[48] Efforts in a more positive direction may perhaps be seen in the practice of the musical form of κάθαρσις which Pythag. and the Pythagoreans used in accordance with an elaborate system: cf. Iamb., VP. 64 ff., 110 ff.; Sch. V. on X 391; also Quint. 9, 4, 12; Porph., VP. 33, etc.—What Aristoxenos has to say about Pythagorean ethics, moralistic parainesis and edification—most of it of a purely rationalist kind—can scarcely be said to have historical value.
[49] Good formulation of Pythag. belief ap. Max. Tyr. 16, 2, i, 287 R.: Πυθαγόρας πρῶτος ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἐτόλμησεν εἰπεῖν, ὅτι αὑτῷ τὸ μὲν σῶμα τεθνήξεται, ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ ἀναπτᾶσα οἰχήσεται ἀθανὴς καὶ ἀγήρως. καὶ γὰρ εἶναι αὐτὴν πρὶν ἥκειν δεῦρο. i.e. the life of the soul is not only endless but without beginning; the soul is immortal because it is timeless.
[50] The withdrawal of the soul from the κύκλος ἀνάγκης and its return to an emancipated existence as a bodiless spirit was never so clearly held in view for the “Pure” by the older Pythagorean tradition as it was among the Orphics (and Empedokles). It is, however, hardly thinkable that a system which regarded every incarnation of the soul as a punishment and the body as its prison or its tomb should never have held out to the true βάκχοι of its mysteries the prospect of a full and permanent liberation of the soul, at last, from corporeality and the earthly life. Only so could the long chain of deaths and rebirths reach a final and satisfactory conclusion. Eternally detained in the cycle of births the soul would be eternally punished (this is e.g. the idea of Empedokles: 455 f., fr. 145 D.); and this cannot have been the real conclusion of the Pythagorean doctrine of salvation. Claud. Mamertus, de An. 2, 7 [Vors. 320, 12], gives it as a doctrine of Philolaos [fr. 22] that the (pure) soul after its separation from the body leads a “bodiless” life in the “Universe” (the κόσμος situated above the οὐρανός): see Böckh, Philol. 177. Apart from this the only evidence for the withdrawal of the soul is late: Carm. Aur. 70 f. (making use of the Empedok. verses, fr. 112, 4 f. = 400 Mull.), Alex. Polyh. ap. D.L. viii, 31 (ἄγεσθαι τὰς καθαρὰς [ψυχὰς] ἐπὶ τὸν ὕψιστον “in altissimum locum” Cobet: but an ellipse of τόπον is hardly admissible. ὁ ὕψιστος = the highest God would be a Hebraic form of expression, nor can it be a possible one here for Alex. Polyh.—we should also, with this meaning of ὕψιστος, expect πρὸς τ. ὕ. ad superiores circulos bene viventium animae, secundum philosophorum altam scientiam, Serv., A. vi, 127—should we then supply ἐπὶ τὸν ὕψιστον <κύκλον>? Or perh. ἐπὶ τὸ ὕψιστον?)—An escape of the souls after the expiry of their περίοδοι must have been known as a Pythagorean belief to Luc., VH. ii, 21. (Vergil, too, is speaking in a Pythagorean sense, A. vi, 744, pauci laeta arva [Elysii] tenemus.—i.e. for ever without renewed ἐνσωμάτωσις—see Serv., A. vi, 404, 426, 713. It is true the line is out of its right place, but there can be no doubt that it reproduces the words and the—in this section Pythagorean—opinion of Vergil.) The idea that the cycle of births is never to be broken cannot be regarded as Pythagorean nor even as Neopythagorean. (A few isolated later accounts of Pythag. doctrine; e.g. D.L. viii, 14 (from Favorinus), Porph., VP. 19, and also the cursory description in Ov., M. xv—with a good deal of foreign matter added—speak of the Pyth. doctrine of soul-transmigration without also referring to the possibility of κύκλου λῆξαι; but they are not meant to deny that [399] possibility but merely leave it unmentioned as unnecessary in the context.) There seems to be no example of a Greek doctrine of transmigration that did not also include a promise to the ὅσιοι or the φιλόσοφοι that they would be able to escape from the cycle of births (at least for a world-period: as Syrian. took it, though probably not Porph.). Such a promise, as the consummation of the promises of salvation therein made, could only be dispensed with in the case of a doctrine of transmigration in which being born again was itself regarded as a reward for the pious (as in the teaching which Jos., BJ. 2, 8, 14, attributes to the Pharisees). By Greek partisans of the doctrine of Metempsychosis rebirth upon earth is always regarded as a punishment or at any rate a burden, not as a desirable goal for the life of the soul. We must therefore presume that the promise of escape from the cycle of rebirth was made also by the oldest Pythagorean teaching as the final benefit of its message of salvation. Without this completing touch Pythagoreanism would be like Buddhism without the promise of a final attainment of Nirvâna.
[51] Pythagoras is called the pupil of Pherekydes as early as Andron of Ephesos (before Theopompos): D.L. i, 119; Vors. ii, 199, 18. Pherekydes was regarded as “the first” who taught the immortality of the soul (Cic., TD. i, 38) or more correctly metempsychosis (Suid. Φερεκ.); cf. Preller, Rh. Mus. (N.F.), iv, 388 f. A hint of such teaching must have been found in his mystical treatise (cf. Porph., Antr. 31; Vors. ii, 204, 12—Gomperz is rather too sceptical, Gk. Thinkers, i, 542). This teaching seems to have been the chief reason which tempted later writers to make the old theologos into the teacher of Pythagoras, the chief spokesman of the doctrine of the soul’s transmigrations.—It is, however, an untenable theory that Pherek. illustrated his doctrine of transmigration by the example of Aithalides. What the Sch. on A.R. i, 645 [Vors. ii, 204, 24], quotes from “Pherekydes” about the alternate sojourn of the ψυχή of Aithalides in Hades and on earth, does not come from Pherekydes the theologos (as Göttling, Opusc. 210, and Kern, de Orph. Epim. Pherec., pp. 89, 106, think) but without the slightest doubt from the genealogist and historian; this is the only Pherekydes who is used by the Sch. of Ap. Rh., and he is used frequently. Besides this, the way in which the different statements of the various authorities used in this Scholion are distinguished, shows quite clearly that Pherekydes had only spoken of Aithalides’ alternate dwelling above and below the earth, but as still being Aithalides, and not as metamorphosed by the series of births into other personalities living upon earth. Pherekydes was obviously reproducing a Phthiotic local-legend in which Aithalides as the son of (the chthonic?) Hermes alternately lived on and below the earth, as an ἑτερήμερος—like the Dioscuri in Lacedaimonian legend (λ 301 ff.: in that passage and generally in the older view—as held by Alkman, Pindar, etc.—both the Dioscuri change their place of abode together: it is not till later that the variant arose acc. to which they alternate with each other: see Hemst. Luc. ii, p. 344 Bip.). It was Herakleides Pont. who first turned the alternate sojourning of Aithalides into death and resurrection (he also made Aithalides one of the previous incarnations of Pythagoras; see [Appendix x]); but as a different person, so that A. thus became an example of metempsychosis. It is not hard to see why Aithalides was chosen as one of the previous incarnations of P., nor how the old miracle-story, preserved to literature by Pherekydes, was thus transformed to suit its new purpose. Plainly Pherekydes did not say that Hermes [400] also gave Aithalides the power of memory after his death (otherwise the statement to this effect in Sch. A.R. would have stood under the name of Pherek.); and the privilege was rather meaningless until after Herakleides’ narrative. Perhaps it was Her. who first added this touch to the story. Ap. Rh. follows him in this point (i, 643 ff.), but not—or not plainly, at least: 646 ff.—in what Herakleides had invented about the metempsychosis of Aithalides.
[52] Macr., Som. Scip. 1, 14, 19, attributes this view to Pythagoras and Philolaos, being certainly correct in the case of the latter; since the opinion that the soul is a κρᾶσις and ἁρμονία of the warm and the cold, the dry and the wet, which go to make up the body, is given by Simmias in Pl., Phd. 86 B, as a tradition that he has received and not an invention of his own. But what else can this mean than a tradition handed down in Thebes by his teacher Philolaos (Phd. 61 D)? (Hence Ἁρμονίας τῆς Θηβαϊκῆς, 95 A.) It is true that Claud. Mam. de An. ii, 7, only attributes to Philolaos the doctrine that the soul is bound up with the body “in eternal and incorporeal harmony” (convenientiam): which would imply an independent substance of the soul side by side with that of the body. But this must have been a misunderstanding of the real meaning of Philolaos. Aristoxenos, too, can only have got his doctrine of the soul as a harmony from his Pythagorean friends. Perhaps, too, this was the influence which suggested to Dikaiarchos his view that the “soul” is a ἁρμονία τῶν τεσσάρων στοιχείων (Dox., p. 387), and indeed τῶν ἐν τῷ σώματι θερμῶν καὶ ψυχρῶν καὶ ὑγρῶν καὶ ξηρῶν, as Nemes., Nat. Hom., p. 69 Matth., tells us—thus exactly resembling Simmias in Plato (unless indeed the passage in Nemes. is a mere reminiscence of Plato strayed here by accident). See also chap. x, [n. 27].
[53] See Pl., Phd. 86 CD. Pre-existence of the soul impossible if it is only an ἁρμονία of the body: 92 AB.
[54] It was in itself almost unavoidable that a community founded like the Pythagorean mainly on a mystical doctrine but not ill-disposed to scientific studies, should, as it was extended (and still followed practical aims) split up into two parties: an inner circle of qualified teachers and scholars, and one or more groups, outside and attached to them, of lay members for whom a special teaching suited for popular comprehension would be provided. Thus the inner circle of Buddhism, the Bikshu, was surrounded by the common herd of “worshippers”; and the same can be seen in Christian monastic organisations. A division, then, of the followers of Pythagoras into Akousmatikoi and Mathematikoi—Pythagoreioi and Pythagoristai—etc., is not in itself at all incredible.
[55] The division of the soul, or the δυνάμεις of the soul, into the λογικόν and the ἄλογον was made, before Plato, by Pythagoras—so we might have learnt, αὐτοῦ τοῦ Πυθαγόρου συγγράμματος οὐδενὸς εἰς ἡμᾶς σωζομένου, from the writings of his followers, acc. to Poseidonios ap. Galen, de Plac. Hipp. et Pl. 5, p. 459 Müll. = v, 478 K.; cf. also 425 K. (Vors. 34, 23). From Poseidonios evidently comes the same opinion in Cic., TD. iv, 10. And, in fact, a fragment of Philolaos π. φύσεως, fr. 13 Diels (Theol. Ar., p. 20, 35 A.), gives a division of the ἀρχαὶ τοῦ ζῴου τοῦ λογικοῦ, which depends upon the idea that the highest living organism contains within itself and makes use of all the lower organisms as well (νοῦς in the head, ἀνθρώπου ἀρχά—ψυχὰ καὶ αἴσθησις in the heart, ῴου ἀρχὰ—ῥίζωσις καὶ ἀνάφυσις in the navel, φυτοῦ ἀρχὰ—σπέρματος μεταβολά and γέννησις in the αἰδοῖον, ξυναπάντων ἀρχά). Then in the psychical region we have a division between the λογικόν [401] and the ἄλογον according to their nature and “seat” in man (λογικόν being made up of reasoning power, νοῦς, specific to man, and sense-perception, αἴσθησις, which also belongs to the other ζῷα, while the ἄλογον = ῥίζωσις καὶ ἀνάφυσις and resembles the αἴτιον τοῦ τρέφεσθαι καὶ αὔξεσθαι, or the φυτικόν, a part of the ἄλογον τῆς ψυχῆς in Arist., EN. 1, 13, p. 1102a, 32 ff.). This evidently represents an attempt at a division of the soul into λογικόν and ἄλογον, such as Poseidonios must have found carried out by other Pythagoreans. A clear distinction between φρονεῖν (ξυνιέναι) and αἰσθάνεσθαι was made by the Pythag. physician Alkmaion, whose division was at least different from and more profound than that of Empedokles (with whom he is contrasted by Thphr., Sens. 25; Vors. 132, 20). Empedokles did indeed distinguish between thinking and perceiving, but thinking (νοεῖν) was only a σωματικόν τι ὥσπερ τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι and to this extent ταὐτόν with it (Arist., An. 3, 3, p. 427a, 21). Alkmaion cannot, therefore, have made ξυνιέναι σωματικόν. These Pythagoreans were on the way to separating from the soul as a whole a separate, thinking soul that required no sense-perception for its thought, the νοῦς. To this latter alone would divinity and immortality be ascribed, as in later philosophy (and thus Dox. 393a, 10, though unhistorically and prematurely, gives τὸ λογικὸν [τῆς ψυχῆς] ἄφθαρτον as a doctrine of “Pythagoras”).—It is certainly difficult to see how Philolaos’ doctrine of the distinction between the ἀνθρώπου ἀρχά, the νοῦς—an element of the soul belonging exclusively to men—and the ζῴου ἀρχά (confined to αἴσθησις and ψυχά, power of life) could possibly be reconciled with the older Pythagorean doctrine of the soul’s transmigration. Acc. to that belief the soul wanders through the bodies of animals as well as men, and the idea implies the view that the same soul could inhabit animals as well as men; that, in fact, πάντα τὰ γενόμενα ἔμψυχα are ὁμογενῆ (Porph., VP. 19; cf. S.E., M. ix, 127). Philolaos, on the contrary, holds that the soul of man is differently constituted from the souls of animals—the latter lack νοῦς (it is not merely that its efficacy is hindered in animals by the δυσκρασία τοῦ σώματος as is said wrongly to be the opinion of Pythag. by Dox. 432a, 15 ff.). The same difficulty arises again in the case of Plato’s doctrine of transmigration.—Alkmaion who ascribes ξυνιέναι to man alone seems not to have held the transmigration doctrine.
[56] 401 ff. Mull.; fr. 112, 5 Diels.
[57] 462 ff. fr. 111.