Introduction
Table of Contents
Approach ye genuine philosophic few, The Pythagoric Life belongs to you: But far, far off ye vulgar herd profane; For Wisdom’s voice is heard by you in vain: And you, Mind’s lowest link, and darksome end, Good Rulers, Customs, Laws, alone can mend.
Pythagoras was the father of [Western] philosophy.*
Superphysics Note
Plato is the most genuine and the best of all his disciples.
Iamblichus
Pythagoras’ biographer was Iamblichus. He is well known to every Platonist.
Iamblichus was descended of a family equally illustrious, fortunate, and rich.
His country was Chalcis, a city of Syria, called Cœle. He associated with Anatolius who was the second to Porphyry. But he far excelled him in his attainments, and ascended to the very summit of philosophy.
He found Anatolius insufficient to satisfy the vast desires of his soul. So he applied himself to Porphyry, to whom (says Eunapius) he was inferior only in the structure and power of composition. For his writings were not so elegant and graceful as those of Porphyry.
Iamblichus shared in an eminent degree the favor of divinity, on account of his cultivation of justice.
He had many associates and disciples from all parts of the world, for the purpose of wisdom.
Among these were:
- Sopater the Syrian, most skilful both in speaking and writing
- Eustathius the Cappadocian
- of the Greeks, Theodorus and Euphrasius
Alypius
A celebrated philosopher named Alypius was deeply skilled in dialectic.
He was contemporary with Iamblichus but was so small that he looked like a pigmy.
However, his great abilities amply compensated for this defect.
His body might be said to be consumed into soul; just as the great Plato says, that divine bodies, unlike those that are mortal, are situated in souls. Thus also it might be asserted of Alypius, that he had migrated into soul, and that he was contained and governed by a nature superior to man.
Alypius had many followers, but his mode of philosophizing was confined to private conference and disputation, without committing any of his dogmas to writing.
Hence his disciples gladly applied themselves to Iamblichus.
The fame therefore of each continually increasing.
They once accidentally met and were surrounded by a great crowd of auditors.
Alypius, contrary to the expectation of every one, turned to Iamblichus and said to him:
Tell me, O philosopher, is either the rich man unjust, or the heir of the unjust man? For in this case there is no medium.
Iamblichus hated the acuteness of the question:
O most wonderful of all men, this manner of considering, whether some one excels in externals, is foreign from our method of philosophizing; since we inquire whether a man abounds in the virtue which it is proper for him to possess, and which is adapted to a philosopher.
He then left and so the multitude was dispersed.
But Iamblichus admired the acuteness of the question, and often privately resorted to Alypius, whom he very much applauded for his acumen and sagacity; so that after his decease, he wrote his life.
Alypius was an Alexandrian by birth, and died in his own country of old age, followed by Iamblichus.
This created the roots which through the cultivation of succeeding Platonists, produced vigorous branches.
- The theological writings of Iamblichus are based on History of the Restoration of the Platonic Theology
- His works are based on the Bibliotheca Græca of Fabricius
The original “life of Pythagoras” has been transmitted to us in a very imperfect state, partly from:
- the numerous verbal errors of the text
- the lack of connexion in the things that are narrated
- many particulars being related in different places, in the very same words
The conjecture of Kuster, one of the German editors of this work is highly probable, that it had not received the last hand of Iamblichus, but that others formed this treatise from the confused materials which they found among his Manuscripts, after his death.
The 2 most celebrated German critics are Kuster and Kiessling.
As to the Pythagoric Ethical Fragments, all eulogy of them is superfluous, when it is considered that, independently of their being written by very early Pythagoreans, they were some of the sources from which Aristotle himself derived his consummate knowledge of morality, as will be at once evident by comparing his Nicomachean Ethics with these fragments.
The collection of Pythagoric Sentences came from the Greek original of the Sentences of Sextus which was lost.
The fraudulent Latin version of them by the Presbyter Ruffinus alone remains.
I call it a fraudulent version, because Ruffinus, wishing to persuade the reader that these Sentences were written by a bishop of the name of Sixtus, has in many places perverted and contaminated the meaning of the original.
In the selection, however, which I have made from these Sentences, I have endeavoured, and I trust not in vain, to give the genuine xviii sense of Sextus, unmingled with the barbarous and polluted interpolations of Ruffinus.
If the English reader has my translation of the Sentences of Demophilus, and Mr. Bridgman’s translation of the Golden Sentences of Democrates, and the Similitudes of Demophilus,[7] he will then be possessed of all the Pythagoric Sentences that are extant, those alone of Sextus excepted, which I have not translated, in consequence of the very impure and spurious state, in which they at present exist.
I deem it also requisite to observe, that the Pythagoric life which is here delineated, is a specimen of the greatest perfection in virtue and wisdom, xix which can be obtained by man in the present state. Hence, it exhibits piety unadulterated with folly, moral virtue uncontaminated with vice, science unmingled with sophistry, dignity of mind and manners unaccompanied with pride, a sublime magnificence in theory, without any degradation in practice, and a vigor of intellect, which elevates its possessor to the vision of divinity, and thus deifies while it exalts.