Early Greek Philosophy — John Burnet (Empedocles fragments)

rise of science, it is hard to see what could have checked

this tendency. It is usual to say that the Greeks were

saved from a religion of the Oriental type by their

having no priesthood ; but this is to mistake the effect

for the cause. Priesthoods do not make dogmas,

though they preserve them once they are made; and

in the earlier stages of their development, the Oriental

peoples had no priesthoods either in the sense intended.’

It was not so much the absence of a priesthood as the

existence of the scientific schools that saved Greece. " 34. The new religion—for in one sense it was new, The Orphic

though in another as old as mankind—reached its —

highest point of development with the foundation of

the Orphic communities. So far as we can see, the

original home of these was Attika; but they spread

with extraordinary rapidity, especially in Southern

Italy and Sicily.2 They were first of all associations

for the worship of Dionysos; but they were dis-

tinguished by two features which were new among the

Hellenes. They looked to a revelation as the source Ὁ

1 See Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 461. The exaggerated rdle often attributed to priesthoods is a survival of French eighteenth century thinking. :

2 See E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. §§ 453-460, who rightly emphasises the fact that the Orphic theogony is the continuation of Hesiod’s work. As we have seen, some of it is even older than Hesiod.

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of religious authority, and they were organised as
artificial communities. The poems which contained
their theology were ascribed to the Thracian Orpheus,
who had himself descended into Hades, and was
therefore a safe guide through the, perils which beset
the disembodied soul in the next world. We have
considerable remains of this literature, but they are
mostly of late date, and cannot safely be used as
evidence for the beliefs of the sixth century. We do
know, however, that the leading ideas of Orphicism
were quite early, A number of thin gold plates with
Orphic verses inscribed on them have been discovered
in Southern Italy ;' and though these are somewhat
later in date than the period with which we are
dealing, they belong to the time when Orphicism was
a living creed and not a fantastic revival. What can
be made out from them as to the doctrine has a
startling resemblance to the beliefs which were
prevalent in India about the same time, though it
seems impossible that there should have been any
actual contact between India and Greece at this date.
The main purpose of the Orgia” was to “ purify” the
believer’s soul, and so enable it to escape from the
“wheel of birth,” and it was for the better attainment of
this end that the Orphics were organised in communities.
Religious associations must have been known to the
Greeks from a fairly early date;* but the oldest of

1 For the gold plates of Thourioi and Petelia, see the Appendix to Miss Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, where the text of them is discussed and a translation given by Professor Gilbert Murray.

2. This was the oldest name for these ** mysteries,” and it simply means ‘*sacraments” (cf. gopya). Ογρία are not necessarily ‘‘ orgiastic.”” That association of ideas merely comes from the fact that they belonged to the worship of Dionysos.

3 Herodotos mentions that Isagoras and those of his γένος worshipped

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these were based, at least in theory, on the tie of
kindred blood. What was new was the institution of
communities to which any one might be admitted by
initiation.’ This was, in fact, the establishment of
churches, though there is no evidence that.these were
connected with each other in such a way that we
could rightly speak of them asa single church. The
Pythagoreans came nearer to realising that.

35. We have to take account of the religious
revival here, chiefly because it suggested the view that
philosophy was above all a “ way of life.” Science too
was a “purification,” a méans of € escape from the
“wheel.” This is the view expressed so strongly in
Plato’s Phaedo, which was written under the influence
of Pythagorean ideas.” Sokrates became to his
followers the ideal “ wise man,” and it was to this side
of his personality the Cynics mainly attached themselves.
From them proceeded the Stoic sage and the Christian
saint, and also the whole brood of impostors whom
Lucian has pilloried for our edification.2 Saints and
sages are apt to appear in questionable shapes, and

the-Karian Zeus (v. 66), and it is probable that the Orgeones attached by Kleisthenes to the Attic 2 γαζγίαξ were associations of this kind. See Foucart, Les associations religieuses chez les Grecs,

1 A striking parallel is afforded to all this by what we are told in Robertson Smith’s Religion of the Semites, p. 339. ‘* The leading feature that distinguished them” (the Semitic mysteries of the seventh century B.C.) **from the old public cults with which they came into competition, is that they were not based on the principle of nationality, but sought recruits from men of every race who were willing to accept initiation through the mystic sacraments.”

2 The Phaedo is dedicated, as it were, to Echekrates and the Pythagorean society. at Phleious, and it is evident that Plato in his youth was impressed by the religious side of Pythagoreanism, though the influence of Pythagorean science is not clearly marked till a later period. Note specially the ἄτραπος of Phd. 66 b4. In Rep. x. 600b 1, Plato speaks of Pythagoras as the originator of a private ὁδός τις βίου.

3 Cf. especially the point of view of the Auction of Lives (Βίων πρᾶσι5).

Philosophy as a Way of Life.

No doctrine
in the
‘« Mysteries.””

90 Early Greek Philosophy

Apollonios of Tyana showed in the end where this
view may lead. It was not wholly absent from any
Greek philosophy after the days of Pythagoras,
Aristotle is as much possessed by it as any one, as we
may see from the Tenth Book of the Ethics, and as we
should see still more distinctly if we possessed such
works as the Protreptikos in their entirety.’ Plato,
indeed, tried to make the ideal wise man of service to
the state and mankind by his doctrine of the philosopher
king. It was he alone, so far as we know, that
insisted on philosophers descending by turns into the
cave from which they had been released and coming
to the help of their former fellow-prisoners.” That was
not, however, the view that prevailed, and the “ wise
man” became more and more detached from the
world. Apollonios of Tyana was quite entitled to
regard himself as the spiritual heir of Pythagoras ; for
the theurgy and thaumaturgy of the late Greek schools
was but the fruit of the seed sown in the generation
before the Persian Wars.

36. On the other hand, it would be wrong to
suppose that Orphicism or the Mysteries suggested any
definite doctrines to philosophers, at least during the
period which we are about to consider. We have
admitted that they really implied a new view of the
soul, and we might therefore have expected to find
that they profoundly modified men’s theory of the
world and their relation to it. The striking thing is

1 For the Προτρεπτικός of Aristotle, see Bywater in 7. Phil. ii. p. 553 Diels in Arch. i. p. 477; and the notes on Z¢hics, i. 5, in my edition.

2 Plato, Rep. 520 c 1, καταβατέον οὖν ἐν μέρει. The allegory of the Cave seems to be Orphic, and I believe Professor Stewart’s suggestion (Myths of Plato, p. 252, n. 2), that Plato had the κατάβασις εἰς “Acdov in

mind, to be quite justified. The idea of rescuing the ‘spirits in prison ἢ is thoroughly Orphic.

Science and Religion οι

that this did not happen. Even those philosophers
who were most closely in touch with the religious
movement, like Empedokles and thé Pythagoreans,
held views about the soul which really contradicted

the theory implied by their religious practices.' There |

is no room for an immortal soul in any philosophy of
this period. Up to Plato’s time immortality was
never treated in a scientific way, but merely assumed
in the Orphic rites, to which Plato half seriously turns
for confirmation of his own teaching.’

All this is easily accounted for. With us a
religious revival generally means the vivid realisation
of a new or forgotten doctrine, while ancient religion
has properly no doctrine at all. “The initiated,”
Aristotle said, “were not expected to learn anything,
but merely to be affected in a certain way and put
into acertain frame of mind.”* Nothing was required
but that the ritual should be correctly performed, and
the worshipper was free to give any explanation of
it he pleased. It might be as exalted as that of
Pindar and Sophokles, or as material as that of the
itinerant mystery-mongers described by Plato in the
Republic. The essential thing was that he should
duly sacrifice his pig.

I. Pythagoras of Samos

37. It is no easy task to give an account of Pytha- . goras that can claim to be regarded as history. Our

1 For Empedokles, see § 119; for the Pythagoreans, see § 149.

2 Cf. Phd. 69 ς 2, καὶ κινδυνεύουσι καὶ οἱ τὰς τελετὰς ἡμῖν οὗτοι καταστήσαντες οὐ φαῦλοί τινες εἶναι, ἀλλὰ τῷ ὄντι πάλαι αἰνίττεσθαι k.t.X%. The gentle irony of this and similar passages ought to be unmistakable.

8 Arist. fr. 45, 1483 a 19, τοὺς τελουμένους οὐ μαθεῖν τι δεῖν, ἀλλὰ παθεῖν καὶ διατεθῆναι.

Character of the tradition,

Ww Qe . ὶ 5 ‘ig natives of Southern Italy, and contemporary with the

92 Early Greek Philosophy

principal sources of information’ are the Lives com-
posed by Iamblichos, Porphyry, and Laertios Diogenes.
That of Iamblichos is a wretched compilation, based
chiefly on the work of the arithmetician Nikomachos
of Gerasa in Judaea, and the romance of Apollonios
of Tyana, who regarded himself as a second Pythagoras,
and accordingly took great liberties with his materials.”
Porphyry stands, as a writer, on a far higher level than
Iamblichos ; but his authorities do not inspire us with
more confidence. He, too, made use of Nikomachos,
and of a certain novelist called Antonius Diogenes,
author of a work entitled Marvels from beyond Thule?
Diogenes quotes, as usual, a considerable number of
authorities, and the statements he makes must be
estimated according to the nature of the sources from
which they were drawn.* So far, it must be con-
fessed, our material does not seem promising. Further
examination shows, however, that a good many
fragments of two much older authorities, Aristoxenos
and Dikaiarchos, are embedded in the mass. These
writers were both disciples of Aristotle; they were

last generation of the Pythagorean school. Both

1 See E. Rohde’s admirable papers, ‘‘ Die Quellen des Iamblichus in

- seiner Biographie des Pythagoras” (74. Mus. xxvi., xxvii.).

2 Tamblichos was a disciple of Porphyry, and contemporary with Constantine. The Life of Pythagoras has been edited by Nauck (1884). Nikomachos belongs to the beginning of the second century A.D. There‘is no evidence that he added anything to the authorities he followed, but these were already vitiated by Neopythagorean fables. Still, it is to him we chiefly owe the preservation of the valyable evidence of Aristoxenos.

3 Porphyry’s Lzfe of Pythagoras is the only considerable extract from his History of Philosophy, in four books, that has survived. The romance of Antonius is the original parodied by Lucian in his Vera Historia.

4 The importance of the life in Laertios Diogenes lies in the fact that it gives us the story current at Alexandria before the rise of Neopytha- goreanism and the promulgation of the gospel according to Apollonios of Tyana,

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wrote accounts of Pythagoras; and Aristoxenos, who
was personally intimate with the last representatives
of scientific Pythagoreanism, also made a collection
of the sayings of his friends. Now the Neopythagorean
story, as we have it in lamblichos, is a tissue of
incredible and fantastic myths; but, if we sift out
the statements which go back to Aristoxenos and
Dikaiarchos, we can easily construct a rational narrative,
in which Pythagoras appears not as a miracle-monger
and religious innovator, but simply as a moralist and
statesman. We might then be tempted to suppose
that this is the genuine tradition ; but that would be
altogether a mistake. There is, in fact, a third and
still earlier stratum in the Lives, and this agrees with
the latest accounts in representing Pythagoras as a
wonder-worker and a religious reformer.

Some of the most striking miracles of Pythagoras
are related on the authority of Andron’s Tripod, and
_ of Aristotle’s work on the Pythagoreans.' Both these
treatises belong to the fourth century B.c, and
are therefore untouched by Neopythagorean fancies.
Further, it is only by assuming the still earlier
existence of this view that we can explain the allusions
of Herodotos. The Hellespontine Greeks told him
that Salmoxis or Zamolxis had been a slave of
Pythagoras,’ and Salmoxis is a figure of the same
class as Abaris and Aristeas.