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http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoreanism
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4.5 Pythagoreans as Relgious Experts, Magicians and Moral Exemplars: Pythagoreanism in Rome, The Golden Verses and Apollonius of Tyana
A third strand in Neopythagoreanism emphasizes Pythagoras' practices rather than his supposed metaphysical system. This Pythagoras is an expert in religious and magical practices and/or a sage who lived the ideal moral life, upon whom we should model our lives. This strand is closely connected to the striking interest in and prominence of Pythagoreanism in Roman literature during the first century BC and first century AD. Cicero (106-43 BC) in particular refers to Pythagoras and other Pythagoreans with some frequency. In De Finibus (V 2), he presents himself as the excited tourist, who, upon his arrival in Metapontum in S. Italy and even before going to his lodgings, sought out the site where Pythagoras was supposed to have died. At the beginning of Book IV (1-2) of the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero notes that Pythagoras gained his fame in southern Italy at just the same time that L. Brutus freed Rome from the tyranny of the kings and founded the Republic; there is a clear implication that Pythagorean ideas, which reached Rome from southern Italy, had an influence on the early Roman Republic. Cicero goes on to assert explicitly that many Roman usages were derived from the Pythagoreans, although he does not give specifics. According to Cicero, it was admiration for Pythagoras that led Romans to suppose, without noticing the chronological impossibility, that the wisest of the early Roman kings, Numa, who was supposed to have ruled from 715-673 BC, had been a pupil of Pythagoras.
In addition to references to Pythagoras himself, Cicero refers to the Pythagorean Archytas some eleven times, in particular emphasizing his high moral character, as revealed in his refusal to punish in anger and his suspicion of bodily pleasure (Rep. I 38. 59; Sen. XII 39-41; Huffman 2005, 21-24, 283 ff. and 323 ff.). Cicero's own philosophy is not much influenced by the Pythagoreans except in The Dream of Scipio (Rep. VI 9), which owes even more to Plato.
The interest in Pythagoras and Pythagoreans is not limited to Cicero, however. Both a famous ode of Horace (I 28-23 BC- see Huffman 2005, 19-21) and a brief reference in Propertius (IV 1 - 16 BC) present Archytas as a master astronomer. Most striking of all is the speech assigned to Pythagoras that constitutes half of Book XV of Ovid's Metamorphoses (early years of the first century AD) and that calls for strict vegetarianism in the context of the doctrine of transmigration of souls. These latter themes are true to the earliest evidence for Pythagoras, but the rest of Ovid's presentation assigns to Pythagoras a doctrine that is derived from a number of early Greek philosophers and in particular the doctrine of flux associated with Heraclitus (Kahn 2001, 146-149).
This flourishing of Pythagoreanism in Roman literature of the golden age has its roots in one of the earliest Roman literary figures, Ennius (239-169 BC), who, in his poem Annales, adopts the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis, in presenting himself as the reincarnation of Homer, although he does not mention Pythagoras by name in the surviving fragments. Roman nationalism also played a role in the emphasis on Pythagoreanism at Rome. Since Pythagoras did his work in Italy and Aristotle even referred to Pythagoreanism in some places as the philosophy of the Italians (e.g. Metaph. 987a10), it is not surprising that the Romans wanted to emphasize their connections to Pythagoras. This is particularly clear in Cicero's references to Pythagoreanism but once again finds its roots even earlier. In 343 BC during the war with the Samnites, Apollo ordered the Romans to erect one statue of the wisest and another of the bravest of the Greeks; their choice for the former was Pythagoras and for the latter Alcibiades. Pliny, who reports the story (Nat. XXXIV 26), expresses surprise that Socrates was not chosen for the former, given that, according to Plato's Apology, Apollo himself had labeled Socrates the wisest; it is surely the Italian connection that explains the Romans' choice of Pythagoras. This attempt to forge a connection with Pythagoras can also be seen in the report of Plutarch (Aem. Paul. 1) that some writers traced the descent of the Aemelii, one of Rome's leading families, to Pythagoras, by claiming Pythagoras' son Mamercus as the founder of the house.
Although Rome's special connection to Pythagoras thus had earlier roots, those roots alone do not explain the efflorescence of Pythagoreanism in golden age Latin literature; some stimulus probably came from the rebirth of what were seen as Pythagorean practices in the way certain people lived. The two most learned figures in Rome of the first century BC, Nigidius Figulus and Varro, both have connections to Pythagorean ritual practices. Thus we are told that Varro (116-27 BC) was buried according to the Pythagorean fashion in myrtle, olive and black poplar leaves (Pliny, Nat. XXXV 160). Amongst Varro's voluminous works was the Hebdomadês (“Sevens”), a collection of 700 portraits of famous men, in the introduction to which Varro engaged in praise for the number 7, which is similar to the numerology of later Neopythagorean works such as Nicomachus' Theology of Arithmetic; in another work Varro presents a theory of gestation, which has Pythagorean connections, in that it is based on the whole number ratios that correspond to the concordant intervals in music (Rawson 1985, 161).
It is Nigidius Figulus, praetor in 58, who died in exile in 45, however, who is usually identified as the figure who was responsible for reviving Pythagorean practices. In the preface to his translation of Plato's Timaeus, which is often treated as virtually a Pythagorean treatise by the Neopythagoreans, Cicero asserts of Nigidius that “following on those noble Pythagoreans, whose school of philosophy had to a certain degree died out, … this man arose to revive it.” Some scholars are dubious about this claim of Cicero. They point to the evidence cited above for the importance of Pythagoreanism in Rome in the two centuries before Nigidius and suggest that Cicero may be illegitimately following Aristoxenus' claim that Pythagoreanism died out in the first half of the fourth century (Riedweg 2005, 123-124). While there may be some evidence that there were practicing Pythagoreans in the second half of the fourth century (see above section 3.4), it is hard to find anyone to whom to apply that label in the third and second centuries, so that, from the perspective of the evidence available to us at present, Cicero may well be right that Nigidius was the first person in several centuries to claim to follow Pythagorean practices.
It is difficult to be sure in what Nigidius' Pythagoreanism consisted. There is no mention of Pythagoras or Pythagoreans in the surviving fragments of his work nor do they show him engaging in Pythagorean style numerology as Varro did (Rawson 1985, 291 ff.). In Jerome's chronicle, Nigidius is labeled as Pythagorean and magus; the most likely suggestion, thus, is that his Pythagoreanism consisted in occult and magical practices. Nigidius' expertise as an astrologer (he is reported to have used astrology to predict Augustus' future greatness on the day of his birth [Suetonius, Aug. 94.5]) may be another Pythagorean connection; Propertius' reference (IV 1) to Archytas shows that Pythagorean work in astronomy was typically connected to astrology in first century Rome.
What led Nigidius and Varro to resurrect purported Pythagorean cult practices? One important influence may have been the Greek scholar Alexander Polyhistor, who was born in Miletus but was captured by the Romans during the Mithridatic wars and brought to Rome as a slave and freed by Sulla in 80 BC. He taught in Rome in the 70s. It is an intriguing suggestion that Nigidius learned his Pythagoreanism from Alexander (Dillon 1977, 117). There is no evidence that Alexander himself followed Pythagorean practices, but he wrote a book On Pythagorean Symbols, which was presumably an account of the Pythagorean acusmata (or symbola), which set out the taboos that governed many aspects of the Pythagorean way of life. In addition, in his Successions of the Philosophers, he gave a summary of Pythagorean philosophy, which he supposedly found in “Pythagorean notebooks” and which has been preserved by Diogenes Laertius (VIII 25-35). The basic principles assigned to Pythagoras are those of the Neopythagorean tradition that begins in the early Academy, i.e., the monad and the indefinite dyad. Since Alexander also assigns to the Pythagoreans the doctrine that the elements change into one another, we might suppose that Ovid also used Alexander directly or indirectly, since he assigns a similar doctrine to Pythagoras in the Metamorphoses (XV 75 ff., Rawson 1985, 294).
It is necessary to look in a slightly different direction, in order to see how magical practices came to be particularly associated with Pythagoras and thus why Nigidius was called Pythagorean and magus. In the first century, it was widely believed that Pythagoras had studied with the Magi (Cicero, Fin. V 87), i.e. Persian priests/wise men. What Pythagoras was thought to have learned from the Magi most of all were the magical properties of plants. Pliny the elder (23-79 AD) identifies Pythagoras and Democritus as the experts on such magic and the Magi as their teachers (Nat. XXIV 156-160). Pliny goes on to give a number of specific examples from a book on plants ascribed to Pythagoras. This book is universally regarded as spurious by modern scholars, and even Pliny, who accepts its authenticity, reports that some people ascribe it to Cleemporus. We can date this treatise on plants to the first half of the second century or earlier, since Cato the elder (234-149 BC) appears to make use of it in his On Agriculture (157), when he discusses the medicinal virtues of a kind of cabbage, which was named after Pythagoras (brassica Pythagorea).
A clearer understanding of this pseudo-Pythagorean treatise on plants and a further indication of its date can be obtained by looking at the work of Bolus of Mendes, an Egyptian educated in Greek (see Dickie 2001, 117-122, to whom the following treatment of Bolus is indebted). Bolus composed a work entitled Cheiromecta, which means “things worked by hand” and may thus refer to potions made by grinding plants and other substances (Dickie 2001, 119). Bolus discussed not just the magical properties of plants but also those of stones and animals. Pliny regarded the Cheiromecta as composed by Democritus on the basis of his studies with the Magi (Nat. 24. 160) and normally cites its contents as what Democritus or the Magi said. Columella, however, tells us what was really going on (On Agriculture VII 5.17). The work was in fact composed by Bolus, who published it under the name of Democritus. Bolus thus appears to have made a collection of magical recipes, some of which do seem to have connections to the Magi, since they are similar to recipes found in 8th century cuneiform texts (Dickie 2001, 121). In order to gain authority for this collection, he assigned it to the famous Democritus.
Since Democritus was sometimes regarded as the pupil of Pythagoreans (Diogenes Laertius IX 38), Bolus' choice of Democritus to give authority to his work may suggest that someone else (the Cleemporus mentioned by Pliny?) had already used Pythagoras for this purpose and that the pseudo-Pythagorean treatise on the magical properties of plants was thus already in existence when Bolus wrote, in the first half of the second century BC. An example of the type of recipe involved is Pliny's ascription to Democritus of the idea that the tongue of a frog, cut out while the frog was still alive, if placed above the heart of a sleeping woman, will cause her to give true answers (Nat. XXXII 49). Thus, the picture of Pythagoras the magician, which may lie behind a number of the supposed Pythagorean practices of Nigidius Figulus, is based on little more than the tradition that Pythagoras had traveled to Egypt and the east, so that he became the authority figure, to whom the real collectors of magical recipes in the third and second century BC ascribed their collections.
Nigidius' revival of supposed Pythagorean practices spread to other figures in first century Rome. Cicero attacked Vatinius, consul in 48 and a supporter of Caesar, for calling himself a Pythagorean and trying to shield his scandalous practices under the name of Pythagoras (Vat. 6). The scandalous practices involved necromancy, invoking the dead, by murdering young boys. Presumably this method of necromancy would not be ascribed to Pythagoras, but the suggestion is that some methods of consulting the dead were regarded as Pythagorean. Cicero later ended up defending this same Vatinius in a speech which has not survived but some of the contents of which we know from the ancient scholia on the speech against Vatinius. In this speech Cicero defended Vatinius' habit of wearing a black toga, which he attacked in the earlier speech (Vat. 12), as a harmless affectation of Pythagoreanism (Dickie 2001, 170). Thus, the title of Pythagorean in first century Rome carried with it associations with magical practices, not all of which would have been widely approved.
Another example of the connection between Pythagoreanism and magic and its possible negative connotations is Anaxilaus of Larissa (Rawson 1985, 293; Dickie 2001, 172-173). In his chronicle, Jerome describes him with the same words as he used for Nigidius, Pythagorean and magus, and reports that he was exiled from Rome in 28 BC. We know that Anaxilaus wrote a work entitled Paignia (“tricks”), which seems to have consisted of some rather bizarre conjuring tricks for parties. Pliny reports one of Anaxilaus' tricks as calling for burning the discharge from a mare in heat in a flame, in order to cause the guests to see images of horses' heads (Nat. XXVIII 181). The passion for things Pythagorean can also be seen in the figure of king Juba of Mauretania (ca. 46 BC – 23 AD), a learned and cultured man, educated at Rome and author of many books. Olympiodorus describes him as “a lover of Pythagorean compositions” and suggests that Pythagorean books were forged to satisfy the passion of collectors such as Juba (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca 12.1, p. 13).
The connection between Pythagoreanism and astrology visible in Nigidius can perhaps also be seen in Thrasyllus of Alexandria (d. 36 AD), the court astrologer and philosopher, whom the Roman emperor Tiberius met in Rhodes and brought to Rome. Thrasyllus is famous for his edition of Plato's dialogues arranged into tetralogies, but he was a Platonist with strong Pythagorean leanings. Porphyry in his Life of Plotinus (20) quotes Longinus as saying that Thrasyllus wrote on Platonic and Pythagorean first principles (Dillon 1977, 184-185). Most suggestive of all is the quotation from Thrasyllus preserved by Diogenes Laertius (Diogenes Laertius IX 38), in which Thrasyllus calls Democritus a zealous follower of the Pythagoreans and asserts that Democritus drew all his philosophy from Pythagoras and would have been thought to have been his pupil, if chronology did not prevent it. It is impossible to be sure what Thrasyllus had in mind here, but one very plausible suggestion is that he is thinking of Democritus as a sage, who practiced magic, the Democritus created by Bolus, who was the successor to the arch mage Pythagoras, the supposed author of the treatise on the magical uses of plants (Dickie 2001, 195).
We cannot be sure whether the Pythagoreanism of Nigidius, Varro and their successors was limited to such things as burial ritual, magical practices and black togas or whether it extended to less spectacular features of a “Pythagorean” life. Q. Sextius, however, founded a philosophical movement in the time of Augustus, which prescribed a vegetarian diet and taught the doctrine of transmigration of souls, although Sextius presented himself as using different arguments than Pythagoras for vegetarianism (Seneca, Ep. 108. 17 ff.) One of these Sextians, as they were known, was Sotion, the teacher of Seneca, and it is Seneca who gives us most of the information we have about them. It is also noteworthy that Sextius is also reported to have asked himself at the end of each day “What bad habit have you cured today? What vice have you resisted? In what way are you better” (Seneca, De Ira III 36). Cicero tells us that it was “the Pythagorean custom” to call to mind in the evening everything said, heard or done during the day (Sen. 38, cf. Iamblichus, VP 164). The practice described by Cicero is directed at training the memory in contrast to Sextius' questions, which call for moral self-examination.
Something similar to the Sextian version of the practice is found in lines 40-44 of the Golden Verses, a pseudepigraphical treatise consisting of 71 Greek hexameter verses, which were ascribed to Pythagoras or the Pythagoreans. The poem is a combination of materials from different dates, and it is uncertain when it took the form preserved in manuscripts and called the Golden Verses; dates ranging from 350 BC to 400 AD have been suggested (see Thom 1995). The Golden Verses are frequently quoted in the first centuries AD and thus constitute one model of the Pythagorean life in Neopythagoreanism, one that is free from magical practices. Much of the advice is common to all of Greek ethical thought (e.g. honoring the gods and parents; mastering lust and anger; deliberating before acting, following measure in all things), but there are also mentions of dietary restrictions typical of early Pythagoreanism and the promise of leaving the body behind to join the aither as an immortal.
Our most detailed account of a Neopythagorean living a life inspired by Pythagoras is Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana. Apollonius was active in the second half of the first century AD and died in 97; Philostratus' life, which was written over a century later at the request of the empress Julia Domna and completed after her death in 217 AD, is more novel than sober biography. Some have even wondered if Apollonius' Pythagoreanism is largely the creation of Philostratus, but there is evidence that Apollonius wrote a life of Pythagoras used by Iamblichus (VP 254) and Porphyry (Burkert 1972, 100), and the fragment of his treatise On Sacrifices has clear connections to Neopythagorean philosophy (Kahn 2001, 143-145). According to Philostratus, Apollonius identified his wisdom as that of Pythagoras, who taught him the proper way to worship the gods, to wear linen rather than wool, to wear his hair long, and to eat no animal food (I 32).
Like Pythagoras, Apollonius journeys to consult the wise men of the east and learns from the Brahmins in India that the doctrine of transmigration, which Apollonius inherited from Pythagoras, originated in India and was handed on to the Egyptians from whom Pythagoras derived it (III 19). Philostratus (I 2) emphasizes that Apollonius was not a magician, thus trying to free him from the more disreputable connotations of Pythagorean practices associated with figures such as Anaxilaus and Vatinius (see above). Nonetheless, Philostratus' life does recount a number of Apollonius' miracles, such as the raising of a girl from the dead (IV 45).
These miracles made Apollonius into a pagan counterpart to Christ. The emperor Alexander Severus (222-235 AD) worshipped Apollonius alongside Christ, Abraham and Orpheus (Hist. Aug., Vita Alex. Sev. 29.2). Hierocles, the Roman governor of Bithynia, who was rigorous in his persecution of Christians, championed Apollonius at the expense of Christ, in The Lover of Truth, and drew as a response Eusebius' Against Hierocles. As mentioned above, there is some probability that Iamblichus intends to elevate Pythagoras himself as a pagan counterpart to Christ in his On the Pythagorean Life (Dillon and Hershbell 1991, 25-26).
The satirist Lucian provides us with a hostile portrayal of another holy man with Pythagorean connections, Alexander of Abnoteichus in Paphlagonia, who was active in the middle of the second century. In Alexander the False Prophet, Lucian reports that Alexander compared himself to Pythagoras (4), could remember his previous incarnations (34) and had a golden thigh like Pythagoras (40). Lucian shows the not often seen negative side to both Pythagoras' and Alexander's reputations when he reports that, if one took even the worst things said about Pythagoras, Alexander would far outdo him in wickedness (4).
Despite these attacks on figures such as Apollonius and Alexander who modeled themselves on Pythagoras, the Pythagorean way of life was in general praised; the Neopythagorean tradition which portrays Pythagoras as living the ideal life on which we should model our own reaches its culmination in Iamblichus' On the Pythagorean Life and Porphyry's Life of Pythagoras
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06-17-2006, 04:04 PM
