Pythagorean Mythicism (i.e., did Pythagoras exist?)

[ficino]

Carl Huffman and Leonid Zhmud, for example, two of the major Pythagorean people writing now, accept that Pythagoras existed, though we know almost nothing about him. I'm always ready to learn. If you know of mainstream scholars who deny that Pythagoras existed, please enumerate them. It doesn't advance any question simply to throw "Are you kidding?" out there.

I just did a search on JSTOR for "Pythagoras never existed" OR "Pythagoras did not exist." Zero hits. Obviously, there are other search terms one could enter. A typical mainstream view is that which appears in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which begins by giving the approximate dates of the "historical Pythagoras":

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/


I am eager to hear of mainstream scholars who deny his existence. I mean people who publish in refereed venues.

Thanks, ficino.

[theomise]

Carl Huffman and Leonid Zhmud, for example, two of the major Pythagorean people writing now, accept that Pythagoras existed, though we know almost nothing about him. I'm always ready to learn. If you know of mainstream scholars who deny that Pythagoras existed, please enumerate them. It doesn't advance any question simply to throw "Are you kidding?" out there.

I just did a search on JSTOR for "Pythagoras never existed" OR "Pythagoras did not exist." Zero hits. Obviously, there are other search terms one could enter. A typical mainstream view is that which appears in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which begins by giving the approximate dates of the "historical Pythagoras":

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/


I am eager to hear of mainstream scholars who deny his existence. I mean people who publish in refereed venues.

Thanks, ficino.

Hi ficino,

Apologies. I wasn't sure whether you were joking when you suggested that your observation that "no mainstream scholar I've heard of thinks that Pythagoras did not exist" should count as evidence of historicity.

Let's regroup for a moment.

The SEP article is a great overview, but let's be honest: I don't think its author was attempting at any point to establish the existence of Pythagoras as an historical personage.

If it's not obvious already, I regard proof by "hey, no mainstream scholars have objected yet, right?" as less than conclusive.

Regardless, it is certainly the case that skepticism regarding the existence of "Pythagoras" (given that such skepticism has been explicitly expressed by true historical figures like Aristotle ...) is well-warranted.

In any case: all crass appeals to authority should obviously be discarded post-haste.

Cheers,
Theo

[ficino]

OK, but I did not say that the views of mainstream scholars, that there existed a historical Pythagoras, count as evidence for P's existence. Nowhere did I propose an argument to authority, and I wouldn't trot out views of modern scholars as evidence of an ancient person's existence. I was implicitly raising doubt, though, against a claim that P. did not exist.

I'd like to know what mainstream scholars deny the existence of Pythagoras, so that I can read their works and become better informed about that branch of the study of ancient philosophy (and/or religion). If no mainstream scholar denies P's existence, then that silence is worth knowing about.

Thanks.

[Blood]

It's basically the same problem we have with many figures of the ancient world.

Did a historical person become mythologized, or did a mythical person become historicized?

We will never know, but I'm skeptical that the default position should always be the former. Such a position greatly devalues the human imagination.

It doesn't matter if "Pythagoras" was real or not, any more that it matters if "Anacharsis" was real. The discussion should always pivot on ideas attributed to Pythagoras, not "the historical Pythagoras."

[ficino]

When I was in grad school, my thesis advisor recommended Erich Frank's very skeptical book on Pythagoreanism, Plato und die sogennanten Pythagoreer. Frank held that all the discoveries attributed to Pythagoras in later tradition were really achievements of Southern Italian Greek mathematicians of Plato's time, who had no connection to religious sectarians. It's really not a huge leap forward to the views that you referenced in your earlier post, Blood. Basically the problem is the infection of sources by Platonism. So, the mathematical teachings of Pythagoras may just be unrecoverable behind Plato.

Still, it's hard for me to think whom Xenophanes means by "he" if not Pythagoras in the fragment where X. writes, "and they say that when he (μιν) was walking by at some point, and a dog was being beaten, he pitied it and said this: 'stop, don't beat it, since when I hear it I recognize the soul of a friend crying out.'" The point is not, is this story fact, but that Xenophanes' dates are something like 570-478 BCE. Heraclitus also attacks Pythagoras as a sort of intellectual jack of all trades. So some references to Pythagoras' existence are pre-Plato and bear a certain probability that I can't quantify.

[andrewcriddle]

When I was in grad school, my thesis advisor recommended Erich Frank's very skeptical book on Pythagoreanism, Plato und die sogennanten Pythagoreer. Frank held that all the discoveries attributed to Pythagoras in later tradition were really achievements of Southern Italian Greek mathematicians of Plato's time, who had no connection to religious sectarians. It's really not a huge leap forward to the views that you referenced in your earlier post, Blood. Basically the problem is the infection of sources by Platonism. So, the mathematical teachings of Pythagoras may just be unrecoverable behind Plato.

Still, it's hard for me to think whom Xenophanes means by "he" if not Pythagoras in the fragment where X. writes, "and they say that when he (μιν) was walking by at some point, and a dog was being beaten, he pitied it and said this: 'stop, don't beat it, since when I hear it I recognize the soul of a friend crying out.'" The point is not, is this story fact, but that Xenophanes' dates are something like 570-478 BCE. Heraclitus also attacks Pythagoras as a sort of intellectual jack of all trades. So some references to Pythagoras' existence are pre-Plato and bear a certain probability that I can't quantify.

Although there almost certainly was a historical Pythagoras, the issue is not IMO that his mathematical teachings are unrecoverable. The issue is that the historical Pythagoras may not have been concerned with mathematical (or numerological) issues at all.

Andrew Criddle

[billd89]

That quotation above surely means Pythagoras believed in metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls to animals. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Jewish esoterica follows this doctrine. I'm curious where that doctrine originates; is it Phoenician?

Given his family's origins, from Semitic Tyre, Pythagoras represented a strange, novel, foreign, oriental and Phoenician tradition migrating into Hellenistic culture. See Clement of Alexandria {c.200 AD}, Stromateis I.62 [Müller, FHG II, 272, fr. 1 (Aristoxenus); FHG I, 287, fr. 67 (Theopompus); FGH III 5 fr. 17 (Neanthes)]

According to Hippobotus {c.160 BC}, Pythagoras son of Mnesarchus was Samian {i.e. from Samos}. But according to Aristoxenus (in his Life of Pythagoras) {c.335 BC}, along with Aristarchus {c.250 BC?} (or Aristotle {c.350 BC}) and Theopompus {c.325 BC}, he was Etruscan. According to Neanthes {c.250 BC}, however, he was Syrian or Tyrian. Thus by most accounts, Pythagoras was of barbarian descent {c.570 BC}.

Clement's text is unambiguous — these competing claims are about the ethnicity of Pythagoras. However, both father and son had competing/confused origin stories. See Porphyry {c.290 AD} in Vita Pythagorae 1: "It is agreed by most that he was born the son of Mnesarchus; but concerning Mnesarchus's origin/descent there is disagreement."

It is curious some myths record Pythagoras as descendant from Apollo and Ancaeus (Adon), linking the philosopher to the reincarnationist mythology of Byblos and also (Semitic) Egypt. Diogenes Laertios 8,4 and Porphyrius, Vita Pythagorae 45 probably refer to research by Heraclides Ponticus (c. 340 BC), see Stephan Scharinger, "A Genealogy of Pythagoras" in Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica 25(2) [2019], p.296:

Regarding this oriental family background, we may again mention the closeness of Pythagoras’s family tree to the Levantine coast: When some authors speak of Pythagoras’s actual Near Eastern lineage, they could also refer to his mythical family background from Sidon or Tyre.

Stories regarding his father's (Phoenician) profession as gem-carver or gem merchant support a Levantine background, too. Maritime Greeks operated gem-carving workshops at Naukratis

In this early Hellenistic syncretism, Pythagoras as a Semitic teacher {c.530 BC} among the Greeks makes sense. Frank (1922) argues that Pythagoras was essentially 'Orphic', foreign by belief. That assumes Pythagoras came from a Kore-Hades cult and Dionysian religion {c.650-550 BC}, translating obscure Phoenician practices for Hellenes accordingly. Numerous references to "Jews" as 'worshippers of Dionysios' indirectly supports this genealogy of Pythagoras as a (Proto Judeo-?) "Phoenician" who established his school in Orphic-friendly Southern Italy, a settled place of maritime Proto-Jews, c.520 BC.

In Origen {c.248 AD}, the Greek Ἰουδαίων doesn't necessarily require a geographic origin from Judea specifically. Instead, Origen conflates the Phoenicio- and Chaldeo-Egyptian background {c.650-600 BC} of Pythagoras' teachings as 'Jewish,' as Josephus does. See Origen, Contra Celsum 1.15:

It is also reported that in the first chapter of On Lawgivers, Hermippos records {c.225 BC} that Pythagoras transmitted his philosophy from Jews {i.e. Jewish sources, c.650-600 BC} to the Greeks.

Though he could not call him "Jewish" exactly, Josephus (90 AD) believed Pythagoras had been taught by (Proto-) Jews. In Contra Apionem 1.14: Pythagoras is identified as "a disciple of Egyptians and Chaldeans." Conflation of these two ethnicities as "Jews" (later) makes sense, if Pythagoras had actually studied under Egyptian Semites c.535 BC.

Moreover, those who first philosophized among the Greeks on celestial and divine matters — namely Pherecydes of Syros {545 BC}, Pythagoras {c.530 BC}, and Thales {c.585 BC} — everyone agrees were disciples of the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and they recorded very little; and the Greeks consider theses writings the most ancient of all, though they scarcely believe them as attributed to such men.

Flavius Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.22 conflates "Jews" (i.e. Judeo-Egyptians) with "Thracians" (i.e. Orphics):

161. Pythagoras of Samos, ancient as he was and regarded as surpassing all philosophers in wisdom and reverence for the Divine, evidently not only knew of our traditions but also had long been an ardent emulator of them. Although no work is acknowledged to be his own, many have recorded accounts about him; the most distinguished of these is Hermippos, one meticulous in all matters of history. So Hermippos writes, in the first of his chapters On Pythagoras, that when one of his companions — a 'Kalliphon' by name, Crotonite by descent — had died, Pythagoras claimed his associate's soul remained present with him both night and day; and that Pythagoras warned others never to transit any place where a donkey had balked, to abstain from all thirst-producing fluids {e.g. alcohol}, and to refrain from all blasphemy. He then adds: 'These things he both practiced and taught, imitating and appropriating doctrines of the Jews and the Thracians {c.650-550 BC}. For it is truly stated this person incorporated many of the Jews' customs into his own philosophy.'

For Cornford (1922) "both the axiom of Monism and the axiom of Dualism are implicit in the doctrine of transmigration, which was certainly taught by Pythagoras"* : the Unity and the Dyad are combined. The Pythagorean philosophy evolved over time. The four-fold deity (posited by Philo Judaeus, DVC 2.) of the 1st C. 'Therapeutae' of Plinthine constitutes a theologically advanced system unrecognizably "Jewish" (Judaean) yet obviously Semitic (Phoenicio-Egyptian) with both Pythagorean and Platonic characteristics.

* F.M. Cornford (1922), "Mysticism and Science in the Pythagorean Tradition" in The Classical Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 3/4 (Jul. - Oct., 1922), p.103





Phillip Sidney Horky's "Approaches to the Pythagorean Acusmata in the Early Academy" in Plato's Academy: Its Workings and its History, Paul Kalligas Editor [2020], p.167:

Since Walter Burkert’s monumental Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (1972, originally published in German in 1963), it has been a commonplace for scholars to assume that the Early Academy subsumed and transformed Pythagoreanism in a bid to construct its own philosophical identity.1

1. Burkert arrived at this conclusion by way of a careful analysis of the accounts that associated Pythagorean and Platonic first principles, especially those found in Theophrastus’ Metaphysics, as well as those that appear to have been derived, at least in some form, from Theophrastus’ lost doxographical writings (Burkert 1972: 63–82). Erich Frank had made this conjecture forty years before (cf. Burkert 1972: p.63, n.61, citing Frank 1923: p.260).

The only transmitter of that conception of the Dyad and the One as Pythagorean doctrine would be Plato’s students and members of the Old Academy, according to Frank (1923) and confirmed in the 1953 discovery of Plato Latinus III 38. The reference is to Walter Burkert's Lore And Science In Ancient Pythagoreanism [1973], p.63 Note 61.

Since Theophrastus was surely only a transmitter of this conception of Pythagorean doctrine, he must be dependent on predecessors who went still further than Aristotle60 in connecting Plato with Pythagoreanism — to the point of identification. The only candidates would be Plato’s immediate pupils, the members of the Old Academy. As a conjecture, this suggestion was made many years ago;61 the proof came to light with a fragment of Speusippus which was first published in 1953.

61. Cf. 1. Frank 260.1, though he overlooks the difference from Aristotle.

Erich Frank. Plato und die sogennanten Pythagoreer: ein Kapitel aus der Geschichte des griechischen Geistes [1923], p.260:

In all of Aristotle's statements about the Pythagoreans, there is actually nothing that must have been drawn from sources other than Pythagoreanizing works of Platonists of his day. No phrasing suggests that he knew any other sources at all, even if some elements may have been drawn from Archytas - or even that such sources existed at all in Aristotle's time.

Most importantly: Aristotle's writings show that in his mind, Pythagoreans are not sharply distinguished from Platonists, but rather the boundaries between both become blurred. In the last two books of Metaphysics, where he deals with this Platonic-Pythagorean number theory, it is often difficult to say whether he actually means Pythagoreans or Platonists. This also suggests Aristotle got his knowledge of Pythagoreans primarily from the writings of Platonists. In any case, one should not use Aristotle's testimonies as an unimpeachable, strictly historical source for the philosophy of the Pythagorean school, as has been done until now.

Rather, they should be viewed as a source for the Platonists' philosophy, or more specifically, for their interpretation and presentation of the Pythagoreans. Another question, of course, is how faithfully these Platonists reproduce teachings of the Pythagoreans. We do not want to discuss this question in detail here; it cannot be definitively resolved anyway, since we possess no other more direct testimonies for these teachings and thus lack any objective criterion by which we could test their presentation. However, after everything we have explained here, the greatest doubt towards them is warranted, and it is unlikely that much of the Pythagoreans' (i.e., the 'Italians,') genuine doctrine remained intact in Platonists' work.

Frank (1923) elaborates the idea that Pythagoras definitely outlined a moral psychology for his students, and it's origin was 'Orphic'; see p.69:

In fact, it is likely that this early Pythagoras {c.525 BC} had, generally speaking, scant impact on scientific mathematics or rigorous science. Certainly, one may call Pythagoras a philosopher but only in the sense of a moral-religious awakener of his day. This is how Plato {c.425 BC} still knew him, celebrating him as the religious prophet who "became a guide to moral education for his disciples." For Plato, Pythagoras was merely the founder of that moral-religious sect of 'Pythagoreans' which had long been indigenous to southern Italy. And for Democritus {c.440 BC}, Pythagoras could have been nothing else, given his own main ethical work was titled Pythagoras {c.415 BC}.

As appropriately as this prophetic Pythagoras fits into the mystical air of the early 6th C. BC {c.575 BC}, an era of intense religious upheaval - the time of Orphics, of Pherecydes {c.575 BC}, Epimenides {c.625 BC?} and others - it is equally unthinkable that in this still entirely archaic atmosphere there could have existed rigorous science and exact mathematics with all the sovereign freedom of spirit these presuppose. And indeed, among older philosophers and writers who mention Pythagoras — Xenophanes {c.500 BC}, Heraclitus {c.500 BC}, Empedocles {c.450 BC}, and Herodotus {c.425 BC} — we find nowhere any indication of strictly scientific mathematics or even of activity which could be called 'philosophical' in the narrowest sense.

In these earlier testimonies, the name of Pythagoras is always and only associated with the idea of metempsychosis, plus other Orphic-type religious views and practices. This earlier period prior to Democritus {i.e. before 425 BC} understood 'Pythagoreans' as members of a religious community similar to the Orphics, and based on the available material, it would hardly be possible to distinguish these Pythagoreans from Orphics by any definitive characteristic. The doctrine of metempsychosis, which characterizes the Pythagoreans in particular, was not foreign to Orphics either, and even their ritual prescriptions and practices, right down to the very details, agree with what is reported of Orphics. Titles mentioned as fundamental books of Pythagoreans, such as The Sacred Word, The Descent to Hades, The World-Garment and the like appear again as titles of Orphic sacred writings {i.e. c.500 BC}.

Plato {c.375 BC} describes 'Philolaus' (that later much-cited Pythagorean from Socrates' time {c.450 BC}) only as an itinerant Orphic prophet, for in those days they traveled from locale to locale and proclaiming what (as it says in Phaedo {c.360 BC}) "was laid down in the Mysteries as sacred word." What Plato hints at of Philolaus' teachings is thoroughly Orphic, without the slightest trace of engagement to Mathematics, Science, or that abstract philosophical speculation which characterizes a book later ascribed to Philolaus (first by Speusippus, Plato's student {c.345 BC}). Plato says nothing at all about any book by Philolaus; as he explicitly emphasizes here, he only knows of his teachings 'from oral tradition' and as mentioned before, what he tells us about these is purely religious-moral in nature.

The "Pythagorean true life" or core of Pythagorean wisdom is the conscious shaping of life according to the highest purpose revealed in Orphic mysteries. Pythagoras' genuine and ancient teaching is limited to making body and soul able and pure for this purpose by ritual dietary prescriptions and washings. It was only after the democratic revolution around the middle of the 5th C. BC — when the Pythagoreans' theocratic aristocracy which had ruled in southern Italy was overthrown, and when, as the historians tell us, "the Pythagoreans' synhedria {meeting-places} were set afire by mobs in Magna Graecia" — that we begin to hear of scientific Mathematics and Philosophy among the Pythagoreans of southern Italy. Aristotle dates the Italians' Mathematical School only to the era of Leucippus and Democritus ("and before these") {c.450 BC}. This so-called 'Pythagorean' School of Mathematici did not survive Aristotle's century {after 300 BC}, while the ancient religious community of Pythagoreans, which had existed long before this (i.e. as far back as {c.500 BC}) and which played a significant role, remained active much longer, well into the Roman Imperial period {c.50 AD?}.

Why one must be careful not to confuse these Pythagorean Mathematici with genuine and ancient Pythagoreans is shown by the fact that Aristotle typically speaks of them only as "so-called Pythagoreans." Thus, they were not real Pythagoreans at all. A tradition preserved by a later author {Iamblichus, c.300 AD} also reveals that preservers of Pythagoras' genuine tradition, — the Acousmatici, as they called themselves — denied these Mathematici the right to call themselves Pythagoreans at all, since their tendency as innovators and heretics did not go back to Pythagoras himself (who had nothing to do with all that recent enlightenment) but rather to a certain old Pythagorean 'Mathematician.' That was "Hippasus" {c.475 BC}: if an historical figure at all, he could only have belonged to the generation before Archytas {c.375 BC}, based on Mathematical discoveries attributed to him. In Hippasus we would thus find the founder {c.475-450 BC} of the later Mathematical School of "so-called Pythagoreans" in southern Italy {c.450 BC}.

According to this tradition, these Mathematici sought to prove the doubted authenticity of their Pythagoreanism against the Acousmatici's attacks by attributing their engagement with Mathematics and speculative Natural Philosophy to Pythagoras himself, and presenting this then-still-new science and their own new discoveries as ancient and genuine teachings of Pythagoras himself. If Pythagorean tradition knew nothing of this, it was because Pythagoras had communicated this 'Mathematics' only to the esoteric circle of his closest and worthiest disciples, with strict instructions to keep it secret from others. Thus since Pythagoras' time {c.500 BC} there had always been Mathematici among Pythagoreans, but outside that narrow circle nothing was known of them.

Therefore Mathematici and the Philosophy they represented were not a recent enlightened heresy (as accused) but rather the true and genuine teaching of Pythagoras, a strict secret long transmitted only among a small group from generation to generation, until it was divulged to the public in the 5th C. BC by indiscretion of an unworthy person - again, according to some, this very "Hippasus." Only since that time were there "genuine," i.e., Mathematici-Pythagorean writings. On the other hand, the ancient Orphic-religious books (such as The Sacred Word) attributed to Pythagoras or his closest disciples — which showed no knowledge of scientific Mathematics and were hardly compatible with it — were claimed by Mathematici to contain merely the exoteric teaching, suitable for the uneducated masses who could not grasp Mathematics. Alternatively, these texts were dismissed as forgeries, falsely attributed to ancient Pythagoreans "to slander them" : an intrigue in which, naturally, the name of the inevitable Hippasus appears once again.

Despite all attacks, Mathematici would be in control of the true tradition. It was not they who had retrospectively interpreted Mathematics and new philosophical enlightenment as a foreign element, but rather the opposite: whatever Mathematics, mathematical Natural Science, and Philosophy had existed among the Greeks at all, that ultimately came from Pythagoras himself, and later Mathematici had only acquired their information by breach of the Pythagorean secret, even if to boast they often presented Pythagoras' discoveries as their own. Thus Oenopides {c.425 BC}, Mathematician from Anaxagoras' era {c.430 BC}, is reduced to a mere plagiarist of Pythagoras, and even Democritus {c.375 BC} must be made into a student of Pythagorean Mathematici by proponents of this view.

Support is found in Leonid Zhmud, Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans [1994/2012], p.45:

Pythagoras is unlikely to have won the esteem of the Abderites by virtue of his philosophical teachings. These coins {dated 430-420 BC} can be seen rather as a reflection of his many-sided fame as one of the wisest of the Greeks. Seltman supposed the Pythagoras' portrait to be connected with Democritus, whose name is found on Abderan coins (as magistrate) at that time;73 to prove this, however, is hardly possible.74 Unlike the coins, Democritus ' own links with Pythagorean philosophy and science are undoubted. Apart from his book Pythagoras (A 33,1), the first of a long series of works on the great Samian, Democritus' contemporary Glaucus of Rhegium confirms that he studied with the Pythagoreans. Democritus was born about 460 and so was almost the coeval of Philolaus.75 If, however, Pythagoreanism before Philolaus was no more than religio-mythological doctrine and arithmological speculation, what could a person like Democritus learn from the Pythagoreans and what was it that evoked his admiration in his book on Pythagoras?76

Solomon Luria {1891-1964}, who followed Frank in rejecting early Pythagorean philosophy and science, suggested {in 1970}, based on the placing of Democritus' Πυθαγόρας among his ethical works (next to On the Disposition of the Wise Man, D.L. 9.46), that he had in his youth learnt ethics from the Pythagoreans and the book itself contained 'moral precepts'. Even if we agree that the placing of the book in later catalogues is a reliable indication of its content, the influence of the Pythagoreans on Democritus was not limited to ethics.78 Aristotle more than once referred to their proximity in natural philosophy.79 Democritus' contacts with the Pythagoreans are evident in the scientific area too. 'If we ask from whom he obtained the mathematical knowledge which distinguished him from his contemporaries, the most satisfactory {p.46} answer is that he studied with a Pythagorean' noted Zeller.80 Democritus wrote a book On Irrational Lines and Solids (A 33), and before him no one except for the Pythagoreans was concerned with the problem of irrationality in mathematics. Bearing in mind, on the one hand, Democritus' links with Pythagorean philosophy and science and, on the other, the polemical context of most of the evidence about Pythagoras examined above, I would suggest that Democritus in his book sided with Pythagoras by giving his own understanding of his wisdom.

Another aspect of the multifaceted σοφία of Pythagoras is revealed by the tradition of his speeches, first referred to by the Socratic Antisthenes (c.450-370 BC). ...

At Johns Hopkins, Ludwig Edelstein's research on Posidonius (and physicians) intersected neatly with his colleague Owsei Temkin research on Galen (a therapeut of Asclepius) and the Alexandrians in 1938; see Teun Tieleman's "Presocratics and Presocratic Philosophy in Galen" in Received Opinions: Doxography in Antiquity and the Islamic World [2000], p.143:

Galen {c.160 AD} honors Pythagoras by linking him to Plato and Socrates. Here Pythagoras emerges as the quintessential sage. First, Pythagoras and Plato75 feature as prime examples of those ancients who are on record as having improved their moral condition through their diet and life-style, i.e. they did not limit themselves to theorizing about the influence of the body on the mind (qam 1.7.11–14 Bazou = iv, 767 Kühn). Near the end of the treatise Pythagoras is linked to Socrates as an ideal educator and moral beacon (qam 11.80.10–11 Bazou = iv, 816 Kühn). Both Pythagoras76 and Socrates are known for not having committed their philosophy to writing. They seem to represent a philosophy actually crowned by a life conforming to it.

Yet Galen does not pay tribute to Pythagoras as a man of practical wisdom only. He also credits him with the doctrine that the soul has both a rational and a non-rational part or power. According to Galen, emotion and weakness of will occur "… because of the causes stated by the ancients. This was not the view of Aristotle and Plato only; it was held even earlier by certain others, among them Pythagoras, who as Posidonius {c.40 AD} too says, was the first to hold this doctrine, while Plato worked it out and made it more complete."77 php 4.7.38–39, 290.1–5 de Lacy = v, 425 Kühn = Posid. T 95 Edelstein-Kidd

Celsus and Origen of Alexandria, Against Celsus 1.1-4; 1.12; 1.14-24; 1.58-60; 3.5-8: