Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans
Luis J. Lopez
In order to best understand the Pythagoreans, one must first begin with a background of the founder himself. Unlike any other Greek philosopher, Pythagoras was heralded as no less than the son of Apollo himself, for such was his wisdom. His followers, failing to approach his wisdom, could only assume that such knowledge derived directly from the gods and thus, called him Hyperborean Apollo, or Apollo from the North (p. 44, Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece).
Unfortunately, he left no written record of his teachings, nor did his followers attempt to detail the inner teachings of the group, due to the proverbial secrecy observed among the members of his group. Therefore, much of what exists today regarding both the philosopher and the legacy of his ideas has been gleaned from the writings of Aristotle and his pupils, which date to the late fourth century B.C.E., as well as the works of Diogenes Laertius and the Neoplatonists , Porphyry and Iamblichus, dating to the third and fourth centuries C.E. respectively (p. 67, The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy).
Most valid accounts of his life date him from 570 to 500 B.C.E. and give his birthplace to be the island of Samos, in the Aegean Sea. However, another account gives his birthplace as Sidon, in Phoenicia (p. 26, Pythagoras). What is clear is that Pythagoras traveled to Egypt, in some official capacity for Polycrates, a tyrant of Samos (p. 43, Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece). Here he remained for 22 years, and dedicated himself to the study of the Egyptian mysteries and doctrines.
From Egypt, he traveled to Babylon, where he studied under the Magi, or cultic priests of the Persians. Here, he also learned mathematics and other sciences from the Chaldeans, as well as studying the thaumaturgic teachings of Zoroastrianism. He next traveled to India, where he studied among the Brahmins before returning to Samos at the age of 56 years. Upon his return, he established a school called the ‘Hemicircle of Pythagoras’ (p. 34, Pythagoras). Around 522 B.C.E., he left Samos, due to a conflict with Polycrates, and traveled to Croton in Calabria, in the region of southern Italy, where he established the political order of the Pythagoreans.
Pythagoras aimed for the viewpoint of the divine and his opinions were taken as sacred revelations by his followers (p. 17, To Think Like God). His insight led to tales that characterized him as the son of a god, the incarnation of a god, or as a third kind of being apart from mortals and gods. His name was treated with reverence and his teachings were simply preceded by the phrases ‘Autos epha’ or Ipse dixit’, that is, ‘He spoke.’
If he did write, more than naught he wrote poetry, as did so many other philosophers of his time. Of the sources that held that Pythagoras did write poetry, they report he signed his poems with the name ‘Orpheus,’ thus interconnecting his name and his followers with the Orphic mystery cults. According to Johan Thom, “several Orphic works from the fifth and the fourth century are ascribed to Pythagoreans such as Cercops, Brontinus, and Zopyrus of Heraclea. In the Hellenistic period too, a number of so-called Orphica had a Pythagorean origin. These include a Hieros Logos, a Hymn to Number and a poem called Lyre” (p. 89, The Pythagorean Golden Verses).
Pythagoras himself was the model for the godly life he advocated. He avoided all inappropriate conduct, such as overeating, drunkenness, jesting, and even laughing. In Pythagoras’ view, “mortals were not put on this Earth to enjoy themselves, but only to suffer” (p. 48, To Think Like God). Because of this, the Pythagoreans viewed a life of luxury as the ultimate offense against the powers that condemned man to his terrestrial stay. The Pythagoreans viewed the Earth as a prison, with the body being the individual jail cell. It was only by embracing the terms of punishment, that is to say, the hardships of life that one could fulfill the terms of one’s sentence (p. 48, To Think Like God).
This notion was pivotal for his movement and it was as much political as religious, because in the view of the Pythagoreans, religion had to be politics and politics, religion. According to Minar, “the Pythagorean Society was not the same as the ordinary political club. It was bound together by religious as well as by political and social ties and much more closely organized than the often ephemeral groups which made their influence felt in the political field” (p. 123, Early Pythagorean Politics).
Only deeds that increased a person’s punishment were to be encouraged, because it was only by laboring that one could undergo one’s punishment. A saying attributed to Pythagoras himself alludes to this fact: “[Hard] labours are good, but pleasures are in every respect bad. For as we came into the present life for the purpose of punishment, it is necessary that we should be punished” (p. 48, Iamblichus, trans., To Think Like God). Another Pythagorean saying demonstrates this same fact: “Do not assist a man laying a burden down; for it is not proper to be the cause of not labouring; but assist him in taking it up” (p. 49, Iamblichus, trans., To Think Like God).
The fragments of Aristotle’s writings on Pythagoras conferred miraculous powers on him, such as his ability to be in two places at the same time, his golden thigh (a sign of religious initiation) that showed he had survived a journey to the underworld, and his killing of a poisonous snake by biting it (p. 72, The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy).
Pythagoras was also renowned for having known several of his past incarnations. According to a story related by Diodorus, called the ‘Tale of the Shield of Euphorbus,’ Pythagoras claimed to have once been Euphorbus, Panthus’ son, who was killed by Mennelaus. When asked how he knew, he clearly indicated an inscription on the inside of the shield which could not be seen by anyone. Upon further examination, the shield was indeed found to have the inscription he identified. Not surprisingly, Pythagoras was the first to introduce the idea of “metempsychosis” into Greek thought.
Metempsychosis, or the idea of the transmigration of the soul and the survival of the psyche through reincarnation, may have been his original idea or may have been developed either in Egypt or in India, during the course of his studies. In order to help his followers attain the same ability to recall their past lives, he enjoined them to ask themselves three times before falling asleep the questions: “Where have I transgressed? What have I accomplished? What duty have I neglected?” (p. 97, The Pythagorean Golden Verses)
This idea may have been the key reason why the movement lasted long after he had passed away, for in it there was hope for salvation in the afterlife and as a result of it, many of his followers could find a rational to undergo the austerities and sacrifices expected of them in living a life devoted to the perfection of oneself. Aside from this belief, “the self-discipline represented in Pythagorean silence and in adherence to the multitude of taboos is founded on a more basic belief that our actions are under constant scrutiny by divine powers. Moreover, the structure of the world is related to a system of rewards and punishments” (p. 74, The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy). Furthermore, “their vegetarianism, as well as other dietary restrictions, was probably based on this belief in reincarnation: the meat one is eating could have been the flesh that clothed the soul of a friend” (p. 45, Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece).
Pythagoras concealed all of his moral precepts, as well as his spiritual and philosophical teachings, in the form of passwords called “sumbola,” otherwise known as symbols. These passwords were a means by which the genuine initiates could identify themselves from impostors and political opponents. These passwords can be classified into three distinct categories, as Aristotle did on his work on the Pythagoreans: “What is? What is foremost? What ought one to do?” (p. 45, Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece).
The most famous password was “What is the Oracle of Delphi? The Tetraktus: This very thing is the harmony in which the Sirens sing” (p. 46, Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece). The Tetraktus became the means by which the Greeks first began to examine and to understand the natural world through number, that is to say, through mathematics. It also became the basis for musical theory, which was the first to posit that the relation between the octave, fourth and fifth correspond to the ratios 2:1, 3:2, and 4:3.
The original idea, of looking to numbers for universal answers, was introduced by Pythagoras himself. As a result, philosophy became for the Pythagoreans the art of proving (p. 93, To Think Like God). This idea developed from his study of harmony, which he discovered was nothing less than the differences in vibrations of specific notes on the musical scale.
He arrived at this conclusion by measuring the length of the string upon which a note was played. He determined that the basic intervals of a musical scale could be expressed in four numbers: 1, 2, 3 and 4, which when added up equaled 10, the number considered by the Pythagoreans as perfect and divine (p. 94, To Think Like God). The number 10 was considered perfect “because it ‘comprised the whole nature of numbers.’ It also contained the formula for the line, surface, and solid” (p. 96, To Think Like God). The Tetraktus was their symbolic representation of the number ten and equated geometrical points with numbers.
According to Aristotle, the Pythagoreans constructed the whole of the universe out of numbers. The reason for this is that they believed if things themselves were made of numbers, then we could know a thing if we knew its number. At the core of this belief was the idea that geometrical points and numbers could be used to construct all manner of shapes. Their conclusion was that things which result from such construction are essentially made of numbers and brought about by them. With this approach, they believed that they could decipher everything. Furthermore, they figured that all they had to do was learn the number of a thing and relate it to the number of other things and they would have the source code of the universe, or even the formula of the soul (p. 98, To Think Like God).
However, the drawbacks of the Pythagorean system when viewed as a philosophical approach were that the blending of mathematics and religion were not the most suitable foundation to base philosophy on, and digression into magic and symbolism were facilitated instead of averted. They never learned to distinguish between mathematics and numerology and this set them apart from the others, who inevitably became envious of them and viewed them as elitists. Even their view of cosmology can be said to have been fixed to fit their map of reality. Since they had devised a system where various planets circled a central fire, and yielded only nine planets in total, they had to devise the idea of a counter-Earth to bring the total to ten, their divine number. But the real problem was that they lacked the rigorous approaches of other philosophical systems to think deeply and instead relied on all manners of physical austerities and disciplines to make up for this lack (p. 113, To Think Like God).
From these ideas, developed by Pythagoras, came the conclusion that correspondence and proportion rule the world. To the initiates of his order, this meant that injustice was an impossibility when viewed on a universal scale, because the principal of number regulated the constitution and behavior of all things. The world could now be understood as “cosmos,” or “ordered world,” a term credited to Pythagoras. For the Pythagoreans, the ordering of the world had a beginning, with the introduction of the unit as the foundation of creation.
The unit served to draw in the unlimited and in so doing unitized it, or united it. “Accordingly, the overall mission of order was to conquer the unordered, and from the unit at its center a wave of unification increasingly spread throughout the unlimited, converting it thereby to cosmos” (p. 101, To Think Like God). However, in Hermann’s final determination, “Pythagorean number theory could not offer us a viable mathematics for the soul. In fact, it was not even an effective means for defending its all-important constituent: the ubiquitous unit” (p. 144, To Think Like God).
Of notable mention is also the idea, developed by Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, that painful events have to be endured without resentment, that is to say, both with courage and inner nobility (p. 143, The Pythagorean Golden Verses). At the base of this lay the Greek anthropological doctrine that man is powerless in the face of heaven-sent events and at the mercy of the gods. Yet by accepting such events, man could demonstrate his inner strength rather than fighting the inevitable. The notion that there is a limit to the suffering of good people is strictly a Pythagorean idea based on their doctrine of divine providence (p. 145, The Pythagorean Golden Verses). This is another reason why the Pythagoreans found it imperative to dedicate themselves to life-long study as a means to self-perfection.
It cannot be denied that they believed themselves to be immortal, as regards the continuity of the psyche. But the motivation for self-discipline came as a result of their belief in the fact that, by so doing, they were safeguarding for themselves vast rewards in the afterlife. This allowed them to avoid the fatalism and resignation that may have come about as a consequence of the seemingly unsympathetic nature of the gods in dealing in the affairs of men.
According to ancient commentators, Pythagoras set up a secret society with extremely rigorous standards for membership and far-reaching goals. Supposedly, the group was established as a political order, thus testifying to the fact that Pythagoras must have been a political leader of some kind (p. 43, Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece). The Pythagorean order spread to other cities in southern Italy and lasted for a couple of generations. There are two views regarding the order, one posits that it was a true aristocracy- rule by the best citizens; the other view holds that it was a tyranny.
To support the former view there is evidence that indicates that around Pythagoras’ death in Metapontum, Croton reached a zenith under Pythagorean rule that lasted until about 450 B.C.E.. Evidence for the latter view rests on the fact that at least two rebellions were carried out against the order. The first rebellion forced Pythagoras to flee Croton to Metapontum and the other resulted in the incineration of the Pythagorean headquarters in Croton, killing all but a few of the members who had to flee for their lives.
The order was spiritual and philosophical as well as political, with moral precepts, sacred rituals and doctrine explaining the nature of life and the universe (p. 44, Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece). The order was open to both men and women, yet anyone wishing to become a member had to undergo an initiation that lasted for up to five years. According to Hermann, in his book To Think Like God, “the mission of the group seems to have been the infiltration and takeover of the government. Of course, the ultimate goal of Pythagoreanism may in fact have been entirely religious- yet in its organized form it cunningly used political means to achieve its ends” (p. 50).
What may have started out as a nucleus of resistance against a prevailing system, soon became mainstream probably because of the standing they achieved through intrigue. However, they remained exclusive and did not open their doors to those they considered unworthy of their teachings. They became so self-absorbed that they did not realize how left out other people felt. What resulted was that the populace rose up against what they considered to be a burgeoning dictatorship (p. 51). The political outlook of the Pythagoreans was strongly anti-democratic, which could rightfully be categorized as a totalitarianism by an anointed elite or more aptly, an aristocracy or “government by the best.”
According to Iamblichus’ On the Pythagorean Life, each candidate had to undergo a series of tests, meted out over several stages. The listing of requirements began with a quasi-religious exposition of Pythagoras’ supernatural ability to heal ignorance through purification, in order to “restore sight to the soul, so that it may redirect toward the object of thought its divine eye” (p. 52, To Think Like God). Iamblichus further states that since Pythagoras had devised an education of his own to impart upon his followers, “he did not accept young men immediately until he had put them through an examination and made a judgment” (p. 53).
The examination consisted of a background check of the petitioner in which inquiries were conducted into both his personal life and the state of relationships with his family, friends and so on. Then the person’s behavior was scrutinized. If this step was completed successfully, then a physical inspection of the applicant’s body followed that included an evaluation of the shape and gait of the body, in order to assess the condition or habits of his soul. If the candidate passed these preliminaries, he was sent away for three years and completely ignored, in order to determine his resolve and desire to learn. Unbeknownst to the aspirant, he remained under careful scrutiny at all times so as to determine if he craved status or recognition, instead of displaying scorn for such impulses (p. 53, To Think Like God).
If a petitioner survived this phase, a five year period of absolute silence awaited those still determined to join. The objective was to test the person’s self-control, more precisely their ability to keep their mouth shut. Any member breaking the oath of never revealing Pythagoras’ teachings to outsiders was treated as dead and a gravestone was then erected with their name. The same ritual was performed for those who were not accepted into the order, and no exception was made to the rule that whoever was dismissed was irrevocably dead, since no second chances were given.
A candidate who entered into this final stage, had to give over their possessions- money, properties and income- to the order, where it was held by trustees called “politicians,” “economists,” and “legislators” (p. 54). These officers managed the financial affairs of the group and made the necessary decisions, paid the bills, settled debts, and so forth. If the candidate was finally found worthy to join, he was raised to the rank of esoteric and allowed to the inner circle. This meant that from this time forward they were authorized to see the face of Pythagoras, who before then had only lectured from behind a curtain. To be admitted meant to go “inside the veil,” and constituted the highest honor bestowed upon the initiate. Those who did not receive approval were returned their possessions and were also paid double the amount by the order before being dismissed by the order (p. 54).
Pythagoras fostered a deep mistrust of the general public and for this reason the order was defined as anti-majority. Public opinion was spurned for this reason, namely that it represented the belief of the many. And yet, according to the Pythagoreans, only a few are capable of having the right beliefs and opinions. Pythagoreans were also advised to avoid intercourse with the mass public and shun public discussion. Oddly enough, these ideas stemmed from their belief in their doctrines which advocated harmony, number theory and numerology. For it is evident, that in order for such an orderliness to exist, things must keep their distance from each other.
Pythagoreans were also enamored of precedence and conformity, which explains their relationship to existing laws even if they were outdated and served no purpose. “To help the law, fight lawlessness,” was a famous maxim attributed to Pythagoras, which his followers had to repeat shortly after the ceremonial evening meal. Every morning when they got up, they had to disclose to one another a detailed account of the activities and events of the previous day. Presumably, this was done to keep tabs on each other and to furnish the leadership with a continuous stream of information on the state of mind of every member (Diodorus Siculus, p. 59, trans., To Think Like God).
There were two revolts against the group which arose as a consequence of the growing resentment against the order after the Greek city of Sybaris was mercilessly destroyed, on the orders of Pythagoreans in power, and quite possibly Pythagoras himself. The first revolt was brought about by a speech given by Ninon, a representative of the democratic faction, who heated up the mob with charges against the elitist persuasions of the Pythagoreans. The people turned into a revengeful mob and destroyed Pythagorean meeting places, killing many members of the order. Those who survived fled in order to escape being killed. Only after years had passed did they return to Croton when the populace had a change of heart towards the order. Upon returning, the Pythagoreans sought to reclaim their former status. They did so and also took full control of the government, making Croton the most powerful city in Southern Italy. But history repeated itself and this time, roughly around 450 B.C.E., the Pythagorean “synedria,” or clubhouses were burned, with many more inside (p. 74).
After the second revolt, there was an overall division among the membership that resulted from those considered “inside” or “outside the veil.” Those who attended lectures but were not allowed to see Pythagoras were referred to as Akousmatikoi, or Listeners. Those others who actually studied with the master were called Mathematikoi, or Learners, the so-called genuine followers. This group inspired Plato and their ideas are preserved in Aristotle’s writings. The first recognized the latter as legitimate Pythagoreans, but the latter did not recognize the former as such. It is stipulated that the reason for this is that the Akousmatikoi began to make Pythagoras’ ideas public, therby transgressing the oath of secrecy. The political power of both eventually waned and died out around the time of Alexander, around 356 to 323 B.C.E. (p. 46, Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece).
Bibliography
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