Pythagoras: His Life and Teaching, a Compendium of Classical Sources (30 page)

CHAPTER
4

P
IETY
TO
THE
D
EAD

P
iety to the dead was a part, not the least, of the Pythagorean doctrine. Whence Cicero, speaking of the immortality of the soul: “More prevalent with me,” says he, “is the authority of the ancients, or our ancestors, who afforded the dead religious rites—which certainly they had not done if they had conceived that nothing pertains to them; or of those who were in this country and instructed Magna Graecia (which now is abolished but then flourished), with their institutions and precepts.”
⁷⁵¹

Pythagoras allowed not the bodies of the dead to be burned, herein imitating the Magi, as not willing that any mortal should participate of divine honor.
⁷⁵²
The Pythagorean custom, as described by Pliny, was to put the dead into earthen barrels amongst leaves of myrtle, olive, and black poplar.
⁷⁵³

To accompany the dead at funerals in white garments he conceived to be pious; alluding to the simple and first nature, according to number, and the principle of all things.
⁷⁵⁴

The Crotonians delighted in burying their dead sumptuously. One of the Pythagoreans told them he had heard Pythagoras discoursing of divine things thus:

“The celestial gods respect the affections of the sacrificers, not the greatness of the sacrifice. On the contrary, the terrestrial gods, as to whose share the lesser things belong, delight in banquets, and mournings, and funeral litations, and costly sacrifices. Whence Hades (the Infernal Regions), from its making choice of entertainment, is named Pluto. Those who pay honors to him most sparingly he permits to continue longest in the upper world. But of those who are excessive in mourning, he brings down ever and anon one, that thereby he may receive the honors which are paid in memory of the dead.”

By this discourse he wrought a belief in his Auditors that they who do all things moderately upon such adverse occasions further their own safety; but as for those who bestow excessive charge, they will all die untimely.
⁷⁵⁵

They forbore to make tombs of Cypress, forasmuch as Jupiter's scepter was of that wood, as Hermippus, in his second book of Pythagoras, affirms.
⁷⁵⁶

CHAPTER
5

R
EVERENCE
OF
P
ARENTS
,
AND
O
BEDIENCE
TO
THE
L
AW

N
ext to gods and daemons, we ought to reverence parents and the law; and to render ourselves obedient to them, not falsely, but really.
⁷⁵⁷
Or as Porphyry says, “He commanded to think and to speak reverently of gods and daemons, to be kind to parents and benefactors, and to obey the law.”
⁷⁵⁸

They held (says Iamblichus) that we ought to believe, there is no greater ill than anarchy; for a man cannot be safe, where there is no governor.
⁷⁵⁹
They held also that we ought to persevere in the customs and rites of our own country, though they be worse than those of other countries. To revolt easily from settled laws, and to be studious of novelty, they conceived to be neither advantageous nor safe.

Seeing that contumelies, pride, and contempt of law often transport men to unjust actions, he daily exhorted, that the law should be assisted and injustice opposed.
⁷⁶⁰
To which end he alleged this distinction: The first of ills, which insinuates itself into houses and cities, is pride; the second, insolence; the third, destruction. Everyone therefore ought to expel and extirpate pride, accustoming himself from his youth to a temperate masculine life, and to be free from slanderous repining, contentious reproaching, and hateful scurrility.

Wickedness disobeys the Divine Law, and therefore transgresses.
⁷⁶¹

A wicked man suffers more torment in his own conscience than he who is punished in body and whipped.
⁷⁶²

CHAPTER
6

L
AWMAKING

M
oreover, says Iamblichus, he constituted another excellent kind of Justice, the legislative part, which commands that which ought to be done, and forbids that which ought not to be done. This is better than the judicative part. For the judicative resembles that part of medicine which cures the sick, but the legislative suffers them not to fall sick, but takes care afar off of the health of the soul.

Varro affirms that Pythagoras delivered this discipline (of governing states) to his auditors last of all—when they were now learned, now wise, now happy. For he saw so many rough waves therein, that he would not commit it but to such a one as was able to shun the rocks; or if all failed, might stand himself as a rock amidst those waves.
⁷⁶³

They who punish not ill persons would have the good injured.
⁷⁶⁴

T
HEORETICAL
P
HILOSOPHY:
I
TS
P
ARTS
A
ND
F
IRST
OF
THE
S
CIENCE
C
ONCERNING
I
NTELLIGIBLES

W
e come next to the theoretical part, to which more particularly belongs that saying of Pythagoras: that by philosophy be had this advantage—to admire nothing. For philosophical discourse takes away wonder—which arises from doubt and ignorance—by knowledge and examination of the facility of everything.

Theoretical philosophy seems to have been divided by the Pythagoreans into two parts, they first (says Iamblichus) delivered the science of intelligibles and the gods; next which, they taught all Physic. To the science of intelligibles belong these heads, wherewith Iamblichus begins his recapitulation of the gods, of heroes, and of daemons.
⁷⁶⁵

CHAPTER
1

O
F
THE
S
UPREME
G
OD

P
ythagoras defined what God is thus: a Mind which penetrates in all directions, and is diffused through every part of the World and through all Nature; from whom all animals that are produced receive life.
⁷⁶⁶

God is one.
⁷⁶⁷
He is not (as some conceive) out of the world, but entire within himself, in a complete circle surveying all generations. He is the Temperament of all ages, the Agent of his own powers and works, the Principle of all things; one in heaven luminary, and father of all things; mind and animation of the whole, the motion of all circles.

God (as Pythagoras learned of the Magi, who term him Ahura Mazda) in his body resembles Light, in his soul, Truth.
⁷⁶⁸
He said that God only is wise.
⁷⁶⁹

He conceived that the first being (God) is neither sensible nor susceptible to sensation or emotion; but is invisible and intelligible.
⁷⁷⁰

CHAPTER
2

O
F
G
ODS
, D
AEMONS
, H
EROES

N
ext to the supreme God, there are three kinds of intelligibles: gods, daemons, heroes. That Pythagoras thus distinguished them is manifest from his precept that we must in worship prefer gods before daemons, heroes before men.
⁷⁷¹
But in Iamblichus, he seems either to observe a different method, or to confound the terms; teaching first of gods, then of heroes, last of daemons; which order perhaps is the same with that of the Golden Verses.
⁷⁷²

First, as decreed, th' immortal Gods adore,
Thy Oath keep: next great Heroes, then implore
Terrestrial Daemons with due sacrifice.
⁷⁷³

By Terrestrial Daemons seems to be understood not Princes (as Hierocles) but the daemons themselves, confined to several offices upon earth; For,

“All the air is full of souls, which are esteemed daemons and heroes. From these are sent to men dreams and presages of sickness and of health; and not only to men, but to sheep also, and to other cattle. To these pertain expiations, and the warding off of evil, and all divinations,
Cledons
and the like.”
⁷⁷⁴

CHAPTER
3

O
F
F
ATE
AND
F
ORTUNE

A
ll the parts of the world above the Moon, are governed according to Providence and firm order, and
the Decree of God† which they follow. But those beneath the Moon by four causes: by God, by fate, by our election, by fortune.
⁷⁷⁵
For instance, to go aboard into a ship or not is in our power; storms and tempests to arise out of a calm is by fortune; for the ship, being underwater to be preserved, is by the providence of God. Of fate there are many manners and differences. It differs from fortune as having a determination, order, and consequence; but fortune is spontaneous and casual—as to proceed from a boy to a youth, and orderly to pass through the other degrees of age, happens by one manner of fate. (Here the text seems deficient.)

Man is of affinity with the Gods, by reason that he participates of heat, wherefore God has a providential care of us.
⁷⁷⁶
There is also
, a Fate of all things in general and in particular, the cause of their administration.†

CHAPTER
4

D
IVINATION

F
or as much as by daemons and heroes all divination is conveyed to men, we shall here add what Pythagoras held and practiced therein. Iamblichus says that he honored divination not the least of the sciences.
⁷⁷⁷
For what things are agreeable to God cannot be known unless a man hear God himself, or the gods, or acquire it by divine art. For this reason, they diligently studied divination, as being the only interpretation of the benevolence of the gods. It is likewise an employment most suitable to those who believe there are gods. But whoever thinks either belief in the gods or divination a folly, to him the other is such also.

Pythagoras approved all kinds of divination, except that which is performed by the sacrifice of living creatures.
⁷⁷⁸

He first used divination by frankincense.
⁷⁷⁹
This was the only burnt offering by which he divined.
⁷⁸⁰

He also used divination by Cledons,
⁷⁸¹
and by birds, which Cicero confirms, saying that he would himself be an augur;
⁷⁸²
and that the Pythagoreans observed not only the voices of the gods, but of men also, which they call omens.
⁷⁸³
Cledons are observations of occurrent speeches, collecting from what is accidentally said upon some other occasion, the effect of what is sought: an instance whereof, see in the Epigram of Callimachus upon Pittacus.
⁷⁸⁴

The interpretation of dreams, Porphyry says, he learned of the Hebrews. He communicated it also to his disciples; for Iamblichus relates he used means to procure them quiet sleeps with good and prophetic dreams. For this reason, some conceive, it was that he forbade flatulent and gross meats, for that they obstruct the serenity which is requisite thereto. Such apparitions he held not to be fantastic but real (not
“a dream” but
“in reality”), as is manifest from one who told him that he dreamed he had talked with his father who was dead, and asked him what it portended. “Nothing,” says he, “for you did really talk with him. As my speaking now to you portends nothing, nor did that.”
⁷⁸⁵

He was skillful likewise in judicial Astrology, if we credit Apuleius, who affirms the Chaldeans showed him the science of the stars, the number of the planets, their stations, revolutions, and the various effects of both in the nativities of men.
⁷⁸⁶

Varro relates him skillful in Hydromancy,
⁷⁸⁷
which (says he) came from Persia, and was practiced by Numa, and afterwards by Pythagoras; wherein they used blood, and invocation of daemons.

Eustathius says the Pythagoreans affirm that all brass does sound by some diviner spirit, for which reason a tripod of that metal is dedicated to Apollo. And when the winds are all laid, the air calm, and all things else quiet, yet the hollow brass caldrons seem to quake.
⁷⁸⁸
The same may be the meaning of Pythagoras when he says, “The sound which is made by brass, is the voice of the voice of the Daemon enclosed in the brass.”
⁷⁸⁹
(Reading, perhaps,
.)

For so Psellus describes a kind of hydromancy practiced by the Assyrians: They take a basin full of water convenient for the daemons to glide into the bottom. The basin of water seems to make a noise as if it breathed. The water in the basin in substance differs nothing from other water—but through the virtue infused thereinto by charms is much more excellent, and made more ready to receive a prophetic spirit. This is a particular daemon, terrestrial, attracted by compositions. As soon as he glides into the water, he makes a little sound inarticulate, which denotes his presence. Afterwards the water running over, there are certain whispers heard with some prediction of the future. This kind of spirit is very wandering, because it is of the solar order, and this kind of daemons purposely speak with a low voice, that by reason of the indistinct obscurity of the voice, their lies may be less subject to discovery. Hitherto Psellus.