1 Andron of Ephesos wrote a work on the Seven Wise Men, called The Tripod, in allusion to the well-known story. The feats ascribed to Pythagoras in the Aristotelian treatise remind us of an ecclesiastical legend. For example, he kills a deadly snake by biting it ; he was seen at Kroton and Metapontion at the same time; he exhibited his golden thigh at Olympia, and was addressed by a voice from heaven when crossing the river Kasas. The same’ authority stated that he was identified by the Krotoniates with Apollo Hyperboreios (Arist. fr. 186).
* Herod. iv. 95.
Life of Pytha- goras.
94 Early Greek Philosophy
It seems, then, that both the oldest and the latest
accounts agree in representing Pythagoras as a man
of the class to which Epimenides and Onomakritos
belonged—in fact, as a sort of “medicine-man”; but,
for some reason, there was an attempt to save his
memory from this imputation, and that attempt
belonged to the fourth century B.c. The significance
of this will appear in the sequel.
38. We may be said to know for certain that
Pythagoras passed his early manhood at Samos, and
was the son of Mnesarchos ;! and he “ flourished,” we
are told, in the reign of Polykrates.* This date
cannot be far wrong; for Herakleitos already speaks
of him in the past tense.°
The extensive travels attributed to Pythagoras by
late writers are, of course, apocryphal. Even the
statement that he visited Egypt, though far from
improbable if we consider the close relations between
Polykrates of Samos and Amasis, rests on no sufficient .
authority. Herodotos, it is true, observes that the
1 Cf. Herod. iv. 95, and Herakleitos, fr. 17 (R. P. 31 a). Herodotos represents him as living at Samos. On the other hand, Aristoxenos said that he came from one of the islands which the Athenians occupied after expelling the Tyrrhenians (Diog. viii. 1). This suggests Lemnos, from which the Tyrrhenian ‘‘ Pelasgians ” were expelled by Miltiades (Herod. vi. 140), or possibly some other island which was occupied at the same time. There were also Tyrrhenians at Imbros. This explains the story that he was an Etrurian or a Tyrian. Other accounts bring him into connexion with Phleious, but that is perhaps a pious invention of the Pythagorean society which flourished there at the beginning of the fourth century B.c. Pausanias (ii. 13, 1) gives it as a Phleiasian tradition that Hippasos, the great-grandfather of Pythagoras, had emigrated from Phleious to Samos.
2 Eratosthenes identified Pythagoras with the Olympic victor of ΟἹ. XLVIII. 1 (588/7 B.c.), but Apollodoros gave his foruzt as 532/1, the era of Polykrates. He doubtless based this on the statement of Aristoxenos quoted by Porphyry (V. Pyzh. 9), that Pythagoras left Samos from dislike to the tyranny of Polykrates (R. P. 53a). For a full discussion, see Jacoby, pp. 215 sqq. 3 Herakl. fr. 16, 17 (R. P. 31, 31 a).
4 It occurs first in the Boustrzs of Isokrates, § 28 (R. P. 52).
Science and Religion 95
Egyptians agreed in certain practices with the rules
called Orphic and Bacchic, which are really Egyptian,
and with the Pythagoreans ;' but this does not imply
that the Pythagoreans derived these directly from
Egypt. He says also in another place that the belief
in transmigration came from Egypt, though certain
Greeks, both at an earlier and a later date, had passed
it off as their own. He refuses, however, to give their
names, so he can hardly be referring to Pythagoras.’
Nor does it matter; for the Egyptians did not believe
in transmigration at all, and Herodotos was simply
deceived by the priests or the symbolism of the
monuments.
Aristoxenos said that Pythagoras left Samos in
order to escape from the tyranny of Polykrates.? It
was at Kroton, a city already famous for its medical
school,* that he founded his society. How long he
remained there we do not know; he died at Meta-
pontion, whither he had retired on the first signal of
revolt against his influence.°
1 Herod. ii, 81 (R. P. 52 4). The comma at Αἰγυπτίοισι is clearly right. Herodotos believed that the worship of Dionysos was introduced from Egypt by Melampous (ii. 49), and he means to suggest that the Orphics got these practices from the worshippers of Bakchos, while the Pythagoreans got them from the Orphics.
2 Herod. ii. 123 (R. P. zd.). The words ‘‘whose names I know, but do not write” cannot refer to Pythagoras ; for it is only of contemporaries that Herodotos speaks in this way (cf. i. 51 ; iv. 48). Stein’s suggestion that he meant Empedokles seems to me convincing. Herodotos may have met him at Thourioi. Nor is there any reason to suppose that of μὲν πρότερον refers specially to the Pythagoreans. If Herodotos had ever heard of Pythagoras visiting Egypt, he would surely have said so in one or other of these passages. There was no occasion for reserve, as Pythagoras must have died before Herodotos was born.
3 Porph. Κ Pyth. 9 (R. P. 53 a).
4 From what Herodotos tells us of Demokedes (iii. 131) we can see that the medical school of Kroton was founded before the time of Pythagoras.
Cf. Wachtler, De Alcmacone Crotoniata, p. 91. 5 It may be taken as certain that Pythagoras spent his last days at
The Order.
96 Early Greek Philosophy
39. There is no reason to believe that the detailed
statements which have been handed down with regard
to the organisation of the Pythagorean Order rest upon
any historical basis, and in the case of many of them
we can still see how they came to be made. The
distinction of grades within the Order, variously called
Mathematicians and Akousmatics, Esoterics and Exoterics,
Pythagoreans and Pythagorists,' isan invention designed
to explain how there came to be two widely different
sets of people, each calling themselves disciples of
Pythagoras, in the fourth century B.C. So, too, the
statement that the Pythagoreans were bound to
inviolable secrecy, which goes back to Aristoxenos,’
is intended to explain why there is no trace of the
Pythagorean philosophy proper before Philolaos.** “Ὁ
The Pythagorean Order was simply, in its origin, a religious fraternity of the type described above, and not,
_“as has sometimes been maintained, a political league.*
Nor had it anything to do with the “ Dorian aristocratic
Metapontion ; Aristoxenos said so (af. Iambl. VY. Pyth. 249), and Cicero (De Fin. v. 4) speaks of the honours which continued to be paid to his memory in that city (R. P. 57 ο). Cf. also Andron, fr. 6 (7.Z.G. ii. 347).
1 For these distinctions, see Porphyry (V. Pyth. 37) and Iamblichos (V. Pyth. 80), quoted R. P. 56 and 56b. The name ἀκουσματικοί is clearly related to the ἀκούσματα, with which we shall have to deal shortly (8 44).
2 For the “‘mystic silence,” see Aristoxenos, af. Diog. viii. 15 (R. P. 55 a). Tannery, ‘‘ Sur le secret dans l’école de Pythagore” (Arch. i. pp. 28 544.), thinks that the mathematical doctrines were the secrets of the school, and that these were divulged by Hippasos; but the most reasonable view is that there were no secrets at all except of a ritual kind.
3 Plato, Rep. x. 600 a, implies that Pythagoras held. no public office. The view that the Pythagorean sect was a political league, maintained in modern times by Krische (De soctetatis a Pythagora conditae scopo politico, 1830), goes back, as Rohde has shown (σε. cit.), to Dikaiarchos, the champion of the ‘‘ Practical Life,” just as the view that it was primarily a scientific society goes back to the mathematician and musician Aristoxenos, The former antedated Archytas, just as the latter antedated Philolaos (see Chap. VII. § 138). Grote’s good sense enabled him to see this quite clearly
(vol. iv. pp. 329 sqq.).
ν Science and Religion 97
ideal.” Pythagoras was an Ionian, and the Order was
originally confined to Achaian states, Nor is there the
slightest evidence that the Pythagoreans favoured the
aristocratic rather than the democratic party.”) The
main purpose of the Order was to secure for its own
members a more adequate satisfaction of the religious
instinct than that supplied by the State religion. It
was, in fact, an institution for the cultivation of holi-
ness. In this respect it resembled an Orphic society,
though it seems that Apollo, rather than Dionysos,
was the chief Pythagorean god. That is doubtless
why the Krotoniates identified Pythagoras with Apollo
Hyperboreios.*? From the nature of the case, however,
an independent society within a Greek state was apt
to be brought into conflict with the larger body. The
1 Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 502, Anm. It is still necessary to insist upon this, as the idea that the Pythagoreans represented the ** Dorian ideal” dies very hard. In his Kudlturhistorische Beitrage (Heft i. p. 59), Max C. P. Schmidt imagines that later writers call the founder of the sect Pythagoras instead of Pythagores, as he is called by Herakleitos and Demokritos, because he had become ‘‘a Dorian of the Dorians.” The fact is simply that Πυθαγόρας is the Attic form of Πυθαγόρης, and that the writers in question wrote Attic. Similarly, Plato calls Archytas, who did belong to a Dorian state, Archytes, though Aristoxenos and others retained the Dorian form of his name.
2 Kylon, the chief opponent of the Pythagoreans, is described by Aristoxenos (Iambl. V. Pyth. 248) as γένει καὶ δόξῃ καὶ πλούτῳ πρωτεύων τῶν πολιτῶν. Taras, later the chief seat of the Pythagoreans, was a democracy. The truth is that, at this time, the new religion appealed to. the people rather than the aristocracies, which were apt to be “‘free- thinking” (Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. iii, § 252). Xenophanes, not Pyth- agoras, is their man.
3 We have the authority of Aristotle, fr. 186, 1510 b 20, for the identifica- tion of Pythagoras with Apollo Hyperboreios. The names of Abaris and Aristeas stand for a mystical movement parallel to the Orphic, but based on the worship of Apollo. The later tradition makes them predecessors of Pythagoras; and that this has some historical basis, appears from Herod. iv. 13 sqq., and above all from the statement that Aristeas had a statue at Metapontion, where Pythagoras died. The connexion of Pythagoras with Zamolxis belongs to the same order of ideas. As the legend of the Hyper- boreans is Delian, we see that the religion taught by Pythagoras was genuinely Ionian in its origin.
98 Early Greek Philosophy
only way in which it could then assert its right to exist was by identifying the State with itself, that is,
by securing the control of the sovereign power. The
history of the Pythagorean Order, so far as it can be
traced, is, accordingly, the history of an attempt to
supersede the State; and its political action is to be
explained as a mere incident of that attempt.
40. For a time the new Order seems actually to have succeeded in securing the supreme power, but reaction came at last. Under the leadership of Kylon, a wealthy noble, Kroton was able to assert itself victoriously against the Pythagorean domination. This, we may well believe, had been galling enough. The “rule of the saints” would be nothing to it; and we can still imagine and sympathise with the irritation felt by the plain man of those days at having his legislation done for him by a set of incomprehensible pedants, who made a point of abstaining from beans, and would not let him beat his own dog because they recognised in its howls the voice of a departed friend ‘(Xenophanes, 7 fr. 7). This feeling would be aggravated by the private religious worship of the Society. Greek states could never pardon the introduction of new gods. Their objection to this was not, however, that the gods in question were false gods. If they had been, it would not have mattered so much. What they could not tolerate was that any one should establish a private means of communication between himself and the unseen powers. That introduced an unknown and incalculable element into the arrangements of the State, which might very likely be hostile to those citizens who had no means of propitiating the intruding divinity.