch, there exist no individual substantial souls, but only, in its stead, one universal, vital, and sensitive force, which is diffused through all existing organisms, and is transiently individualized in different bodies (Cic., Tusc., I. 10, 21; 31; 37). (Ueberweg 1889: 183)
The viewpoint broadly attributed to the pythagoreans, e.g. that they "refer all the appearances of individual soul-life to the universal ensouling energy of the world, so it is also placed beyond doubt, that all souls were with them an efflux merely of the universal soul" (Ritter 1836: 406).
Seneca (Nat. Quaest., VII. 32) says of the school of the Sextians, that after having commenced its existence with great éclat, it soon disappeared. Q. Sextius (born about 70 B.C.) was the founder of the school, and Sextius, his son, sotion of Alexandria (whose instructions Seneca enjoyed about 18-20 A.D.), Cornelius celcius, L. Crassitius of Tarentum, and Papirius Fabianus, are named as his disciples. Q. Sextius and Sotion wrote in Greek. Sotion inspired his pupil, Seneca, with admiration for Pythagoras (Sen., Ep., 108); abstinence from animal food, daily self-examination, and a leaning toward the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, are among the Pythagorean elements in the philosophy of the Sextians. Their teaching seems to have consisted principally of exhortations to moral excellence, to energy of soul, and to independence with reference to external things. The sage, says Sextius, goes through life armed by his virtues against all the contingencies of fortune, wary and ready for battle, like a well-ordered army when the foe is near (Sen., Ep., 59). (Ueberweg 1889: 221)
I would not have thought to count Seneca among the neo-pythagoreans. Sotion's name is familiar but I cannot find mention of him in anything I've previously posted.
Jamblichus (died about 330 A.D.), a native of Chalcis in Cœle-Syria and pupil of Porphyry, employed the Neo-Platonic philosophy simply as a means for confirming the polytheistic cultus. He attempted the speculative justification of superstition. He imitated Pythagoras more than Plato, his philosophy resting rather on mystical speculations with numbers, than on Platonic ideas. In his system not only did all the gods of the Greeks and Orientals (excepting the Christian God) and the gods of Plotinus find a place, but he also took a quite peculiar pleasure in adding to the number of superior divinities from the resources of his own fancy. (Ueberweg 1889: 252)
The most divine Iamblichus might have gotten so divine from paying respect to so many divinities.
Carpocrates of Alexandria - among whose followers was one named Marcellina, who came to Rome during the bishopric of Anicetus (about 160 A.D.) - taught perhaps as early as the year 130, and maintained a species of universalistic rationalism. His followers kept before them images of the persons to whom they paid the greatest reverence, among whom were included not only Jesus and Paul, but also Homer, Pythagoras, Aristotle, and others. (Ueberweg 1889: 284)
Paying respect to both Jesus and Pythagoras - what was his name? Carpocrates or Cacocrates?
Whatever of truth is to be found in the works of the Greek philosophers and poets, and elsewhere, must be ascribed, says Justin [Flavius Justinus], to the workings of the divine Logos, which is present among all men in the germ. while in Christ it appeared in its complete fullness. Yet the revelations made by this divine Word are not all equally direct; to Pythagoras nad Plato it [|] spoke through Moses and the Prophets. (Ueberweg 1889: 290-291)
Reminds me of Ritter's "uniformity of the human mind". Practically it evinces that even the earliest Christians were prone to erroneously ascribe Pythagoras' achievements to Moses - a theme that will run over a thousand years.
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