andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Mon Aug 21, 2017 1:38 am
neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2017 4:00 pm
As for Pythagoras, we do have serious evidence for his existence.
Technically I agree. There is IMO no real doubt about the existence of a religious guru called Pythagoras in the 6th century BCE who founded a political association in Greek speaking Italy and Sicily. However we have very little solid evidence as to what Pythagoras taught or what his original followers believed. Almost all of our evidence goes back to writers influenced by Platonists and or Aristotelians who had their own agenda. Whether a Pythagoras even vaguely like the later picture ever existed is not at all clear.
Andrew Criddle
The evidence I was thinking of that comes closest to a verification of the historicity of Pythagoras are references to two contemporaries of Pythagoras.
The discussion is about valid historical method. Ancient historians and classicists can't (though some do) lower their standards because they don't have as much evidence as modern historians to work with. They tailor their questions and research according to what the extant evidence will allow.
We have a smattering of references to Pythagoras in the centuries after he lived but they in principle can confirm nothing about the historicity of Pythagoras. Hence we sometimes read about question marks hanging over the notion of his existence.
But we do have those reported contemporaries of Pythagoras. WIth thanks to Riedweg, Christoph. 2005.
Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching, and Influence. . . . .
1. Xenophanes of Colophon c. 570 – c. 475 BC)
That he [Pythagoras] was sometimes this person, sometimes that, Xenophanes confirms in the elegy that begins:
Now I turn to another tale and I shall show the way.
But what he says about him [Pythagoras] goes like this:
And once, when he passed by as a puppy was being beaten, they say, he pitied it and said these words:
“Stop, don’t beat it, for truly it is the soul of a friend:
I recognized it when I heard it utter sounds.”
(Diog. Laert 8,36, within it Xenophanes 21 B 7 D.-K.) -- 3rdC CE
2. Heraclitus of Ephesus (fl ca 503--500) (ca 535-475)
Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, practiced inquiry (historíe) most
of all men; he made a selection of these writings and created his own
“wisdom” (sophíe)—much learning, artful knavery. (Heraclit. 22 B
129 D.-K.).
Here Pythagoras is son of Mnesarchus speaking of Pythagoras for the first time. The context is of dismantling authorities of Homer, Hesiod, and others. Pythagoras is an example of how even “the most respected person knows and harbors only opinions”
Thus Pythagoras studied writings and made a selection he called his own wisdom (and “artful knavery”)
“these writings” H previously mentioned Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus, Xenophanes, Hecataeus -- also accused of much learning with little insight.
Much learning does not teach understanding, otherwise it would
have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and also Xenophanes and
Hecataeus. (Heraclit. 22 B 40 D.-K.).
They are by no mean decisive references proving beyond doubt the historicity of Pythagoras. They still leave room for doubts.
But imagine how significant reports independent of Christianity about what two of Jesus' contemporaries said about him would be if we had them!
If only we had evidence for Jesus comparable to what we have for Pythagoras, or Apollonius of Tyana, or Demonax, . . . there would still be room for doubt, but the case of historicists would have a lot more historical methodological validity to it than it does currently.