Molon labe II

I, admittedly, have an ambivalent relationship to Pythagoreanism. On the one hand it developed out of the same Magna Graecian cultural koine as Bacchic Orphism and there is a lot of intersection between the two, what with prominent Pythagoreans writing a number of treatises which circulated under the names of Orpheus and Mousaios in antiquity. And that, unfortunately, is where some of the ambivalence comes from – many of the misconceptions that people have about Orphism (for instance that it’s an ascetic, reformist movement espousing celibacy, vegetarianism, teetotalism and metempsychosis) comes from Pythagorean-inspired sources that don’t reflect what you find in authentic Orphic material.

The two groups are actually like Night and Day – Orphism is focused on the dead and the gods beneath the earth while Pythagoreans were obsessed with the luminous heavenly powers. Orphism is ecstatic, violent, cathartic – Pythagoreanism is harmonious, serene, contemplative. The appeal of Orphism is to the emotions; Pythagoreanism to the intellect. Orphism is all about Dionysos while in Pythagoreanism that position is held by Apollon. What primarily unites them is music and magical healing – but even these they take in very different directions.

Once a proper distinction is drawn between the two, however, I actually find a lot of value in Pythagoreanism, especially when you’re looking at the more shamanic elements of it – but the differences are as real and important as the differences between, say, the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox National churches. Which is actually a pretty apt analogy – because as much as those ecclesiastical bodies differ from each other they also have a lot more in common than they do with, say, charismatic Pentecostals, Methodists, Unitarian Universalists or Mormons. Likewise Pharnobazos and Brontinos probably could have sat down and had more of a meaningful conversation (despite the many points of divergence in their practice and ideology) than they could have with a Boiotian peasant or Athenian hoplite.

Plus Pythagoreans were responsible for a democratic coup at Tarentum, the bastards.

So as I said, I’m ambivalent about them.

But when I read the following comments by Brea Plum all of that fell away and I got decidedly protective of my Pythagorean brethren, heretics though they may be.

First she starts off by saying:

I am an atheist but more to the point, I am a Classicist. You are describing ideas, concepts, people and history you apparently know little about and understand even less.

And then to show that she is clearly talking about herself she goes on to add:

Your analogy is far off base. Your list has nothing to do with religion or tradition; they were schools of philosophy, mathematics and natural science respectively.

There’s a lot of things to criticize about Pythagoras and his school but their piety was beyond reproach:

He ordained that his disciples should speak well and think reverently of the Gods, Muses and Heroes, and likewise of parents and benefactors; that they should obey the laws; that they should not relegate the worship of the Gods to a secondary position, performing it eagerly, even at home; that to the celestial divinities they should sacrifice uncommon offerings; and ordinary ones to the inferior deities. All things were divided between, on the one hand, the superior, light, right, equal, stable and straight; while the “other” was inferior, dark, left, unequal, unstable and movable. (Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 38)

Porphyry goes on to say that Pythagoras was so driven by zeal to worship the gods properly that he traveled to many distant lands to be instructed in the science of religion:

Then Pythagoras visited the Egyptians, the Arabians, the Chaldeans and the Hebrews, from whom he acquired expertery in the interpretation of dreams, and he was the first to use frankincense in the worship of divinities. In Egypt he lived with the priests, and learned the language and wisdom of the Egyptians, and three kinds of letters, the epistolic, the hieroglyphic, and symbolic, whereof one imitates the common way of speaking, while the others express the sense by allegory and parable. In Arabia he conferred with the King. In Babylon he associated with the other Chaldeans, especially attaching himself to Zabratus, by whom he was purified from the pollutions of his past life, and taught the things which a virtuous man ought to do to be free. Likewise he heard lectures about nature, and the principles of wholes. It was from his stay among these foreigners that Pythagoras acquired the greater part of his wisdom. (11-12)

And consider the advice that Pythagoras is said to have given to Crotona’s female population, according to Imablichus:

To the women Pythagoras spoke as follows about sacrifices. To begin with, inasmuch as it was no more than natural that they would wish that some other person who intended to pray for them should be worthy, nay, excellent, because the Gods attend to those particularly, so also it is advisable that they themselves should most highly esteem equity and modesty, so that the divinities may be the more inclined to grant their requests. Further, they should offer to the divinities such things as they themselves have with their own hands produced, such as cakes, honey-combs, and perfumes, and should bring them to the altars without the assistance of servants. They should not worship divinities with blood and dead bodies, nor offer so many things at one time that it might seem they meant never to sacrifice again. It was in the same assembly that Pythagoras is said to have made the celebrated suggestion that, after a woman has had connexion with her husband, it is holy for her to perform sacred rites on the same day, which would be inadmissible, had the connection been with any man other than her husband. (Life of Pythagoras 11)

Aside from his aversion to animal sacrifice and belief that marriage completely mitigates sexual pollution Pythagoras is perfectly representative of traditional Hellenic religion. Indeed, proper piety was the primary thing that Pythagoras taught:

The most extended lectures, however, were those concerning sacrifices, both at the time when migrating from the preset life, and at other times; also about the proper manner of sepulture. Of some of these propositions the reason is designed; such as for instance that we must beget children to leave successors to worship the Gods. But no justification is assigned for the others, although in some cases they are implied proximately or remotely, such as that bread is not to be broken, because it contributes to the judgment in Hades. Thus, for instance, in respect to the last statement, that bread is not to be broken, some explain that precept on the grounds that it is inauspicious, at the beginning of an undertaking, to make an omen of fracture or diminution. Moreover, all these precepts are based on one single underlying principle, the end of divinity, so that the whole of every life may result in following God, which is besides that principle and doctrine of philosophy. For it is absurd to search for good in any direction other than the Gods. Those who do so resemble a man who, in a country governed by a king, should do honor to one of his fellow-citizens who is a magistrate, while neglecting him who is the ruler of all of them. Indeed, this is what the Pythagoreans thought of people who searched for good elsewhere than from God. For since they exist, as the rulers of all things, it must be self-evident that good must be requested of the Gods alone.

Pythagoras enjoined a bunch of religious taboos on his disciples in order to maintain proper purity before the holy powers:

Above all, he forbade as food red mullet and blacktail, and he enjoined abstinence from the hearts of animals and from beans, and sometimes, according to Aristotle, even from paunch and gurnard. Some say that he contented himself with just some honey or a honeycomb or bread, never touching wine in the daytime, and with greens boiled or raw for dainties, and fish but rarely. His robe was white and spotless, his quilts of white wool, for linen had not yet reached those parts. He was never known to over-eat, to behave loosely, or to be drunk. He would avoid laughter and all pandering to tastes such as insulting jests and vulgar tales. He would punish neither slave nor free man in anger. Admonition he used to call “setting right.” He used to practise divination by sounds or voices and by auguries, never by burnt-offerings, beyond frankincense.

The offerings he made were always inanimate; though some say that he would offer cocks, sucking goats and porkers, as they are called, but lambs never. However, Aristoxenos has it that he consented to the eating of all other animals, and only abstained from ploughing oxen and rams. The same authority, as we have seen, asserts that Pythagoras took his doctrines from the Delphic priestess Themistoklea.

And he further bade them to honour gods before demi-gods, heroes before men, and first among men their parents; and so to behave one to another as not to make friends into enemies, but to turn enemies into friends. To deem nothing their own. To support the law, to wage war on lawlessness. Never to kill or injure trees that are not wild, nor even any animal that does not injure man. That it is seemly and advisable neither to give way to unbridled laughter nor to wear sullen looks. To avoid excess of flesh, on a journey to let exertion and slackening alternate, to train the memory, in wrath to restrain hand and tongue, to respect all divination, to sing to the lyre and by hymns to show due gratitude to gods and to good men. To abstain from beans because they are flatulent and partake most of the breath of life ; and besides, it is better for the stomach if they are not taken, and this again will make our dreams in sleep smooth and untroubled. (Diogenes Laertios, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 8.19-21; 23-24)

And that’s not even getting into the cool shamanic stuff such as this and this!

So either Brea is a Classicist who has never read the primary sources (such as Iamblichus, Porphyry and Diogenes) or decent secondary scholarly literature such as Walter Burkert’s Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, Günther Zuntz’s Persephone: Three Essays on Religion and Thought in Magna Graecia, Charles H. Kahn’s Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History, G. S. Kirk’s The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History or fuck even Peter Kingsley for that matter. Or else she’s another one of those deceitful humanist atheists trying to appropriate polytheist intellectuals of the past, even if they’ve got to erase their whole history and identity to do so.

I mean Pythagoras himself claimed that the inspiration for his mathematical theorem came from the gods  and sacrificed an ox to them in gratitude (an ox, mind you, despite his vegetarian predisposition, because that was what was required to fulfill tradition) so to strip him of his religious identity is to unravel the whole weltanschauung of which his mathematical and scientific beliefs were a part. What makes this so egregiously offensive is that a lot of the work he did with number was to provide an intellectual defense for the radical pluralism of traditional polytheism against the incipient monism of the Ionian physikoi which he recognized if left unchecked would lead to a world devoid of divinity. That’s why even though I don’t agree with all of his ideas I respect the hell out of the man and consider him one of our polytheist heroes.