Life of Pythagoras — Iamblichus, trans. Thomas Taylor (1818)
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1 This inventor of names was called by the Egyptians Theuth, as we are informed by Plato in the Philebus and Phedrus ; in the latter of which dialogues, Socrates says: ‘I have heard, that about Naucratis in Egypt, there was one of the ancient Gods of the Egyptians, to whom a bird was sacred, which they call Ibis; but the name of the demon himself was Theuth.
According to tradition, this God first discovered number and the art of reckoning, geometry and astronomy, the games of chess and hazard, and likewise letters. On this passage I observe as follows, in Vol. 3. of my translation of Plato: The genus of disciplines belonging to Mercury, contains gymnastic, music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and the art of speaking and writing. This God, as he is the source of invention, is called the son of Maia ;
27 that the genus of women is most adapted to piety, gave to each of their ages the appellation of some God. Hence he called an unmarried woman Core, i.e. Proserpine; but a bride, Nympha; the woman who has brought forth children, Mater ; and a grandmother, according to the Doric dialect, Maza. In conformity to which also, the oracles in Dodona and at Delphi, are unfolded into light through a woman.
But through this praise pertaining to piety, Pythagoras is said to have produced so great a change in female attire, that the women no longer dared to clothe themselves with costly garments, but consecrated many myriads of their vestments in the temple of Juno.
The effect also of this discourse is said to have been such, that about the region of the Crotonians the fidelity of the husband to the wife was universally celebrated; [imitating in this respect] Ulysses, who would not receive immortality from Calypso, on condition that he should abandon Penelope. Pythagoras therefore also observed, that it remained for the women to exhibit their probity to their husbands, in order that they might be equally because investigation, which is implied by Mata, produces invention : and as unfolding the will of Jupiter, who is an intellectual God, he is the cause of mathesis or discipline. He first subsists in Jupiter, the artificer of the world; next among the supermundane Gods ; in the third place, among the liberated Gods ; fourthly, in the planet Mercury; fifthly, in the Mercurial order of demons; sixthly, in human souls, who are the attendants of this God ; and in the seventh degree, his properties subsist in certain animals, such as the ibis, the ape, and sagacious dogs. The narration of Socrates in this place, is both allegorical and anagogic or reductory. Naucratis is a region of Egypt eminently subject to the influence of Mercury, though the whole of Egypt is allotted to this divinity. Likewise, in this city a man once flourished full of the Mercurial power, because his soul formerly existed in the heavens of the Mercurial order. But he was first called Theuth, that is, Mercury, and a God, because his soul subsisted according to the perfect similitude of this divinity. But afterwards a demon, because from the God Mercury, through a Mercurial demon, gifts of this kind are transmitted to a Mercurial soul.
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celebrated with Ulysses. In short, it is recorded that through the above-mentioned discourses, Pythagoras obtained no moderate honor and esteem, both in the city of the Crotonians and throughout Italy.
CHAP. XII.
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