140. Such, so far as we can see, was the historical Philolaos, and he is a sufficiently remarkable figure. He is usually, however, represented in a different light, and has even been spoken of as a “precursor of Copernicus.” To understand this, we shall have to consider for a little the story of what can only be called a literary conspiracy. Not till this has been exposed will it be possible to estimate the real importance of Philolaos and his immediate disciples.

As we can see from the Phaedo and the Gorgias, Plato was intimate with these men and was deeply impressed by their religious teaching, though it is plain too that he did not adopt it as his own faith. He was still more attracted by the scientific side of Pythagoreanism, and to the last this exercised a great influence on him. His own system in its final form had many points of contact with it, as he is careful to mark in the Philebus.[[744]] But, just because he stood so near it, he is apt to develop Pythagoreanism on lines of his own, which may or may not have commended themselves to Archytas, but are no guide to the views of Philolaos and Eurytos. He is not careful, however, to claim the authorship of his own improvements in the system. He did not believe that cosmology could be an exact science, and he is therefore quite willing to credit Timaios the Lokrian, or “ancient sages” generally, with theories which certainly had their birth in the Academy.

Now Plato had many enemies and detractors, and this literary device enabled them to bring against him the charge of plagiarism. Aristoxenos was one of these enemies, and we know he made the extraordinary statement that most of the Republic was to be found in a work by Protagoras.[[745]] He seems also to be the original source of the story that Plato bought “three Pythagorean books” from Philolaos and copied the Timaeus out of them. According to this, the “three books” had come into the possession of Philolaos; and, as he had fallen into great poverty, Dion was able to buy them from him, or from his relatives, at Plato’s request, for a hundred minae.[[746]] It is certain, at any rate, that this story was already current in the third century; for the sillographer Timon of Phleious addresses Plato thus: “And of thee too, Plato, did the desire of discipleship lay hold. For many pieces of silver thou didst get in exchange a small book, and starting from it didst learn to write Timaeus.”[[747]] Hermippos, the pupil of Kallimachos, said that “some writer” said that Plato himself bought the books from the relatives of Philolaos for forty Alexandrian minae and copied the Timaeus out of it; while Satyros, the Aristarchean, says he got it through Dion for a hundred minae.[[748]] There is no suggestion in any of these accounts that the book was by Philolaos himself; they imply rather that what Plato bought was either a book by Pythagoras, or at any rate authentic notes of his teaching, which had come into the hands of Philolaos. In later times, it was generally supposed that the work entitled The Soul of the World, by Timaios the Lokrian, was meant;[[749]] but it has now been proved beyond a doubt that this cannot have existed earlier than the first century A.D. We know nothing of Timaios except what Plato tells us himself, and he may even be a fictitious character like the Eleatic Stranger. His name does not occur among the Lokrians in the Catalogue of Pythagoreans preserved by Iamblichos.[[750]] Besides this, the work does not fulfil the most important requirement, that of being in three books, which is always an essential feature of the story.[[751]]

Not one of the writers just mentioned professes to have seen the famous “three books”;[[752]] but at a later date there were at least two works which claimed to represent them. Diels has shown how a treatise in three sections, entitled Παιδευτικόν, πολιτικόν, φυσικόν, was composed in the Ionic dialect and attributed to Pythagoras. It was largely based on the Πυθαγορικαὶ ἀποφάσεις of Aristoxenos, but its date is uncertain.[[753]] In the first century B.C., Demetrios Magnes was able to quote the opening words of the work published by Philolaos.[[754]] That, however, was written in Doric. Demetrios does not actually say it was by Philolaos himself, though it is no doubt the same work from which a number of extracts are preserved under his name in Stobaios and later writers. If it professed to be by Philolaos, that was not quite in accordance with the original story; but it is easy to see how his name may have become attached to it. We are told that the other book which passed under the name of Pythagoras was really by Lysis.[[755]] Boeckh has shown that the work ascribed to Philolaos probably consisted of three books also, and Proclus referred to it as the Bakchai,[[756]] a fanciful title which recalls the “Muses” of Herodotos. Two of the extracts in Stobaios bear it. It must be confessed that the whole story is very suspicious; but, as some of the best authorities still regard the fragments as partly genuine, it is necessary to look at them more closely.

The “Fragments of Philolaos.”

141. Boeckh argued with great learning and skill that all the fragments preserved under the name of Philolaos were genuine; but no one will now go so far as this. The lengthy extract on the soul is given up even by those who maintain the genuineness of the rest.[[757]] It cannot be said that this position is plausible on the face of it. Boeckh saw there was no ground for supposing that there ever was more than a single work, and he drew the conclusion that we must accept all the remains as genuine or reject all as spurious.[[758]] As, however, Zeller and Diels still maintain the genuineness of most of the fragments, we cannot ignore them altogether. Arguments based, on the doctrine contained in them would, it is true, present the appearance of a vicious circle at this stage. It is only in connexion with our other evidence that these can be introduced. But there are two serious objections to the fragments which may be mentioned at once. They are sufficiently strong to justify us in refusing to use them till we have ascertained from other sources what doctrines may fairly be attributed to the Pythagoreans of this date.

In the first place, we must ask a question which has not yet been faced. Is it likely that Philolaos should have written in Doric? Ionic was the dialect of all science and philosophy till the time of the Peloponnesian War, and there is no reason to suppose that the early Pythagoreans used any other.[[759]] Pythagoras was himself an Ionian, and it is by no means clear that in his time the Achaian states in which he founded his Order had already adopted the Dorian dialect.[[760]] Alkmaion of Kroton seems to have written in Ionic.[[761]] Diels says, it is true, that Philolaos and then Archytas were the first Pythagoreans to use the dialect of their homes;[[762]] but Philolaos can hardly be said to have had a home,[[763]] and the fragments of Archytas are not written in the dialect of Taras, but in what may be called “common Doric.” Archytas may have found it convenient to use that dialect; but he is at least a generation later than Philolaos, which makes a great difference. There is evidence that, in the time of Philolaos and later, Ionic was still used even by the citizens of Dorian states for scientific purposes. Diogenes of Apollonia in Crete and the Syracusan historian Antiochos wrote in Ionic, while the medical writers of Dorian, Kos and Knidos, continue to use the same dialect. The forged work of Pythagoras referred to above, which some ascribed to Lysis, was in Ionic; and so was the work on the Akousmata attributed to Androkydes,[[764]] which shows that, even down to Alexandrian times, it was still believed that Ionic was the proper dialect for Pythagorean writings.

In the second place, there can be no doubt that one of the fragments refers to the five regular solids, four of which are identified with the elements of Empedokles.[[765]] Now Plato gives us to understand, in a well-known passage of the Republic, that stereometry had not been adequately investigated at the time he wrote,[[766]] and we have express testimony that the five “Platonic figures,” as they were called, were discovered in the Academy. In the Scholia to Euclid we read that the Pythagoreans only knew the cube, the pyramid (tetrahedron), and the dodecahedron, while the octahedron and the icosahedron were discovered by Theaitetos.[[767]] This sufficiently justifies us in regarding the “fragments of Philolaos” with something more than suspicion. We shall find more anachronisms as we go on.

The Problem.

142. We must look, then, for other evidence. From what has been said, it will be clear that we cannot safely take Plato as our guide to the original meaning of the Pythagorean theory, though it is certainly from him alone that we can learn to regard it sympathetically. Aristotle, on the other hand, was quite out of sympathy with Pythagorean ways of thinking, but took a great deal of pains to understand them. This was just because they played so great a part in the philosophy of Plato and his successors, and he had to make the relation of the two doctrines as clear as he could to himself and his disciples. What we have to do, then, is to interpret what Aristotle tells us in the spirit of Plato, and then to consider how the doctrine we arrive at in this way is related to the systems which had preceded it. It is a delicate operation, no doubt, but it has been made much safer by recent discoveries in the early history of mathematics and medicine.