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The Secret History of Pythagoras
Thank you for checking out this book by Theophania Publishing. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you soon. We have thousands of titles available, and we invite you to search for us by name, contact us via our website, or download our most recent catalogues. THE Translation of this venerable Piece of Antiquity is undertook upon a double Score; being designed as well to entertain the Curiosity of the Learned, as to supply the Defects of the Ignorant. If the original Language would have been more acceptable to the one, it would have been less intelligible to the other. I cannot, without uttering a Falsity, venture to affirm that so singular and valuable a Piece will be made Public, at least as And in the mean Time I shall flatter myself, that this little Essay may contribute in some sort or other to the diversion, if not Instruction, of People in every Condition of Life. If this is well received, the other Parts will make their Appearance at proper Distances of Time. I publish no more at present, because I would not be thought to impose too much upon any one's Patience; as for losing my own Labour, I am under no bad Apprehensions about that; for the Reader cannot reject with a greater Disdain, than I have translated with Pleasure, the Contents of this Book.
32 pages, Paperback
First published June 7, 2011
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Pythagoras
51Ìýbooks329ÌýfollowersPythagoras, one of the most famous and controversial ancient Greek philosophers, lived from ca. 570 to ca. 490 BCE. He spent his early years on the island of Samos, off the coast of modern Turkey. At the age of forty, however, he emigrated to the city of Croton in southern Italy and most of his philosophical activity occurred there. Pythagoras wrote nothing, nor were there any detailed accounts of his thought written by contemporaries. By the first centuries BCE, moreover, it became fashionable to present Pythagoras in a largely unhistorical fashion as a semi-divine figure, who originated all that was true in the Greek philosophical tradition, including many of Plato's and Aristotle's mature ideas. A number of treatises were forged in the name of Pythagoras and other Pythagoreans in order to support this view.
The Pythagorean question, then, is how to get behind this false glorification of Pythagoras in order to determine what the historical Pythagoras actually thought and did. In order to obtain an accurate appreciation of Pythagoras' achievement, it is important to rely on the earliest evidence before the distortions of the later tradition arose. The popular modern image of Pythagoras is that of a master mathematician and scientist. The early evidence shows, however, that, while Pythagoras was famous in his own day and even 150 years later in the time of Plato and Aristotle, it was not mathematics or science upon which his fame rested. Pythagoras was famous (1) as an expert on the fate of the soul after death, who thought that the soul was immortal and went through a series of reincarnations; (2) as an expert on religious ritual; (3) as a wonder-worker who had a thigh of gold and who could be two places at the same time; (4) as the founder of a strict way of life that emphasized dietary restrictions, religious ritual and rigorous self discipline.
It remains controversial whether he also engaged in the rational cosmology that is typical of the Presocratic philosopher/scientists and whether he was in any sense a mathematician. The early evidence suggests, however, that Pythagoras presented a cosmos that was structured according to moral principles and significant numerical relationships and may have been akin to conceptions of the cosmos found in Platonic myths, such as those at the end of the Phaedo and Republic. In such a cosmos, the planets were seen as instruments of divine vengeance (“the hounds of Persephone�), the sun and moon are the isles of the blessed where we may go, if we live a good life, while thunder functioned to frighten the souls being punished in Tartarus. The heavenly bodies also appear to have moved in accordance with the mathematical ratios that govern the concordant musical intervals in order to produce a music of the heavens, which in the later tradition developed into “the harmony of the spheres.� It is doubtful that Pythagoras himself thought in terms of spheres, and the mathematics of the movements of the heavens was not worked out in detail. There is evidence that he valued relationships between numbers such as those embodied in the so-called Pythagorean theorem, though it is not likely that he proved the theorem.
Pythagoras' cosmos was developed in a more scientific and mathematical direction by his successors in the Pythagorean tradition, Philolaus and Archytas. Pythagoras succeeded in promulgating a new more optimistic view of the fate of the soul after death and in founding a way of life that was attractive for its rigor and discipline and that drew to him numerous devoted followers.
The Pythagorean question, then, is how to get behind this false glorification of Pythagoras in order to determine what the historical Pythagoras actually thought and did. In order to obtain an accurate appreciation of Pythagoras' achievement, it is important to rely on the earliest evidence before the distortions of the later tradition arose. The popular modern image of Pythagoras is that of a master mathematician and scientist. The early evidence shows, however, that, while Pythagoras was famous in his own day and even 150 years later in the time of Plato and Aristotle, it was not mathematics or science upon which his fame rested. Pythagoras was famous (1) as an expert on the fate of the soul after death, who thought that the soul was immortal and went through a series of reincarnations; (2) as an expert on religious ritual; (3) as a wonder-worker who had a thigh of gold and who could be two places at the same time; (4) as the founder of a strict way of life that emphasized dietary restrictions, religious ritual and rigorous self discipline.
It remains controversial whether he also engaged in the rational cosmology that is typical of the Presocratic philosopher/scientists and whether he was in any sense a mathematician. The early evidence suggests, however, that Pythagoras presented a cosmos that was structured according to moral principles and significant numerical relationships and may have been akin to conceptions of the cosmos found in Platonic myths, such as those at the end of the Phaedo and Republic. In such a cosmos, the planets were seen as instruments of divine vengeance (“the hounds of Persephone�), the sun and moon are the isles of the blessed where we may go, if we live a good life, while thunder functioned to frighten the souls being punished in Tartarus. The heavenly bodies also appear to have moved in accordance with the mathematical ratios that govern the concordant musical intervals in order to produce a music of the heavens, which in the later tradition developed into “the harmony of the spheres.� It is doubtful that Pythagoras himself thought in terms of spheres, and the mathematics of the movements of the heavens was not worked out in detail. There is evidence that he valued relationships between numbers such as those embodied in the so-called Pythagorean theorem, though it is not likely that he proved the theorem.
Pythagoras' cosmos was developed in a more scientific and mathematical direction by his successors in the Pythagorean tradition, Philolaus and Archytas. Pythagoras succeeded in promulgating a new more optimistic view of the fate of the soul after death and in founding a way of life that was attractive for its rigor and discipline and that drew to him numerous devoted followers.
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October 26, 2021Fun to read, this is a quite obvious Protestant forgery, one that, through ignorance, misrepresents the beliefs and institutions of archaic Greek paganism. The author puts into the mouth of Aethalides and his master the fancies and theories of 18th century Anglo protestants, while the characterization of pagan priestcraft bears a more than coincidental similarity to contemporary Protestant perceptions of the Roman Catholic Church.
One would think that a document that had been hiding for 2,500+ years would reveal something new and unknown about its purported author, some piece of hitherto unknown biographical data, and yet theres nothing here that can't be derived from some late antique history or biography well known to the educated classes of 18th century Europe.
I would certainly recommend this to anyone interested in the use of forgery in early modern religious polemics, but for those interested in the life of Pythagoras, pick up the Pythagorean Sourcebook by Guthrie and Fideler, which contains authentic primary sources for his life and teachings.
One would think that a document that had been hiding for 2,500+ years would reveal something new and unknown about its purported author, some piece of hitherto unknown biographical data, and yet theres nothing here that can't be derived from some late antique history or biography well known to the educated classes of 18th century Europe.
I would certainly recommend this to anyone interested in the use of forgery in early modern religious polemics, but for those interested in the life of Pythagoras, pick up the Pythagorean Sourcebook by Guthrie and Fideler, which contains authentic primary sources for his life and teachings.
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