Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (29 page)

His third category shows that he is concerned simply with the circulation of books under a wrong name (not forgery in the sense I am using it), since homonymy, as we have seen, does not involve a false authorial claim. He explicates his reference to the
of kings by speaking specifically of Juba, king of Libya, who loved Pythagorean writings; Ptolemy Philadelphius, who loved Aristotelian writings; and Pisistratus tyrant of Athens, who loved Homeric writings. These kings, he indicates, were willing to pay gold for their beloved texts, leading enterprising scholars to invent them. His second category conforms with the statement of Iamblichus: students wrote books in the names of their teachers. He claims that this is true of “all” the books written in the name of Pythagoras. “For Pythagoras left no writings … and so his disciples out of affection/good will put the name Pythagoras on their writings
.” As a result, for Olympiodorus, all of the writings in the name of Pythagoras are

This statement is sometimes taken as an authoritative account of what happened in the philosophical schools.
⁶⁶
Here again, however, it is not clear whether Olympiodorus is referring to forgeries in the name of Pythagoras by later writers or to publication of essays based on students’ lecture notes (about which, below). And of course if Olympiodorus assumed that Pythagoras published nothing, then it only makes sense that he must draw the corollary: books that bear Pythagoras’ name must have been written by students. And if they were written by students,
they must have been produced with good will toward the master. And so it must have been an established and accepted practice.

As inexorable as the logic may have seemed to Olympiodorus, it cannot be seen as compelling today. Pythagoras was in fact widely thought to have written numerous books (although a number of ancients denied it). His followers did write books, but in their own names. There were, to be sure, books claiming to be written by Pythagoras that he did not himself write, just as there were books falsely written in the names of Socrates, Epicurus, Jesus, Peter, and Paul. To that extent, the practice was widespread. But this does not mean it was widely respected and approved. On the contrary, every indication is that even in antiquity the practice was widely condemned and censured. Whether forgers—Pythagorean or otherwise—themselves took the matter lightly is another question, one we will return to at the end of this chapter.

In any event, Olympiodorus lived a thousand years after Pythagoras himself. He shows no evidence of knowing what happened in the wake of Pythagoras, a millennium earlier. There is no reason to assume he is doing anything but repeating hearsay that had been in circulation in Neoplatonic circles since at least the time of Iamblichus, himself writing eight hundred years after the fact.

One is more or less left with an off-the-cuff comment by Iamblichus in support of this alleged practice in Pythagorean circles. It comes as no surprise that recent studies of the matter by scholars of Pythagoreanism draw a strongly negative conclusion, as summarized forcefully by Leonid Zhmud: “The only one (!), who reports such a practice is once again Iamblichus. Up to that point we do not hear of any concrete instance in which a Pythagorean ascribed his discoveries to Pythagoras, and we have furthermore no indication that such a tendency existed in his school.”
⁶⁷

I will draw some conclusions about the practices of forgery in the philosophical schools shortly, after raising several other issues. For now it is enough to provide some counterevidence to Iamblichus’ assertion.

It is important to recognize that different Pythagoreans (even in the “school”) had their own views and perspectives, and that they had no qualms about expressing them.
⁶⁸
Most of these later authors wrote orthonymously, and we know of their writings. Others to be sure claimed to be Pythagoras. But this was not seen as an acceptable, let alone a widespread, practice. When these authors were
detected, their works were described as forgeries. We have already seen this to be the case with Porphyry and Diogenes Laertius.

Moreover, there were clear reasons for later Pythagoreans wanting to make their writings appear to derive from the great man himself. Among other things, H. Balz and others have argued that the practice provided a greater antiquity for certain Pythagorean views, a desideratum in the face of competing claims of other philosophical traditions.
⁶⁹
In addition, we have other evidence of Pythagorean authors intentionally trying to deceive their readers about their authorial claims (what would have been the point if writing in the name of Pythagoras was widely accepted?). We have already seen that King Juba of Mauretania was willing to pay cash on the barrel head for writings of Pythagoras. Also, we have reports of forged Pythagorean manuscripts being artificially “enhanced” to make them look old and therefore authentic.
⁷⁰
We also have several ancient accounts of faux “discoveries” of Pythagorean texts, meant to assure others of their great antiquity.
⁷¹

There were numerous reasons for Pythagoreans to want to claim that their own writings were the productions of Pythagoras himself. But there is little indeed to suggest that they did so out of humility in a practice that was widely acknowledged in antiquity to be acceptable and sanctioned.

As was already intimated, when it comes to the publication of students’ lecture notes we are dealing with a different matter altogether. So far as we can tell, it was widely thought that the written dissemination of a teacher’s “classroom” instruction should be under the teacher’s name, since he was the one, after all, who had spoken the words. Not all teachers approved of the practice. But what was definitely derided was the alternative of publishing a teacher’s words as one’s own.

Quintilian gives an interesting instance of the practice, a case in which he was not thoroughly pleased that his words had been published by others:

Two books on the art of rhetoric are at present circulating under my name, although never published by me or composed for such a purpose. One is a two days’ lecture which was taken down by the boys who were my audience. The other consists of such notes as my good pupils succeeded in taking down from a course of lectures on a somewhat more extensive scale. I appreciate their kindness, but they showed an excess of enthusiasm and a certain lack of discretion in doing my utterances the honour of publication.
⁷²

Quintilian explains the situation because he is now publishing a new treatise on the same topic, and wants it to be clearly understood that the new iteration will be superior to the two published by students in his name.

On the other hand, as we have seen already, students who published their teacher’s words as their own were severely chastised for plagiarism. This is instanced in the case of Empedocles, mentioned by Diogenes Laertius: “Timaeus in the ninth book of his
Histories
says he was a pupil of Pythagoras, adding that, having been convicted at that time of stealing his discourses
he was, like Plato, excluded from taking part in the discussions of the school” (
Lives
, 8.54).

The clearest instance, however, comes in one that is self-attested. Arrian, as is well known, did not attempt to write his own philosophical reflections based on the teachings of Epictetus, but instead recorded, to the best of his ability, what Epictetus himself said. Had he published the teachings under his own name, he would have been guilty, by ancient standards, of plagiarism (witness Empedocles:
). And so he makes his intentions quite clear at the outset of the Discourses: