Pythagorean Monks, Pythagorist Civilians: Acusmatici and Mathematici

Pythagoras grouped his disciples according to their respective merits.

They were naturally dissimilar and so it was not fit for them to equally participate of the same things.

It was neither right for some to participate in the most honorable auditions, while others did not. For this would be uncommunicative and unjust.

While he imparted a convenient portion of his discourses to each, he benefited as much as possible all of them, and preserved the proportion of justice, by making each a partaker of the auditions according to his desert.

Hence, he divided them into:

• Pythagoreans, and
• Pythagorists

This is similar to how we call some men Attics, but others Atticists.

Some of them he considered to be genuine.

• But he ordained that others should show themselves to be the emulators of these.

He ordered therefore that the Pythagoreans should:

• always live together
• have their possessions shared in common

But that each of the others should possess his own property apart from the rest, and that assembling together in the same place, they should mutually be at leisure for the same pursuits.

Thus each of these modes was derived from Pythagoras, and transmitted to his successors.

The Pythagoreans had 2 forms of philosophy:

• Acusmatici
• Mathematici

Of these, the Mathematici are acknowledged to be Pythagoreans by the rest.

But the Mathematici do not admit that the Acusmatici are so, or that they derived their instruction from Pythagoras, but from Hippasus.

Some say that Hippasus was a Crotonian. Others say he was a Metapontine.

The Acusmatici philosophy consists in auditions.

• These are unaccompanied by demonstrations or a reasoning process.
• This is because it merely orders:
  • a thing to be done in a certain way
  • to preserve other things as were said by him, as so many divine dogmas.

They however would not speak of those dogmas as those dogmas are not to be spoken of.

• They think that their sect is the wisest, as they retained what they had heard more than others.

These auditions are divided into 3 species:

1. What a thing actually is

Examples are:

• What are the islands of the blessed? The sun and moon.
• What is the oracle at Delphi? The tetractys.
• What is harmony? That in which the Syrens subsist.

2. What a thing especially is

Examples are:

• What is the most just thing? To sacrifice.
• What is the wisest thing? Number.

But the next to this in wisdom, is that which gives names to things.

• What is the wisest of the things that are with us, [i. e. which pertain to human concerns]? Medicine.
• What is the most beautiful? Harmony. What is the most powerful? Mental decision.
• What is the most excellent? Felicity.
• What is that which is most truly asserted? That men are depraved.

Hence they say that Pythagoras praised the Salaminian poet Hippodomas, because he sings:

These therefore, and such as these, are the auditions of this kind. For each of these shows what a thing especially is.

This however is the same with “the wisdom of the 7 wise men”.

They investigated for a man to know himself, to know:

• not what is simply good, but what is especially good
• not what is difficult, but what is most difficult

They investigated to do what is natural for oneself, to know not what is easy, but what is most easy.

The above auditions are conformable but posterior in time to such wisdom as that of the 7 wise men; since they were prior to Pythagoras.