Pythagoras combines the character of a sophist (a man of large observation, and clever, ascendent, inventive mind,—the original sense of the word Sophist, prior to the polemics of the Platonic school, and the only sense known to Herodotus[716]) with that of an inspired teacher, prophet, and worker of miracles,—approaching to and sometimes even confounded with the gods,—and employing all these gifts to found a new special order of brethren, bound together by religious rites and observances peculiar to themselves. In his prominent vocation, analogous to that of Epimenidês, Orpheus, or Melampus, he appears as the revealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples above the level of mankind, and to recommend them to the favor of the gods; the Pythagorean life, like the Orphic life,[717] being intended as the exclusive prerogative of the brotherhood,—approached only by probation and initiatory ceremonies which were adapted to select enthusiasts rather than to an indiscriminate crowd,—and exacting entire mental devotion to the master.[718] In these lofty pretensions the Agrigentine Empedoklês seems to have greatly copied him, though with some varieties, about half a century afterwards.[719] While Aristotle tells us that the Krotoniates identified Pythagoras with the Hyperborean Apollo, the satirical Timon pronounced him to have been “a juggler of solemn speech, engaged in fishing for men.”[720] This is the same character, looked at from the different points of view of the believer and the unbeliever. There is, however, no reason for regarding Pythagoras as an impostor, because experience seems to show, that while in certain ages it is not difficult for a man to persuade others that he is inspired, it is still less difficult for him to contract the same belief himself.
Looking at the general type of Pythagoras, as conceived by witnesses in and nearest to his own age,—Xenophanês, Hêrakleitus, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Isokratês,[721]—we find in him chiefly the religious missionary and schoolmaster, with little of the politician. His efficiency in the latter character, originally subordinate, first becomes prominent in those glowing fancies which the later Pythagoreans communicated to Aristoxenus and Dikæarchus. The primitive Pythagoras inspired by the gods to reveal a new mode of life,[722]—the Pythagorean life,—and to promise divine favor to a select and docile few, as the recompense of strict ritual obedience, of austere self-control, and of laborious training, bodily as well as mental. To speak with confidence of the details of his training, ethical or scientific, and of the doctrines which he promulgated, is impossible; for neither he himself nor any of his disciples anterior to Philolaus—who was separated from him by about one intervening generation—left any memorials in writing.[723] Numbers and lines, studied partly in their own mutual relations, partly under various symbolizing fancies, presented themselves to him as the primary constituent elements of the universe, and as a sort of magical key to phenomena, physical as well as moral. And these mathematical tendencies in his teaching, expanded by Pythagoreans, his successors, and coinciding partly also, as has been before stated, with the studies of Anaximander and Thalês, acquired more and more development, so as to become one of the most glorious and profitable manifestations of Grecian intellect. Living as Pythagoras did at a time when the stock of experience was scanty, the license of hypothesis unbounded, and the process of deduction without rule or verifying test,—he was thus fortunate enough to strike into that track of geometry and arithmetic, in which, from data of experience few, simple, and obvious, an immense field of deductive and verifiable investigation may be travelled over. We must at the same time remark, however, that in his mind this track, which now seems so straightforward and well defined, was clouded by strange fancies which it is not easy to understand, and from which it was but partially cleared by his successors. Of his spiritual training much is said, though not upon very good authority. We hear of his memorial discipline, his monastic self-scrutiny, his employment of music to soothe disorderly passions,[724] his long novitiate of silence, his knowledge of physiognomy, which enabled him to detect even without trial unworthy subjects, his peculiar diet, and his rigid care for sobriety as well as for bodily vigor. He is also said to have inculcated abstinence from animal food, and this feeling is so naturally connected with the doctrine of the metempsychosis, that we may well believe him to have entertained it, as Empedoklês also did after him.[725] It is certain that there were peculiar observances, and probably a certain measure of self-denial embodied in the Pythagorean life; but on the other hand, it seems equally certain that the members of the order cannot have been all subjected to the same diet, or training, or studies. For Milo the Krotoniate was among them,[726] the strongest man and the unparalleled wrestler of his age,—who cannot possibly have dispensed with animal food and ample diet (even setting aside the tales about his voracious appetite), and is not likely to have bent his attention on speculative study. Probably Pythagoras did not enforce the same bodily or mental discipline on all, or at least knew when to grant dispensations. The order, as it first stood under him, consisted of men different both in temperament and aptitude, but bound together by common religious observances and hopes, common reverence for the master, and mutual attachment as well as pride in each other’s success; and it must thus be distinguished from the Pythagoreans of the fourth century B. C., who had no communion with wrestlers, and comprised only ascetic, studious men, generally recluse, though in some cases rising to political distinction.
The succession of these Pythagoreans, never very numerous, seems to have continued until about 300 B. C., and then nearly died out; being superseded by other schemes of philosophy more suited to cultivated Greeks of the age after Sokratês. But during the time of Cicero, two centuries afterwards, the orientalizing tendency—then beginning to spread over the Grecian and Roman world, and becoming gradually stronger and stronger—caused the Pythagorean philosophy to be again revived. It was revived too, with little or none of its scientific tendencies, but with more than its primitive religious and imaginative fanaticism,—Apollonius of Tyana constituting himself a living copy of Pythagoras. And thus, while the scientific elements developed by the disciples of Pythagoras had become disjoined from all peculiarity of sect, and passed into the general studious world,—the original vein of mystic and ascetic fancy belonging to the master, without any of that practical efficiency of body and mind which had marked his first followers, was taken up anew into the pagan world, along with the disfigured doctrines of Plato. Neo-Pythagorism, passing gradually into Neo-Platonism, outlasted the other more positive and masculine systems of pagan philosophy, as the contemporary and rival of Christianity. A large proportion of the false statements concerning Pythagoras come from these Neo-Pythagoreans, who were not deterred by the want of memorials from illustrating, with ample latitude of fancy, the ideal character of the master.
That an inquisitive man like Pythagoras, at a time when there were hardly any books to study, would visit foreign countries, and converse with all the Grecian philosophical inquirers within his reach, is a matter which we should presume, even if no one attested it; and our witnesses carry us very little beyond this general presumption. What doctrines he borrowed, or from whom, we are unable to discover. But, in fact, his whole life and proceedings bear the stamp of an original mind, and not of a borrower,—a mind impressed both with Hellenic and with non-Hellenic habits and religion, yet capable of combining the two in a manner peculiar to himself; and above all, endued with those talents for religion and personal ascendency over others, which told for much more than the intrinsic merit of his ideas. We are informed that after extensive travels and inquiries he returned to Samos, at the age of about forty: he then found his native island under the despotism of Polykratês, which rendered it an unsuitable place either for free sentiments or for marked individuals. Unable to attract hearers, or found any school or brotherhood, in his native island, he determined to expatriate. And we may presume that at this period (about 535-530 B. C.) the recent subjugation of Ionia by the Persians was not without influence on his determination. The trade between the Asiatic and the Italian Greeks,—and even the intimacy between Milêtus and Knidus on the one side, and Sybaris and Tarentum on the other,—had been great and of long standing, so that there was more than one motive to determine him to the coast of Italy; in which direction also his contemporary Xenophanês, the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, emigrated, seemingly, about the same time,—from Kolophon to Zanklê, Katana, and Elea.[727]
Kroton and Sybaris were at this time in their fullest prosperity,—among the first and most prosperous cities of the Hellenic name. To the former of the two Pythagoras directed his course. A council of one thousand persons, taken from among the heirs and representatives of the principal proprietors at its first foundation, was here invested with the supreme authority: in what manner the executive offices were filled, we have no information. Besides a great extent of power, and a numerous population, the large mass of whom had no share in the political franchise, Kroton stood at this time distinguished for two things,—the general excellence of the bodily habit of the citizens, attested, in part, by the number of conquerors furnished to the Olympic games,—and the superiority of its physicians, or surgeons.[728] These two points were, in fact, greatly connected with each other. For the therapeutics of the day consisted not so much of active remedies as of careful diet and regimen; while the trainer, who dictated the life of an athlete during his long and fatiguing preparation for an Olympic contest, and the professional superintendent of the youths who frequented the public gymnasia, followed out the same general views, and acted upon the same basis of knowledge, as the physician who prescribed for a state of positive bad health.[729] Of medical education properly so called, especially of anatomy, there was then little or nothing. The physician acquired his knowledge from observation of men sick as well as healthy, and from a careful notice of the way in which the human body was acted upon by surrounding agents and circumstances: and this same knowledge was not less necessary for the trainer; so that the same place which contained the best men in the latter class was also likely to be distinguished in the former. It is not improbable that this celebrity of Kroton may have been one of the reasons which determined Pythagoras to go thither; for among the precepts ascribed to him, precise rules as to diet and bodily regulation occupy a prominent place. The medical or surgical celebrity of Dêmokêdês (son-in-law of the Pythagorean Milo), to whom allusion has been made in a former chapter, is contemporaneous with the presence of Pythagoras at Kroton; and the medical men of Magna Græcia maintained themselves in credit, as rivals of the schools of the Asklepiads at Kôs and Knidus, throughout all the fifth and fourth centuries B. C.
The biographers of Pythagoras tell us that his arrival there, his preaching, and his conduct, produced an effect almost electric upon the minds of the people, with an extensive reform, public as well as private. Political discontent was repressed, incontinence disappeared, luxury became discredited, and the women, hastened to exchange their golden ornaments for the simplest attire. No less than two thousand persons were converted at his first preaching; and so effective were his discourses to the youth, that the Supreme Council of One Thousand invited him into their assembly, solicited his advice, and even offered to constitute him their prytanis, or president, while his wife and daughter were placed at the head of the religious processions of females.[730] Nor was his influence confined to Kroton. Other towns in Italy and Sicily,—Sybaris, Metapontum, Rhêgium, Katana, Himera, etc., all felt the benefit of his exhortations, which extricated some of them even from slavery. Such are the tales of which the biographers of Pythagoras are full.[731] And we see that even the disciples of Aristotle, about the year 300 B. C.,—Aristoxenus, Dikæarchus, Herakleidês of Pontus, etc., are hardly less charged with them than the Neo-Pythagoreans of three or four centuries later: they doubtless heard them from their contemporary Pythagoreans,[732] the last members of a declining sect, among whom the attributes of the primitive founder passed for godlike, but who had no memorials, no historical judgment, and no means of forming a true conception of Kroton as it stood in 530 B. C.[733]
To trace these tales to a true foundation is impossible: but we may entertain reasonable belief that the success of Pythagoras, as a person favored by the gods and patentee of divine secrets, was very great,—that he procured to himself both the reverence of the multitude and the peculiar attachment and obedience of many devoted adherents, chiefly belonging to the wealthy and powerful classes,—that a select body of these adherents, three hundred in number, bound themselves by a sort of vow both to Pythagoras and to each other, and adopted a peculiar diet, ritual, and observances, as a token of union,—though without anything like community of property, which some have ascribed to them. Such a band of men, standing high in the city for wealth and station, and bound together by this intimate tie, came by almost unconscious tendency to mingle political ambition with religious and scientific pursuits. Political clubs with sworn members, under one form or another, were a constant phenomenon in the Grecian cities,[734] and the Pythagorean order at its first formation was the most efficient of all clubs; since it presented an intimacy of attachment among its members, as well as a feeling of haughty exclusiveness against the public without, such as no other fraternity could parallel.[735] The devoted attachment of Pythagoreans towards each other is not less emphatically set forth than their contempt for every one else. In fact, these two attributes of the order seem the best ascertained, as well as the most permanent of all: moreover, we may be sure that the peculiar observances of the order passed for exemplary virtues in the eyes of its members, and exalted ambition into a duty, by making them sincerely believe that they were the only persons fit to govern. It is no matter of surprise, then, to learn that the Pythagoreans gradually drew to themselves great ascendency in the government of Kroton. And as similar clubs, not less influential, were formed at Metapontum and other places, so the Pythagorean order spread its net and dictated the course of affairs over a large portion of Magna Græcia. Such ascendency of the Pythagoreans must have procured for the master himself some real, and still more supposed, influence over the march of government at Kroton and elsewhere, of a nature not then possessed by any of his contemporaries throughout Greece.[736] But his influence was probably exercised in the background, through the medium of the brotherhood who reverenced him: for it is hardly conformable to Greek manners that a stranger of his character should guide personally and avowedly the political affairs of any Grecian city.
Nor are we to believe that Pythagoras came originally to Kroton with the express design of creating for himself an ascendent political position,—still less that he came for the purpose of realizing a great preconceived political idea, and transforming Kroton into a model-city of pure Dorism, as has been supposed by some eminent modern authors. Such schemes might indeed be ascribed to him by Pythagoreans of the Platonic age, when large ideas of political amelioration were rife in the minds of speculative men,—by men disposed to forego the authorship of their own opinions, and preferring to accredit them as traditions handed down from a founder who had left no memorials; but it requires better evidence than theirs to make us believe that any real Greek born in 580 B. C. actually conceived such plans. We cannot construe the scheme of Pythagoras as going farther than the formation of a private, select order of brethren, embracing his religious fancies, ethical tone, and germs of scientific idea,—and manifesting adhesion by those observances which Herodotus and Plato call the Pythagorean orgies and mode of life. And his private order became politically powerful, because he was skilful or fortunate enough to enlist a sufficient number of wealthy Krotoniates, possessing individual influence which they strengthened immensely by thus regimenting themselves in intimate union. The Pythagorean orgies or religious ceremonies were not inconsistent with public activity, bodily as well as mental: probably the rich men of the order may have been rendered even more active, by being fortified against the temptations of a life of indulgence. The character of the order as it first stood, different from that to which it was afterwards reduced, was indeed religious and exclusive, but also active and domineering; not despising any of those bodily accomplishments which increased the efficiency of the Grecian citizen, and which so particularly harmonized with the preëxisting tendencies of Kroton.[737] Niebuhr and O. Müller have even supposed that the select Three Hundred Pythagoreans constituted a sort of smaller senate at that city,[738]—an hypothesis no way probable; we may rather conceive them as a powerful private club, exercising ascendency in the interior of the senate, and governing through the medium of the constituted authorities. Nor can we receive without great allowance the assertion of Varro,[739] who, assimilating Pythagoras to Plato, tells us that he confined his instructions on matters of government to chosen disciples, who had gone through a complete training, and had reached the perfection of wisdom and virtue. It seems more probable that the political Pythagoreans were those who were most qualified for action, and least for speculation. And we may reasonably suppose in the general of the order that skill in turning to account the aptitudes of individuals, which two centuries ago was so conspicuous in the Jesuits; to whom, in various ways, the Pythagoreans bear considerable resemblance. All that we can be said to know about their political principles is, that they were exclusive and aristocratical, adverse to the control and interference of the people; a circumstance no way disadvantageous to them, since they coincided in this respect with the existing government of the city,—had not their own conduct brought additional odium on the old aristocracy, and raised up an aggravated democratical opposition, carried to the most deplorable lengths of violence.
All the information which we possess, apocryphal as it is, respecting this memorable club, is derived from its warm admirers; yet even their statements are enough to explain how it came to provoke deadly and extensive enmity. A stranger coming to teach new religious dogmas and observances, with a tincture of science and some new ethical ideas and phrases, though he would obtain some zealous votaries, would also bring upon himself a certain measure of antipathy. Extreme strictness of observances, combined with the art of touching skilfully the springs of religious terror in others, would indeed do much both to fortify and to exalt him. But when it was discovered that science, philosophy, and even the mystic revelations of religion, whatever they were, remained confined to the private talk and practice of the disciples, and were thus thrown into the background, while all that was seen and felt without, was the political predominance of an ambitious fraternity,—we need not wonder that Pythagorism in all its parts became odious to a large portion of the community. Moreover, we find the order represented not merely as constituting a devoted and exclusive political party, but also as manifesting an ostentatious self-conceit throughout their personal demeanor,[740]—refusing the hand of fellowship to all except the brethren, and disgusting especially their own familiar friends and kinsmen. So far as we know Grecian philosophy, this is the only instance in which it was distinctly abused for political and party objects: the early days of the Pythagorean order stand distinguished for such perversion, which, fortunately for the progress of philosophy, never presented itself afterwards in Greece.[741] Even at Athens, however, we shall hereafter see that Sokratês, though standing really aloof from all party intrigue, incurred much of his unpopularity from supposed political conjunction with Kritias and Alkibiadês,[742] to which, indeed, the orator Æschinês distinctly ascribes his condemnation, speaking about sixty years after the event. Had Sokratês been known as the founder of a band holding together intimately for ambitious purposes, the result would have been eminently pernicious to philosophy, and probably much sooner pernicious to himself.
It was this cause which brought about the complete and violent destruction of the Pythagorean order. Their ascendency had provoked such wide-spread discontent, that their enemies became emboldened to employ extreme force against them. Kylon and Ninon—the former of whom is said to have sought admittance into the order, but to have been rejected on account of his bad character—took the lead in pronounced opposition to the Pythagoreans; and the odium which the latter had incurred extended itself farther to the Senate of One Thousand, through the medium of which their ascendency had been exercised. Propositions were made for rendering the government more democratical, and for constituting a new senate, taken by lot from all the people, before which the magistrates should go through their trial of accountability after office; an opportunity being chosen in which the Senate of One Thousand had given signal offence by refusing to divide among the people the recently conquered territory of Sybaris.[743] In spite of the opposition of the Pythagoreans, this change of government was carried through. Ninon and Kylon, their principal enemies, made use of it to exasperate the people still farther against the order, until they provoked actual popular violence against it. The Pythagoreans were attacked when assembled in their meeting-house near the temple of Apollo, or, as some said, in the house of Milo: the building was set on fire, and many of the members perished;[744] none but the younger and more vigorous escaping. Similar disturbances, and the like violent suppression of the order, with destruction of several among the leading citizens, are said to have taken place in other cities of Magna Græcia,—Tarentum, Metapontum, Kaulonia. And we are told that these cities remained for some time in a state of great disquietude and commotion from which they were only rescued by the friendly mediation of the Peloponnesian Achæans, the original founders of Sybaris and Kroton,—assisted, indeed, by mediators from other parts of Greece. The cities were at length pacified, and induced to adopt an amicable congress, with common religious festivals at a temple founded expressly for the purpose, and dedicated to Zeus Homarius.[745]