149 The metaphor (and the point of Diogenes’ joke) is that Cleanthes had preserved his life like one bailing water from a leaky vessel.
150 See 7.37.
151 Ptolemy IV was ruler of Egypt in the late third century BC, and like most Hellenistic dynasts, collected Greek thinkers and poets at his court. According to 7.185, Sphaerus agreed to join Ptolemy when others refused.
152 Otherwise unknown.
153 The anecdote turns on the difference between inference and true knowledge. Mnesistratus claims that Sphaerus cannot be more certain of Ptolemy’s royal status than he was of the authenticity of the pomegranates, but Sphaerus’ reply gives Ptolemy an innate quality of kingship that transcends sense impressions.
154 The lines are adapted from Euripides’ Orestes (540–41), where Tyndareus, king of Sparta, says he has been blessed in all things but his daughters, Helen and Clytemnestra. Chrysippus inserted “Cleanthes” in place of “my daughters.”
155 A large neighborhood in Athens, so named because it was the potters’ quarter.
156 Carneades of Cyrene (214/13–129/28 BC) served as head of the Academy. His rivalry with Chrysippus was notorious. Diogenes discusses his life and views at 4.62–66.
157 The name could be taken to mean “horse-hidden.”
158 Euripides, Orestes 253–54. Electra addresses her brother Orestes, who is being driven mad by the vengeful shade of his mother Clytemnestra.
159 Odyssey 10.495. The reference is to Tiresias, the great seer of Thebes—the only shade in the underworld to retain full wisdom and consciousness.
160 Carneades apparently parodied the line, as related in 4.62.
161 Arcesilaus and Lacydes, both of whom headed the Platonic Academy, are discussed at 4.28–45 and 4.59–61, respectively.
162 An odeon was a hall for musical performances or recitations. Here Diogenes refers to the Odeon built at Athens by Pericles in the fifth century BC.
163 This Olympiad began in 208 BC.
164 Bacchus was another name for Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry. “Bacchus” became a synonym for wine.
165 Since the Hellenistic dynasts controlled vast wealth and liked to patronize philosophers, book dedications were common as a way to curry favor and repay benefactions.
166 That is, he had only one servant (see 7.181). In context the point seems to be that he could have afforded a larger staff had he accepted the largesse of wealthy patrons.
167 Ptolemy IV Philopator (c. 244–205 BC), king of Egypt.
168 The Lyceum was a grove outside the walls of Athens where Aristotle’s school had been centered. Aristotle and his followers sometimes taught there while strolling with groups of students, but Chrysippus was evidently the first to deliver formal lectures in the open air.
169 A celebrated physician (c. 315–240 BC) and the author of a number of books on anatomy and practical medicine.
170 What follows is a series of specious arguments—many of them syllogisms that violate the rules of Stoic logic.
171 The Eleusinian Mysteries, rites sacred to the goddesses Demeter and Persephone, took place in secret and were not to be divulged to outsiders. The hierophant was the priest who presided over these rites.
172 Eubulides of Miletus (fl. fourth century BC) was a philosopher of the Megarian school and a pupil of Euclides of Megara. He is best known for his philosophical paradoxes. Diogenes discusses his life and views at 2.108–12.
173 Hera and Zeus were brother and sister as well as husband and wife. Homer, in Book 14 of the Iliad, describes an occasion on which Hera seduced Zeus, perhaps the “story” referred to here. The sentence that follows indicates that Chrysippus gave the tale allegorical implications.
174 Antigonus of Carystus is meant, not either of the Macedonian kings of that name.
175 Cynic philosophers before Chrysippus had argued that incest taboos were purely artificial. Plato, in the Republic, takes steps to ensure that incest will not occur by accident in his ideal state, even though parents and children will not recognize their familial bonds.
176 Necrophagy, like incest, might be regarded, by those questioning the validity of social convention, as morally neutral; Herodotus, in the fifth century BC, discussed the necrophagy of the Callatian Indians in just these terms (Histories 3.38). The taboo against cannibalism was also challenged by the Cynics (see 6.73).
177 In other words, why should one not live by begging from others, as the Cynics often did.
178 Book 7 breaks off at this point, with the list of Chrysippus’ works incomplete; the remainder of the text has not survived. According to several ancient sources, Diogenes, in the remainder of Book 7, went on to recount the lives and views of the following Stoic philosophers: Zeno of Tarsus, Diogenes of Babylon, Apollodorus of Seleucia, Boethus of Sidon, Mnesarchus, Mnasagoras, Nestor, Basilides, Dardanus, Antipater of Tarsus, Heraclides of Tarsus, Sosigenes, Panaetius of Rhodes, Hecaton of Rhodes, Posidonius of Apamea, Athenodorus Cordylion, Athenodorus Cananites, Antipater of Tyre, Arius Didymus of Alexandria, and Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, who (uniquely among Diogenes’ subjects) wrote in Latin as well as Greek.
Book 8
PYTHAGORAS
fl. c. 530 bc
EMPEDOCLES
c. 492–c. 432 bc
EPICHARMUS
fl. early 5th cent. bc
ARCHYTAS
fl. c. 400–350 bc
ALCMEON
5th cent. bc
HIPPASUS
6th cent. bc
PHILOLAUS
c. 470–390 bc
EUDOXUS
c. 390–c. 340 bc
Empedocles, by Luca Signorelli, 1499–1502.
Pythagoras
1,2 Now that we have reviewed Ionian philosophy starting with Thales,1 and presented its noteworthy representatives, let us take up the philosophy of Italy, which began with Pythagoras, the son of the gem engraver Mnesarchus, a Samian, according to Hermippus, though Aristoxenus says he was a Tyrrhenian from one of the islands the Athenians occupied after they expelled the Tyrrhenians.2 Some say that he was the son of Marmacus, himself the son of Hippasus, son of Euthyphro, son of Cleonymus, an exile from Phlius,3 and that because Marmacus lived in Samos, Pythagoras was called a Samian. On reaching Lesbos he was recommended to Pherecydes4 by his uncle Zoilus. He had three silver drinking-cups made and took them as gifts to each of the priests of Egypt. He had older brothers, of whom Eunomus was the elder and Tyrrhenus the second; he also had a slave, Zamolxis,5 whom the Getae worship as Cronus, according to Herodotus.
3 He was a student, as was mentioned earlier, of Pherecydes of Syros, after whose death he went to Samos and studied with Hermodamas6 (the descendant of Creophylus), by then an elderly man. Being young and fond of learning, he went abroad and had himself initiated in all the Greek and barbarian mysteries. He went to Egypt, and it was then that Polycrates introduced him by letter to Amasis.7 He even learned the Egyptian language, as Antiphon8 says in his work On Men of Exceptional Virtue, and visited the Chaldaeans and the Magi.9 Then, in Crete, he descended with Epimenides into the cave of Ida.10 (He had also visited the Egyptian sanctuaries, where he was taught their secret lore about the gods.) He then returned to Samos, and finding his country under the rule of Polycrates, he sailed away to Croton11 in Italy. And there, establishing laws for the Italians, he and his students were held in high esteem. Numbering three hundred, they administered the state so well that its government was virtually a government by the best.
Three Philosophers, by Giorgione, 1508–1509. Interpretations of the figures portrayed have included the Three Kings, three astronomers, representatives of three religions, and the rival exponents of painting, philosophy, and astrology. Recently, Pythagoras and his two teachers, Thales and Pherecydes, have also been mentioned. It has been suggested that the figure of the young man can be inscribed neatly in a right-angled triangle to which the Pythagorean theorem applies.
4 Heraclides Ponticus says that Pythagoras gave the following accou
nt of himself: he had formerly been Aethalides and was thought to be the son of Hermes;12 Hermes told him to choose any gift he wanted except immortality. He therefore asked to retain, both living and dead, the memory of what he had experienced. Hence in life he could recall everything; and when he died he kept his memories intact. Later on, he entered the body of Euphorbus and was wounded by Menelaus.13 And Euphorbus used to say that he had once been Aethalides and had received the gift from Hermes and the power of his soul to pass from one place to another, and he recounted how it migrated, and in which plants and animals it had been present, and everything that it underwent in Hades, and everything the other souls there endure.
5 When Euphorbus died, his soul entered the body of Hermotimus,14 who, wishing to corroborate the story, traveled to the Branchidae;15 upon entering the temple of Apollo, he identified the shield that Menelaus had dedicated there (for he said that Menelaus, when he sailed home from Troy, had dedicated the shield to Apollo), a shield that by then had rotted; only its ivory facing remained. When Hermotimus died, he became Pyrrhus, the fisherman of Delos, and he again remembered everything: how he had previously been Aethalides, then Euphorbus, then Hermotimus, and then Pyrrhus. When Pyrrhus died, he became Pythagoras and remembered everything that has been mentioned.
6 There are some who say, mistakenly, that Pythagoras left no written work. Heraclitus16 the natural philosopher, at any rate, declares, almost at the top of his voice, “Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, pursued inquiry beyond all other men, and having made his selection of these writings, created a wisdom of his own, showing great learning but faulty workmanship.” He expressed himself thus in response to the opening of Pythagoras’s work On Nature, which reads: “I swear by the air I breathe, I swear by the water I drink, that I shall never be censured on account of this work.” Pythagoras wrote three books: On Education, On Statesmanship, and On Nature.
Numa Follows the Lessons of Pythagoras, by Pablo Picasso, 1930. Etching from an illustrated version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, published in 1931.
7 But the book that passes as the work of Pythagoras is by Lysis of Tarentum,17 a Pythagorean who fled to Thebes and taught Epaminondas.18 Heraclides, son of Serapion, in his Epitome of Sotion, says that Pythagoras also wrote a poem in epic verse, On the Universe, and secondly The Sacred Poem, which begins,
Young men, hold all these my words in quiet reverence;
8 thirdly On the Soul, fourthly On Piety, fifthly Helothales (the father of Epicharmus of Cos19), sixthly Croton, and other works. Heraclides says that the poem On the Mysteries was written by Hippasus20 to slander Pythagoras, and that many works written by Aston of Croton have been attributed to Pythagoras. Aristoxenus says that Pythagoras got most of his ethical doctrines from Themistoclea,21 the priestess of Delphi. Ion of Chios, in his Triads, says that Pythagoras ascribed some of his own poems to Orpheus.22 They also attribute to him the
Sosicrates, in his Successions, says that when Leon the tyrant of Phlius asked Pythagoras what he was, he replied, “A philosopher.”24 He said that life resembles a festival, where some go to compete for a prize, others to buy or sell, but the best men as spectators; for likewise in life, some men are servile by nature, hunters of fame and profit, while the philosopher hunts for the truth. So much for this topic.
9 The three treatises cited above contain the following general principles of Pythagoras. He forbids us to pray for ourselves, since we do not know what is good for us. He substitutes for the word “drunkenness” the word “damage,” and rejects every type of satiety, saying that one should not exceed what is moderate when drinking or eating. About sexual pleasure he speaks as follows: “Have sexual relations in winter, not in summer; though less harmful in autumn and spring, they are harmful in every season and not good for one’s health.” When someone once asked him when one should have sexual relations, he replied, “Whenever you want to become weaker than yourself.”
10 He divides man’s life in this way: “Twenty years a boy, twenty a youth, twenty a young man, and twenty an old man. And the stages of life correspond to the seasons: the boy to spring, the youth to summer, the young man to autumn, and the old man to winter.” (For him the youth is an adolescent, and the young man an adult.)
Pythagoras: Nocturnes in Cosine, by Michael Schultheis, 2014. From the series Dreams of Pythagoras, in which the artist imagines Pythagoras falling into a deep sleep and dreaming of the progeny of his original ideas.
He was the first, according to Timaeus, to say that “the possessions of friends are common property” and that “friendship is equality.” And his disciples did put their possessions into a common stock. They kept silent for a period of five years, merely listening to his discourses, but not yet seeing him, until they were judged worthy; from then on his house was open to them and they were admitted to his presence. They refrained from using coffins of cypress, since Zeus’ scepter was made from that material, as Hermippus says in the second book of his work On Pythagoras.
11,12 Indeed, he is said to have been highly dignified, and his students held the opinion about him that he was Apollo come from the Hyperboreans.25 There is a story that once, when his flank was exposed, his thigh was seen to be made of gold. And there were many who reported that the river Nessus,26 when he crossed it, addressed him by name. And according to Timaeus, in the tenth book of his Histories, Pythagoras remarked that the women who live with men have divine names, being called Maidens, Brides, and then Mothers.27 It was he who brought geometry to perfection, while Moeris28 was the first to discover the beginnings of its elements, as Anticlides says in the second book of his work On Alexander. He says that Pythagoras spent most of his time on the arithmetical aspects of geometry, and that he invented the canon monochord.29 Nor did he even neglect medicine. Apollodorus the Arithmetician says that Pythagoras sacrificed a hecatomb30 when he discovered that in a right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares on the sides that formed the right angle.31 And the following epigram bears on this discovery:
Two pages from the Zhou Dynasty Sundial of Astronomy and Calculation, illustrating the “Gougu” (Pythagorean) theorem. Dating from the Zhou dynasty (c. 1046–256 BC), this version is from a Ming dynasty edition, 1603. This text contains one of the first recorded proofs of the Pythagorean theorem.
Pythagoras attained his celebrated result: he discovered
The figure in honor of which he offered a famous sacrifice of oxen.
13 He is also said to have been the first to put athletes on a meat diet, starting with Eurymenes32 (as Favorinus says in the third book of his Reminiscences), whereas formerly they had trained on dried figs, soft cheese, and even wheat meal, as the same Favorinus says in the eighth book of his Miscellaneous History. But others say it was a gymnastics trainer named Pythagoras who instituted this diet and not our Pythagoras, who forbade the slaughter, not to mention the eating, of animals—since their souls, in common with ours, possess justice. But this was only a pretext. His real reason for forbidding the consumption of sentient animals was to train and accustom men to be content with their diet, so they could live on the most easily procurable foodstuffs, spreading their tables with uncooked food and drinking only water. For this diet would result in a healthy body and a keen mind. And of course he worshipped only at the altar of Apollo the Begetter in Delos (which is behind the altar of Horns), since upon it were placed flour and meal and round cakes, untouched by fire; nor was there any sacrificial victim, as Aristotle says in his Constitution of the Delians.
14 He was the first, they say, to declare that the soul, traveling the circle of necessity, is bound now in one creature, now in another. He was also the first to introduce weights and measures into Greece, according to Aristoxenus the musician; and the first to say that the Evening and Morning Stars are the same,33 according to Parmenides.
He was so admired that people used to call
he himself, in one of his writings, says “after 207 years I have returned from Hades to the world of men.”34 This is why even the Leucanians, Peucetians, Messapians, and Romans35 adhered to him faithfully and came to hear his words.
15,16 Until the time of Philolaus36 it was not possible to acquire knowledge of Pythagorean doctrine; it was he alone who published Pythagoras’s three famous books, which Plato ordered him by letter to purchase for one hundred minas.37 No fewer than six hundred people attended Pythagoras’s evening audience; and persons who were thought worthy to see him would write to their friends to report that they had met with so singular an honor. The Metapontines38 called his house “the temple of Demeter,” and his lane “the Museum,”39 as Favorinus says in his Miscellaneous History. The other Pythagoreans also used to say that not all of his doctrines were for everyone to hear, as Aristoxenus says in the tenth book of his Rules of Pedagogy. In that work, Xenophilus the Pythagorean, when asked by someone how he could best educate his son, replied, “Let him live in a well-governed city.” And throughout Italy Pythagoras made many into good and honorable men, among them the legislators Zaleucus and Charandas.40 For he had a gift for friendship; in particular, if he learned that someone had adopted his watchwords, he would immediately attach himself to that man and make him his friend.
17 The following were his watchwords: “don’t stir fire with a knife,” “don’t step over the bar of a scale,” “don’t sit down on your bushel,” “don’t eat your heart,” “don’t help a man load; help him unload,” “always fold up your quilts,” “don’t wear a signet ring engraved with the image of a god,” “wipe away the imprint of a cooking pot in the ashes,” “don’t wipe yourself in a privy under the light of a torch,” “don’t urinate facing the sun,” “don’t walk the highways,” “don’t shake hands too readily,” “don’t keep swallows under your own roof,” “don’t raise birds with crooked talons,” “don’t urinate on or stand upon your nail and hair trimmings,” “turn the sharp edge of a knife away,” “when leaving on a journey, don’t turn back at the border.”
Lives of the Eminent Philosophers Page 48
