Greek Texts & Translations

The same authority, as we have seen, asserts that Pythagoras took his doctrines from the Delphic priestess Themistoclea. Hieronymus, however, says that, when he had descended into Hades, he saw the soul of Hesiod bound fast to a brazen pillar and gibbering, and the soul of Homer hung on a tree with serpents writhing about it, this being their punishment for what they had said about the gods ; he also saw under torture those who would not remain faithful to their wives. This, says our authority, is why he was honoured by the people of Croton. Aristippus of Cyrene affirms in his work On the Physicists that he was named Pythagoras because he uttered the truth as infallibly as did the Pythian oracle. ^note

He is said to have advised his disciples as follows : Always to say on entering their own doors :

Where did I trespass? What did I achieve?

And unfulfilled what duties did I leave?

Not to let victims be brought for sacrifice to the gods, and to worship only at the altar unstained with blood. Not to call the gods to witness, man's duty being rather to strive to make his own word carry conviction. To honour their elders, on the principle that precedence in time gives a greater title to respect ; for as in the world sunrise comes before sunset, so in human life the beginning before the end, and in all organic life birth precedes death. 8.1.23 And he further bade them to honour gods before demi-gods, heroes before men, and first among men their parents ; and so to behave one to another as not to make friends into enemies, but to turn enemies into friends. To deem nothing their own. To support the law, to wage war on lawlessness. Never to kill or injure trees that are not wild, nor even any animal that does not injure man. That it is seemly and advisable neither to give way to unbridled laughter nor to wear sullen looks. To avoid excess of flesh, on a journey to let exertion and slackening alternate, to train the memory, in wrath to restrain hand and tongue, to respect all divination, 8.1.24 to sing to the lyre and by hymns to show due gratitude to gods and to good men. To abstain from beans because they are flatulent and partake most of the breath of life ; and besides, it is better for the stomach if they are not taken, and this again will make our dreams in sleep smooth and untroubled.

Alexander in his Successions of Philosophers says that he found in the Pythagorean memoirs the following tenets as well. ^note 8.1.25 The principle of all things is the monad or unit ; arising from this monad the undefined dyad or two serves as material substratum to the monad, which is cause ; from the monad and the undefined dyad spring numbers ; from numbers, points ; from points, lines ; from lines, plane figures ; from plane figures, solid figures ; from solid figures, sensible bodies, the elements of which are four, fire, water, earth and air; these elements interchange and turn into one another completely, and combine to produce a universe animate, intelligent, spherical, with the earth at its centre, the earth itself too being spherical and inhabited round about. 8.1.26 There are also antipodes, and our "down" is their "up." Light and darkness have equal part ^note in the universe, so have hot and cold, and dry and moist ; and of these, if hot preponderates, we have summer; if cold, winter; if dry, spring; if moist, late autumn. If all are in equilibrium, we have the best periods of the year, of which the freshness of spring constitutes the healthy season, and the decay of late autumn the unhealthy. So too, in the day, freshness belongs to the morning, and decay to the evening, which is therefore more unhealthy. The air about the earth is stagnant and unwholesome, and all within it is mortal; but the uppermost air is ever-moved and pure and healthy, and all within it is immortal and consequently divine. 8.1.27 The sun, the moon, and the other stars are gods; for, in them, there is a preponderance of heat, and heat is the cause of life. The moon is illumined by the sun. Gods and men are akin, inasmuch as man partakes of heat ; therefore God takes thought for man. Fate is the cause of things being thus ordered both as a whole and separately. The sun's ray penetrates through the aether, whether cold or dense - the air they call cold aether, and the sea and moisture dense aether - and this ray descends even to the depths and for this reason quickens all things.