Special attention has been dedicated to the political dimension of Pythagorean- ism ever since Krische’s 1830 monograph asserted, peremptorily, that the mark of Pythagorean societas was eminently political: “The scope of the Society was purely political, not only to initially restore the failed power of the aristocrats, but to enhance and amplify it”.⁶⁰
In the early twentieth century archaeological studies revealed the supremacy of Pythagorean cities throughout Magna Graecia, which was confirmed by Kahr- stedt’s study of the distribution throughout the region of coins minted by Croton,
59 Guthrie 1962: 147.
60 Krische 1830: 101, orig.: “Societatis scopus fuit mere politicus, ut lapsam optimatum po- testatem non modo in pristinum restitueret, sed firmaret amplificaretque”.
especially after Sybaris’ defeat in 510 BC.⁶¹ Croton’s domination over the rest of the Dorian city-colonies of Magna Graecia confirmed the extent of the Pythagor- ean political influence: in fact, most of these coins have Pythagorean symbols.⁶² And yet, as already mentioned, the first historiographical and philosophical approaches to Pythagorean politics were strongly influenced by Zeller’s skepti- cism, which, in turn, guided Diels’ Vorsokratiker collection. Consequently most scholars considered the issue of Pythagorean politics simply accidental (Cen- trone 1996: 196).
It is necessary to agree with Minar’s view that the relationship between phil- osophical thought and political practice in the history of Pythagoreanism has challenged the ingenuity of classicists (D. S. M. 1943: 79): this naivete would tend– if left to its own fate – to lead to the rejection of the political connections based on an a priori argument that a man like Pythagoras could not be involved in this type of activity (Minar 1942: 15).
Therefore, the problem of Pythagorean political activity presents a multifac- eted framework of issues: not only because of the complex relationships between earlier and later sources, including the uncertain chronology of domination (and defeat) of the Pythagoreans in Magna Graecia and the unclear influence of Py- thagoras on these forms of Pythagoreanism, but also, perhaps mainly, because of the theoretical difficulty of articulating the relationship between philosophy and politics. Starting even with Aristotle, this relationship had begun to be seen as somewhat inappropriate.
Delatte’s 1922a Essai sur la politique pythagoricienne is the fundamental work on this topic. Delatte’s exhaustive study of the sources for Pythagorean pol- itics led him to believe that the early Pythagoreans were an effective political force in Croton, but he also refers to a later period, especially to the fourth cen- tury BC, the century of Archytas and Aristoxenus, and evidence of the attempts of these men to combine political activity with the main lines of Pythagorean philosophical thought. Previously, Delatte argues, the goal of the Pythagorean koinōníai was “inner peace” and they refrained from reformist action and serious involvement in the political institutions of their cities:“Society wants only the
61 Kahrstedt 1918: 186. See also Seltman 1933, De Vogel 1957: 323 and May 1966.
62 See Seltman’s coins (1933: 76–80, 100, 118, 144) and May 1966: 157, 167. Especially coin n. 28 (Seltman 1933: 144), depicting a bearded man with the inscription PUTHAGORES, which could be a portrait of Pythagoras himself, and as such has already been used by Guthrie 1962 for the cover of the first volume of his History of Greek Philosophy. Philip 1966: 194 is, however, skeptical about the possibility of the image depicting Pythagoras’ real face.
inner peace that will secure its own peace of mind and keep the existing insti- tutions, of which it became the keeper”.⁶³
Moreover, even if it is true that the Pythagorean community was somehow involved in political activity, it is not correct to infer that Pythagoras himself was directly involved in such activities:
We can therefore conclude that the political system with aristocratic tendencies which, ac- cording to Timaeus, marked the end of the history of Society, was not born of an impulse of Pythagoras, and was in all likelihood even foreign to his reform plan.⁶⁴
Consequently, Delatte identifies the key element of the pro-democratic, anti-Py- thagorean riots not as the result of the political compromise of the community as such, with its conservative and aristocratic sense (rather, more appropriately considered as a moral force), but rather from the attitudes of some individuals who abused their prestige and ended up dragging it to the conflict in a reactive movement to the attacks that followed, and therefore under the form of self-de- fense (Delatte 1922a: 19–20).
Jaeger 1928, in turn, supports the Zellerian thesis that the political stance at- tributed to the Pythagoreans was simply a projection of the ideal of a practical life proposed by Aristoxenus and Dicearchus. Jaeger’s Pythagoras, in line with Delatte, was an educator, who emphasized music and mathematics.
However, Von Fritz 1940 wonders whether we can even say that the ancient Pythagorean community had political control over the cities of Magna Graecia. Through an“austere investigation of the sources” (Tate 1942: 74), he argues that Aristoxenus is the most reliable witness to the political system of the Pytha- gorean communities, and Von Fritz skeptically concludes that:
Ancient tradition does not provide the slightest evidence for the existence of anything like a real rule of the Pythagoreans in any of the cities of Southern Italy at any time.⁶⁵
Ultimately, Von Fritz’s position does not differ substantially from that of his pred- ecessors: the Pythagoreans’ political commitment should not be treated as phil-
63 Delatte 1922a: 21, orig.: “la Société désire seulement la paix intérieure, qui lui assure sa propre tranquillité, et le mantien des instituitions existantes, dont elle est devenue maîtresse”. 64 Delatte 1922a: 18, orig.: “On peut donc conclure que la politique à tendances aristocratiques qui, selon Timée, caractérise la fin de l’historie de la Société, n’est pas née d’une impulsion de Pythagore, et même que la politique était, selon toute vraisemblance, étrangère à son plan de reformes”.
osophically important, but rather should be attributed to the personal choices, perhaps religiously motivated, of a few isolated members of the koinōnía.
It is only Minar’s 1942 work dedicated to the politics of the early Pythagor- eans that makes clear the dangers and historiographical presuppositions inher- ent in separating Pythagorean philosophy from its political effects. In the preface to this work, he describes the paradox of a philosophical movement simultane- ously controlling the political sphere in which its work is interpreted:
That the Pythagorean Society exercised a political influence in the cities of southern Italy in the sixth and the fifth centuries B.C. has long been a recognized fact. But the paradox of a philosophical school being involved in political activity has brought a certain amount of difficulty into the historical evaluation of the facts.⁶⁶
Minar acknowledges that several ancient authors explicitly claim that the Pytha- goreans (and even Pythagoras himself) formally exercised government control in Croton and other cities (Minar 1942: 16): Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry, Iambli- chus, and Cicero, among others.⁶⁷ Therefore, he opposes the argument of his predecessors that political activity was an isolated activity of some Pythagor- eans. Two considerations count against this argument: on one hand, the highly centralized nature of the community makes isolated political activity unlikely, on the other hand, the historical record suggests that the revolt was directed against the Pythagorean community as a whole. Both traditions would make it improb- able that political choice was limited to the marginal activity of a few members:
The highly centralized character of the Society, which von Fritz recognizes, makes it unlike- ly that Pythagorean political activity was merely that of individual members; and the fact that a revolt against the government in power was the same thing as an attack against the Society, or at least involved such an attack as an integral part, strongly suggests that the Pythagorean Society was recognized as the real ruler in Croton and most of the cities of Magna Graecia.⁶⁸
Pythagoreanism, as a movement, ruled over many cities in Magna Graecia. It is the job of modern historians, who are usually unaccustomed to such a close re- lationship between philosophy and politics, to understand the dynamic unity of the two dimensions of Pythagoreanism.
Minar’s attempt to link these two parts together is probably the least con- vincing part of his reading. His solution is to give the doctrinal component of
66 Minar 1942: v.
67 D. L. Vitae VIII. 3; Porph. VP: 20, 21, 54; Iambl. VP: 30, 130, 249, 254; Cicero, Tusc. Disp.V. 4.10. 68 Minar 1942: 18.
the Pythagorean political philosophy a much lower importance than one would expect (Minar 1942: 95–132). Rather than treat the Pythagorean political views as a strict extension of their philosophy, Minar reduces Pythagoras and his move- ment to a political society marked by some degree of opportunism and pragma- tism.⁶⁹
It is no accident that many Italian scholars were interested in Pythagorean- ism and especially its political dimensions: putting aside Capparelli’s chauvinis- tic extremes (1941), several authors, starting with Rostagno 1922 and Mondolfo’s revision of Zeller (1938), sought to link the mystical and scientific dimensions in a complex historiographical framework in which the political dimension plays a central role. The meaning of this tradition can be understood by the definition that opens Ferrero’s classic work, Storia del Pitagorismo nel mondo Romano (1955):
Pythagoreanism, as the facts attest, proved to be something larger than and different from an abstract cultural phenomenon, a manifestation of a special religious-dogmatic purpose, or even a merely intellectual movement. It was, if we are not mistaken, the expression of a social and political reality connected to a permanent structure of the ancient world; it was the characteristic expression of an organization of intellectuals which sought to respond to the demands of a dominant group, of a political elite, which at first, as with theocracies, identified itself and was identical with the intellectuals themselves.⁷⁰
The Italian appropriation of Pythagoreanism had its origins in Roman times. A brief excursus on this tradition clearly shows the depth of the ethno-political identification of Pythagoreanism with Italian culture.
By utilizing ambiguity in the term“Italian philosophy”, and appealing to a legend that Pythagoras was the son of a Tyrrhenian, that is, an Etruscan, many claim Pythagoras as one of the forefathers of Rome’s political, philosophical and
69 One must agree here with De Vogel 1966: 13 when she suggests that Minar would conclude that“Pythagoras was rather a shrewd politician, an aristocratic reactionary at a time of rising democracy– and that all this had nothing to do with philosophy”. Minar 1942: 99 seems to credit the political doctrine of the Pythagoreans with the simple function of a superstructure, stating that“the relationship between practice and theory will be seen most clearly through an analysis of the doctrinal superstructure which this group built up about its political activity”. 70 Ferrero 1955: 21, orig.: “Il pitagorismo alla prova dei fatti si dimostró qualcosa di più e di diverso di un astratto fenomeno di cultura, della manifestazione di un particolare indirizzo religioso-dogmatico, o infine di una mera espressione intellettualisica. Esso fu, se non andiamo errati, specialmente l’espressione di un fatto sociale e politico collegato ad una struttura per- manente del mondo antico; fu l’espressione caratteristica di un’organizzazione degli intellettuali rispondente alle esigenze di un gruppo dominante, di un’eletta politica, la quale in un primo tempo, al pari delle teocrazie, si identificò e fu una cosa sola con i proprii intellettuali.
religious culture.⁷¹ The Samian philosopher ends up in the lists of Roman citi- zens (Pliny, Hist. Nat. XXXIV 26) and is identified as the teacher of the king-priest Numa Pompilius (Plutarch, Life of Numa I. 8). Cicero, in the process of dispelling the anachronistic error that Pythagoras was Numa’s teacher, ends up instead confirming the patriotic tradition from which it derives:
I believe that, on account of his admiration for the Pythagoreans, king Numa too was iden- tified by posterity as a Pythagorean. For since they knew of Pythagoras’ teaching and rules, and had learned from their ancestors of the fairness and wisdom of that king, but since through the lapse of time they were ignorant of the lifetimes of those men and the times in which they lived they believed that the king, who excelled in wisdom, was a disciple of Pythagoras.⁷²
In several Ciceronian pages, the Pythagoreans, defined as“our near fellow citi- zens, they who were then called Italic philosophers” (Cato Maior XXI. 78), be- came a central chapter in the glorious history of Rome (Tusc. Disput. IV).⁷³ A fa- mous passage of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (XV. 1–447), as well as one from Plu- tarch’s Life of Numa (I. 8 and 11), reaffirm the connection between Numa and Py- thagoras, consolidating, the earlier tradition of Pythagoras’ Romanness and Ital- ianness.⁷⁴
The philosophico-theological literature of the Middle Ages, despite lacking access to the Lives of Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry and Iamblichus, amongst other less important sources, kept alive the tradition of Pythagoras. Ambrose re- calls the Pythagorean sayings and several placita; Augustine, who frequently re- ferred favorably to Pythagoras and Pythagorean philosophy in his early works ultimately changed his mind, saying:“I once believed that there were no errors in the so-called Pythagorean doctrine, but there are many, and even capital
71 Aristoxenus’s testimony about Pythagoras’ Etruscan father is located, among others, in Plutarch, Quaest. Conv. VIII, 7, 1.
72 Cicero, Tusc. Disp. IV. 1–2, orig.: “Quin etiam arbitror propter Pythagoreorum admirationem Numam quoque regem Pythagoreum a posterioribus existimatum. Nam cum Pythagorae disci- plinam et instituta cognoscerent regisque eius aequitatem et sapientiam a maioribus suis ac- cepissent, aetates autem et tempora ignorarent propter vetustatem, eum, qui sapientia excel- leret, Pythagorae auditorem crediderunt fuisse”.
73 Cicero, Cato Maior XXI. 78, orig.: “incolae paene nostros, qui essent italici philosophi quondam nominati”.
74 Titus Livius recalls, in this sense, a very significant fact: In 181 AD, a box of books that are thought to have been written by Numa himself was found in Rome (Liv. XL. 29). Defined as “Pythagorean” and dedicated to religious themes and wisdom, these books were burnt (sic) at the behest of the authorities, who feared threats to official religion.
ones”.⁷⁵ Augustine joined Tertullian and Lactantius, in recognizing the primary mistake of the Samius sophista– the belief in metempsýchōsis.⁷⁶
In the wake of the recovery of Platonism, the Italian Quattrocento immedi- ately proceeded to revive Pythagoras as a member of the Italian past. The recov- ery of the Latin sources plays a fundamental role in this development. From the first Life of Pythagoras, written by Baldi 1888 in the vernacular to the figure of Pythagoras found in Petrarch (Triumphus fame III. 7–8), there is a slow appropri- ation of Pythagoreanism. This appropriation did not remain a mere literary exer- cise, but reached a speculative dimension with Nicholas of Cusa, the erudite scholar from the Roman Church, whose negative theology appealed to the Pytha- gorean number-geometry of the Timaeus and the Republic. The doctrine of the trinity is also claimed to come from Pythagoras: “This is the threefold unity that Pythagoras, first among all philosophers, the glory of Italy and Greece, taught us to worship”.⁷⁷
Two Italian intellectual figures of the first order engaged with Pythagorean- ism during this period: Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. Ficino attempt- ed to situate Florence, city of the Medici, in Western intellectual history as the successor to Athens and Rome and to position himself as continuing the Acad- emy, undertakes the project of translating the Platonic corpus through the influ- ence of Neopythagorean exegesis. In his introduction to the translation of Ploti- nus, Ficino had previously summarized the place of Pythagoras in history:
The sacred philosophy was born under Zoroaster among the Persians, under Mercury among the Egyptians, both in the one place and in the other consistent and coherent with itself; then it grew among the Thracians under Orpheus and Aglaophemus, matured among the Greeks and the Italians under Pythagoras, and became an adult in Athens, under the divine Plato.⁷⁸
75 Augustine, Retr., PL 32: col. 58–9, orig.: “me credidisse nullos errores in Pythagorica esse doctrina, cum sint plures, iidemque capitales”.
76 See, for these authors, the following pages: Tertullian, De Anima, PL 2: col. 697–701; Lac- tantius, Div. Inst., PL 6, col. 405–9 and De vita beata, PL 6: col. 777; Augustine, Against Acad., PL 32: col. 954; Ambrosius, In salm., PL 15: col. 1275.
77 Cusano 1972: 68, orig.: “Questa è quella unità trina che Pitagora, primo tra tutti i filosofi, gloria d’Italia and di Grecia, ci ha insegnato ad adorare”.
78 Ficino 1576: 1537, orig.: “Divina providentia volente videlicet omnes pro singulorum ingenio, ad se mirabiliter revocare, factum est, ut pia quaedam philosophia quodam et apud Persas sub Zoroastre, et apud Aegyptios sub Mercurio nasceretur, utrobique; sibimet consonas: nutriretur deinde apud Thrace sub Orpheo atque Aglaophemo: adolesceret quoque mox sub Pythagora apud Graecos et: in Italos tandem vero a Divo Platone consumaretur Athenis”.
In another work, Pythagoras again appears in a genealogy of ancient philosophy, or rather of prisca theologia, from Hermes Trismegistus to Plato:
[Hermes] was succeeded by Orpheus, to whom have been attributed the following parts of the ancient theology; later, Aglaophemus, who had been initiated into the sacred rites by Orpheus, was succeeded in theology by Pythagoras, of whom Philolaus was a disciple, the same who was Plato’s preceptor. Therefore, a single sect of ancient philosophy, every- where coherent with itself, was established by six theologians, in a wonderful order, which is inaugurated by Mercury and is fully accomplished with the divine Plato.⁷⁹
The idea of Pythagoras as a priscus philosophus, placed within a larger tradition, assumes the universalist vision also developed by Pico della Mirandola: Pico drew connections between Pythagorean philosophy, the Kabbalah, the Chaldean Oracles and Arabic wisdom. As Pico prepared himself to discuss nine hundred propositions drawn from various wisdom traditions in Rome, he desperately asked Ficino (with the urgency well-known to every historian) to lend him the codex containing Iamblichus’ Pythagorean Life: “in this much needed time for my studies”.⁸⁰ Pico considered Pythagoreanism to be the main bridge to ancient Eastern wisdom.
Constraints of space prevent us from examining the Italian path of the Py- thagorean tradition more closely.⁸¹ What matters here is to note that modern Ital- ian historians have recovered the tradition of studying Pythagorean politics with- in archaeological and historical studies of Magna Graecia; see, for instance, Prontera 1976 and 1977, Mele 1982, 2000 and 2007 and Musti 1990. However, Ital- ian historians of philosophy have also considered the importance of Pythagoras: among them, besides the aforementioned Ferrero 1955, the studies of Casertano
79 Ficino 1576: 1836. This is from Argumentum Marsilij Ficini Florentini, in librum Mercurij Trismegisti, ad Cosmum Medicem, that is, the dedicatory letter addressed to Cosimo de Medici on the occasion of the translation of the first 14 booklets of Corpus Hermeticum. In the original: “cum secutus Orpheus, secundas antiquae theologiae partes obtinuit. Orphei sacris initiatus est Aglaophemo successit in theologia Pythagoras, quem Philolaus sectatus est, divi Platonis nostril praeceptor. Itaque una priscae theologiae undique sibi consona secta, ex theologis sex miro quodam ordine conflata est, exordia sumens a Mercurio, a divo Platone penitus absoluta”. Ficino aims to construct an archeology of knowledge, in which he uses earlier texts and authors to explain the subsequent history of thought (Tambrun-Krasker 1999: 20–22).
80 Pico della Mirandola 1572: 361, orig.: “hoc tempore ad mea studia plurimum necessarium”. 81 Such an examination would have to follow the path traced by Casini 1998, among others. For the influence of Pythagoreanism on Renaissance Europe art and architecture, see Gaugier-Joost’s 2009 extensive monograph, which agrees that the Pythagorean revival began in Italy: “the