D. The Pythagoreans

It is no doubt significant that our earliest indications of the existence of an allegorical understanding of Homer are associated with southern Italy and can be dated to a period very shortly after Pythagoreanism be-

[95] See Morrow's notes to his translation of the commentary, ad loc. : p. 132, n. 129, and p. 38, n. 88.

^[96]

[97] In Phdr . 151.7, 11.

[98] In Phdr . 233.21.

^[99]

[100] E.g., In Phdr . 154.15; 247.20; 148.18; 142.10, 14; 193.6.

^[101]

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came established there. A Porphyrian scholion on the battle of the gods in Iliad 20^[102] explains the battle as a physical, then a moral allegory, and continues: "This kind of answer [to those who attack Homer] is very old, dating from Theagenes of Rhegium, who was the first to write about Homer."^[103] Several other ancient sources, none referring specifically to allegorical interpretation, confirm that Theagenes was an early Homer scholar and make it possible to fix his floruit around 525 B.C .^[104] Among the modern scholars who have examined the problem, Armand Delatte^[105] suspected Pythagorean influence on Theagenes, but Félix Buffière^[106] was reluctant to believe that the Pythagoreans were concerned with the sort of physical allegory attributed to Theagenes by Porphyry. The most recent scholar to look into the question is Marcel Detienne,^[107] whose conclusions are convincing. He argues that we have good reason to believe that Theagenes was a grammarian and hence unlikely to be the creator of the allegorical method. Furthermore, the Porphyrian scholion quoted above seems to attribute to Theagenes the simultaneous creation of both physical and moral allegory—an unlikely accomplishment for any one individual, much less a grammarian. Theagenes, Detienne concludes, was simply a grammarian who wrote on Homer and who may or may not have been influenced by the Pythagoreans who were undoubtedly present in Rhegium in his time: he simply mentioned the modes of interpretation he knew to be in use, which included physical and moral allegory. The important point to be gained from our meagre information on Theagenes is that both of these modes of allegory date from the period of the first Pythagoreans, ca. 525 B.C .

Given, then, that moral and physical allegory are at least as old as Pythagoreanism and that the contributions of Neopythagoreanism to the mystical allegorical interpretation of Homer articulated and transmitted by the Neoplatonists are quite substantial,^[108] one must ask to

[102] B scholion on Il . 20.67; Schol. in Il ., ed. Dindorf, vol. 4, P. 231; see Porph. Quaest hom ., ed. Schrader, vol. 1, pp. 240-41.

^[103]

[104] If the attack on Homer goes back to the poet's own time, then the apologia for Homer must be of comparable age (see above, n. 43). On the dating of Theagenes, cf. Buffière, Mythes d'Homère , pp. 103-4.

[105] Delatte, Etudes sur la littérature pythagoricienne , p. 115.

[106] Buffière, Mythes d'Homère .

[107] Detienne, Homère, Hésiode, et Pythagore , pp. 65-67.

[108] See ch. 2B below on Numenius.

― 33 ―

what extent the latter mode of exegesis may have depended on early Pythagorean interpretation. Buffière minimized the importance of early Pythagoreanism in the evolution of the allegorical tradition and placed great emphasis on the late second century—the period of Numenius—as the cradle of the mystical allegory of Homer, which for him is primarily Neoplatonic.^[109] Other scholars have reacted strongly against his formulation, however, and have argued eloquently for the archaic roots of the mystical allegory of Homer in early Pythagorean ism.^[110]

The tradition—or rather traditions—of ancient Pythagoreanism are notoriously difficult to reconstruct. The school's emphasis on secrecy prevented the general dissemination of a Pythagorean literature and favored the production of pseudepigrapha. The nature of the evidence is such that scholarly consensus on the content of the teaching of Pythagoras himself and of Pythagoreans before the time of Plato is a remote goal. In spite of this, substantial advances have been made in this century, and

[109] Cf. Buffière in his edition of Heraclitus's Allegories , p. xxix: "l'exégèse mystique et pythagoricienne, dont on ne trouve aucune trace précise avant le temps de Plutarque." At the same time, he acknowledges the Pythagorean sources of Porphyry's essay on the cave of the nymphs (Mythes d'Homère , pp. 423-24), though it is clear he thinks of Neopythagoreanism as a phenomenon created by the second century after Christ.

[110] In a study that appeared simultaneously with Buffière's, Jérôme Carcopino denounced the attribution to the Neoplatonists of the creation of mystical allegorical iconography and imagery relating to Homer: "Elles remontent tout au moins jusqu'aux gloses que, bien avant notre ère, des Pythagoriciens avaient ré-digées" (De Pythagore aux apôtres , p. 199). Robert Flacelière, in an otherwise largely positive review of Buffière's work, questioned the late date for the beginnings of mystical allegory and remarked, "je croirais volontiers, pour ma part, que le pythagorisme du v et du iv siècle avant J-C, aussi hostile que Platon h Hombre, a pu, tout comme Platon lui-même, utiliser des vers d'Homère à ses propres fins" (Revue des études grecques 70 [1957], p. 261). He nevertheless went on to affirm that Buffière was no doubt correct in emphasizing the importance and originality of the Neoplatonic tradition of interpretation that begins with Porphyry and whose sources cannot be traced back with certainty beyond Numenius. Boyancé, introducing Detienne's study, is clearly referring to Buffière's work when he observes discreetly, "C'est à tort, croyons-nous avec M. Detienne, qu'un livre important, paru récemment, n'a pas accordé une attention suffisante a l'ancien pythagorisme" (Boyancé in Hombre, Hésiode et Pythagore , p. 7). Finally, Detienne makes it clear throughout his Homère, Hésiode et Pythagore that he considers Buffière's emphasis wrong and that the mystical allegory of Homer, along with the other modes of allegory, had Pythagorean roots. He views these traditions as continuous from the sixth century B.C . to the end of paganism and beyond.

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it is possible at least to propose a model to account for the development of Pythagoreanism and to examine the evidence for an early Pythagorean interpretation of Homer in its light.

Shortly after the pioneering work of Delatte,^[111] the seminal study of Erich Frank appeared,^[112] the thrust of which was to locate many of the discoveries of "scientific" Pythagoreanism in the early fourth century and to demonstrate the dependence of much of what has been transmitted as Pythagoreanism on Platonism, and, more specifically, on the generation of the successors of Plato, Speusippus and Xenocrates. Frank's focus was on the natural sciences, but Walter Burkert's more recent synthesis^[113] has extended the same principles and concluded that much of what we have been accustomed to call Pythagoreanism is simply dogmatic Platonism, and that the Platonization of the Pythagorean tradition began far earlier than Eduard Zeller and the other historians of the last century dreamed:

One might . . . define later Pythagoreanism as Platonism with the Socratic and dialectic element amputated. . . . Scholars have shown in different ways that Neoplatonism is quite closely dependent on the Old Academy, and "Pythagoreanism" too belongs in this category. It is also basically Platonism, existing at a time when Plato (as interpreted in Pythagorean fashion) had lost his position in the Academic school. Later, neo-Pythagoreanism converges, in the philosophical realm, with Neoplatonism.^[114]

It is in the light of this understanding of Pythagorean tradition that any evidence for a pre-Platonic Pythagorean interpretation of Homer must be viewed.

[111] Littérature pythagoricienne (1915).

[112] Frank, Plato und die sogenannten Pythagoreer .

[113] Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism , first (German) edition, 1962.

[114] Burkert, Lore and Science , p. 96. For purposes of the present study, the embroiled question of whether the dogmatic Platonism expounded by the Neoplatonists can be traced to a secret teaching of Plato himself, or only to the generation of his successors, need not be answered. I have taken Letter 7 as an authentic document able to throw light on Plato's attitude toward the written word. This does not, however, imply a belief in a transmitted secret teaching traceable to Plato himself, and anyone disposed to believe that the existence of such a teaching is established should consult the sensitive and perceptive analysis of E. N. Tigerstedt in Interpreting Plato . Tigerstedt accepts, however, the principle that the Early Academy was dogmatic (p. 105) and the evidence assembled by Frank and Burkert makes it probable that much of what we receive as "Pythagoreanism" can be traced to that context.

― 35 ―

What, then, is the evidence for an archaic Pythagorean exegesis of Homer? The testimonia that indicate a concern with Homer on the part of the early Pythagoreans were examined by Delatte^[115] and have more recently been reviewed by Detienne.^[116] The conclusions that may be reached are disappointing, and although it is highly probable that some of the dozens of interpretations of Homeric verses attributed to Pythagoras are in fact pre-Platonic, there is no single interpretive idea that can be dated with certainty to that period.

Most credible as early contributions are probably those "Pythagorean" interpretations that suggest a ritual use of the poems. Excerpts from Homer and Hesiod were sung for cathartic purposes, to "tranquilize"

the soul."^[117] Also credible is the attribution to early Pythagoreanism of a moralizing interpretation of the Iliad as a whole that made it the story of the disastrous consequences of the lack of self-control

of a single man (Paris).^[118]

Overall, the significant thing that emerges from the testimonia is the emphasis that early Pythagoreanism placed on Homer and Hesiod, as revealed in the choice of these bodies of poetry for incantation over such more obvious choices as Orpheus and Musaeus.^[119] In spite of the anecdote of Pythagoras's trip to Hades, where he is said to have seen Homer and Hesiod undergoing punishment for slandering the gods,^[120] it does indeed seem that early Pythagoreanism was less hostile to the Homeric poems than were other religious and philosophical movements of the sixth century B.C . Both Porphyry and Iamblichus pass on the tradition that Pythagoras was the student of the Homeridae of Samos,^[121] and there is little doubt that in early Pythagoreanism the Iliad and Odyssey were indeed used as sacred books—as sources of both magical incantations and moral exempla—at a time when Ionian thinkers such as Xenophanes were denouncing Homer as the representative of an outdated and misleading account of the divine. Pierre Boyancé has pointed out that an

[115] Delatte, Littérature pythagoricienne , pp. 109-36.

[116] Detienne, Hombre, Hésiode et Pythagore . See also Boyancé, Le Culte des Muses chez les philosophes grecs , pp. 121-31.

[117] Porph. Vit. Pyth . 32; cf. Iambl. De vit. Pyth . 111 and 113.

[118] Iambl. De vit. Pyth . 42.

[119] Cf. Boyancè, Culte des Muses , pp. 120-22.

[120] Cf. Delatte, Littérature pythagoricienne , p. 109, n. 4, for numerous testimonia to the legend.

[121] Porph. Vit. Pyth . 1.2; Iambl. De vit. Pyth . 9.11. Cf. Delatte, Littérature pythagoricienne , pp. 116-117 and Detienne, Homère, Hésiode et Pythagore , pp. 13-14.

― 36 ―

attested cult of the Muses in early Pythagoreanism is an appropriate symbol of their bond with Homer.^[122]

The relationship of this use of Homer in early Pythagoreanism to a transmitted Pythagorean interpretation of Homer is at best obscure. There is no evidence that a systematic early Pythagorean exegesis of Homer, in whole or in part, was ever committed to writing,^[123] and the oral tradition is impossible to reconstruct.

It is nevertheless clear that, from an early period, Pythagoreanism was divided into two sects, one, commonly called the Akousmatikoi, that was more traditional and placed its emphasis on the original revelation and on ritual, and another, the Mathematikoi, that was mathematical and scientific in orientation.^[124] The first of these sects was the vehicle for the transmission of many short sayings, or

, which come down as an important element of Pythagoreanism, though generally it is impossible to date individual

even approximately. Some

have a Homeric flavor or are in some way relevant to Homer,^[125] and it is quite possible that whatever elements might have survived of a primitive Pythagorean exegesis of Homer might have done so in this form. Some few shreds of Homer exegesis are also to be traced to Aristotle's account of Pythagoreanism, and others can be traced to various early sources that, though not unimpeachable, may well represent the early tradition of Pythagoreanism.

[122] Boyancé, Culte des Muses , p. 241.

^[123]

[124] See Delatte, Littérature pythagoricienne , pp. 29-31, and Burkert, Lore and Science , pp. 193-206.

^[125]

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Homer is credited by these Pythagoreanizing interpretations with having described the music of the spheres^[126] and metempsychosis,^[127] and having presented a personification of the monad in Proteus, "who contains the properties of all things just as the monad contains the combined energies of all the numbers."^[128] He is said to have held such Pythagorean doctrines as the existence of a lunar paradise,^[129] and his Sirens are transformed into the benevolent Sirens of the Pythagoreanizing myth of Er in the Republic .^[130] This last instance is a striking one, illustrative of the central position of the dialogues of Plato in the establishment both of the canonical versions of "Pythagorean" myths and of the connections between those myths and Homer.

The use of the myths of Plato to explicate the myths of Homer and the idea that the two bodies of storytelling had like structures of meaning were perhaps the most important developments in the history of the reading of Homer in Platonic circles. The process at work in the early development of the interpretation of the myth of the Sirens was essentially the same as that which emerged more clearly in the second-century interpretation of the cave of the nymphs in the Odyssey by the Neopythagorean Numenius, whose "exegesis" of that passage was in all probability included entirely in a commentary on the myth of Er.^[131]

In practice, the myths of Plato became central texts of a "primitive Pythagoreanism" that was little more than dogmatic Platonism disguised under the name of Pythagoras—a tradition rejected by the skeptical Academy, which Numenius attacked bitterly. Numenius would have fully assimilated the conception of Pythagoras and his doctrine elaborated by the successors of Plato. In proposing to demonstrate that the doctrines of Plato and Pythagoras were identical, he was simply restoring a primitive unity (though one with no necessary connection with Plato himself if we view dogmatic Platonism as the product of his suc-

[126] Heraclit. Quaest. hom . 12.2-13.1. Cf. Delatte, Littérature pythagoricienne , p. 116.

[127] Schol in Il ., ed. Erbse, vol. 4, PP-310-11. Ps.-Plut. De vit. Hom . 122. Eust. In Il . 1090.31-33. Cf. Delatte, Littérature pythagoricienne , p. 127

^[128]

[129] Porph. ap. Stob. Ecl . 1.41.61.

[130] Plut. Quaest. conv . 9.14.6.145d-e. See also the Certamen (38) and the opening remarks in Eustathius's introduction to his commentary on the Iliad (translated by C. J. Herington in "Homer: a Byzantine Perspective").

[131] See ch. 2B below.

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cessors). In going beyond Pythagoras to demonstrate the same doctrine in Homer, he may well have been working in a Pythagorean tradition as old as the sixth century B.C ., but which had been so radically reworked in the fourth and third centuries that little, if any, of its pre-Platonic content was or is perceptible. Similarly, the interpretations of the passages on the Sirens and on the arrows of Apollo that generated the music of the sphere of the sun were doubtless articulated by thinkers—Plutarch is an excellent case in point—thoroughly steeped in Platonism. Some, identifying their positions more emphatically with those of dogmatic Platonism, may, along with Numenius, have called themselves, or have been called,

, but the myths of Plato loomed large among their sources and there would have been little in their Pythagoreanism traceable to sources earlier than those myths.

Beyond the specific passages in the scholia and the surviving interpretive literature that have been claimed as illustrations of Pythagorean influence on the early interpretation of Homer, there is the larger question of the sources of etymology as an interpretive tool.

Commentators on the meaning of the Homeric poems began early—certainly before Plato's time—to focus upon individual words (whether words of particular difficulty or simply words of particular importance) and to explain them by analogy to words of similar sound. This was done in a manner utterly devoid of historical perspective and without any perception of the actual phonetic principles according to which words evolve, and hence appears invariably arbitrary and naive. Nevertheless, it is a mode of explication as old as Homer himself.^[132] Institutionalized in the encyclopedic Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (ca. 570-636), moreover, it knew a tremendous vogue throughout the Middle Ages.

Since its roots are demonstrably Homeric, there is little point in searching elsewhere for the originator of this exegetic technique, but it has nevertheless been suggested that the early Pythagoreans may have made a substantial contribution to the considerable body of interpretation by etymology transmitted in the scholia and elsewhere. The Cratylus of Plato is the ancient work we might hope would throw light on the question of the sources of pre-Platonic etymological thought, yet

^[132]

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here, as so often, Plato is frustratingly vague regarding the background of the ideas he presents. In an important article Pierre Boyancé has analyzed the indications given for the source of the theory lying behind Socrates' etymological speculations in the Cratylus .^[133] Using the principle asserted by Frank that only Aristotelian testimony about early Pythagoreanism is likely to reflect a tradition anterior to the Platonizing Pythagoreanism traceable to the generation of Speusippus, Boyancé arrives at the conclusion that it is authentic Pythagoreanism that we perceive dimly behind the position adopted ironically—and yet seriously—by Socrates, a position that includes the combination "d'une méthode d'exégèse des noms de dieux et d'une philosophie religieuse."^[134] This idea is substantially developed by Detienne,^[135] who places emphasis on Proclus's observation that Pythagoras shared the opinion, expressed by Cratylus in the dialogue, that names are established by an infallible nomothete and so correspond to the natures of things.^[136] Proclus links this principle to Pythagoras by means of an

representing the sage questioned by a disciple: "What is the wisest of beings?—Number. What is the second in wisdom?—He who established the names of things."^[137] The same saying is reported in slightly different form by Iamblichus.^[138]

Examined in isolation, however, the passage in Proclus is an excellent example of the kind of thought that later Neoplatonism attributed to Pythagoras. Proclus goes on to explain the

:

When [Pythagoras] speaks of the name-giver he hints at soul, which itself came to be from mind. With respect to things themselves soul is not primary, as mind is, but rather it contains images of them and detailed, essential

which are like statues of things themselves, just as names mimic the noetic forms that are numbers. And so being for all things comes from mind, which knows itself and is wise, while naming comes from soul mimicking mind. So, says Pythagoras, naming is not random but comes from that which contemplates mind and the nature of things and therefore names exist by nature .^[139]

[133] Boyancé, "La 'Doctrine d'Euthyphron' dans le Cratyle. "

[134] Boyancé, "Doctrine d'Euthyphron," p. 175.

[135] Detienne, Homère, Hésiode et Pythagore , pp. 72-76.

[136] Proclus In Crat . 16:5.25-6.19.

^[137]

[138] Iambl. De vit. Pyth . 18.82.

^[139]

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The conception of ideal numbers expressed here is decidedly Platonic, not Pythagorean,^[140] and the "hypostases" mind and soul belong to the vocabulary of Plotinian Neoplatonism. Yet Proclus claims to be expounding the thought of Pythagoras by explaining it in terms of thinking that postdated the historical Pythagoras by two to eight centuries. What for us can be nothing but a grotesque anachronism, however, was for him sound and time-honored philosophical method.^[141]

The fact that the later Neoplatonists attributed an anachronistic conceptual model to Pythagoras does not, however, entirely obscure the fact that this

gives us substantial reason to suspect that early Pythagoreanism understood there to be a real and explicable relationship between words and the things they represent, names and their sounds being keys to the essences of things.

The doxographic miscellany entitled The Life and Poetry of Homer , attributed to Plutarch, and in all probability belonging to the second century after Christ, throws considerable light on the relationship between Pythagoras and Homer as understood by late antiquity. The author's concern with Pythagoras is incidental to his larger, indeed megalomaniacal, plan to demonstrate that Homer is the source of all philosophy—and not simply of philosophy, but of rhetoric and of many other human skills as well.^[142] Working in a heterogeneous tradition that doubtless owed much

[140] Cf. Burkert, Lore and Science , p. 27.

[141] See ch. 5C below on Proclus's relationship to the literature of the past and specifically to Homer. The notion that Pythagoras and early Pythagoreanism recognized a non-material reality is universal in Neoplatonism from the time of Plotinus himself (Enn . 5.1.9) and can be traced still earlier to the second-century Neopythagoreans.

^[142]

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to the Stoa, the author of the Life embraces a variety of doctrines and explicitly rejects very few. What we see at work in this text is the process by which Platonizing litterateurs of late antiquity—Plutarch himself is an outstanding example—incorporated much of the philosophical tradition into a matrix compatible with the thought of the successors of Plato in the Academy. The peculiarity of the Life is that the matrix is made coextensive with the Iliad and Odyssey and their sphere of influence, and the roots of the entire tradition are located in the "enigmatic and mythic language"^[143] of Homer. The author often indicates that Homer "hints at"

various doctrines of later thinkers, and makes it clear that the poems are a vast encyclopedia with a complex, sometimes obscure, structure of meaning.

It is principally in the context of the discussion of souls that Ps.-Plutarch brings up Pythagoras, asserting that "of all the doctrines [concerning the soul], that of Pythagoras and Plato is the noblest, that the soul is immortal."^[144]

For this author, as we shall see, there are certain doctrines that are specifically Pythagorean and others that are Platonic, though borrowed from, or at least shared with, Pythagoras.^[145] The immortality of the soul is one of the latter, and though it doubtless does have pre-Platonic Pythagorean roots, as expressed by Ps.-Plutarch it represents a thoroughly Platonized Pythagoreanism.

Metensomatosis is introduced in the Life as a properly Pythagorean doctrine that "was not beyond the understanding of Homer."^[146] The talking horses of Achilles and the old dog that recognizes Odysseus indicate that the souls of men and other animals are related, and the destruction of Odysseus's crew as punishment for killing the sacred cattle is viewed as a general indication that all animals are honored by the gods (De vit. Hom . 125). The subsequent passage (De vit. Hom . 126) on Circe as the symbol of the cycle of metensomatosis, to which "the thinking man"

Odysseus is immune, already suggests something more sophisticated and the patterns of the myths of Plato begin to be visible behind this hero who is liberated from reincarnation by the pos-

^[143][144]

[145] The idea of the dependence of Plato on Pythagoras is at least as old as Aristotle (Metaph . A 987a).

^[146]

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session of reason

. The fact that

is here identified with the Hermes of the myth likewise points back to the Cratylus , though this may be only the proximal source of the idea.^[147] It points at the same time, however, to later developments of the same identification that lead, for example, to the identification, by the Naassenian Gnostics of the first and second centuries, of Hermes the Psychopomp (Od . 24.1-14) with the creative and redeeming

—that is, with Christ.^[148] In a fragment preserved in Stobaeus (Ecl . 1.41.60), Porphyry develops the allegory of Circe, making it clear that this "Pythagorean" tradition became part of the Neoplatonic reading of the passage.^[149]

When Odysseus's descent to Hades is viewed as "separating soul from body,"^[150] we have fully entered that bizarre realm of Platonized Pythagoreanism where the influence of the legend of Pythagoras's own temporary death and resurrection becomes indistinguishable from that of the similar story of Er in the Republic . From the present perspective, the important point, though, is that a comprehensive view of Odysseus the hero as a "thinking man," freed by reason from the round of reincarnation, a hero whose heroism consists precisely in the denial of existence on the material plane and the attainment of a higher state, exists here in isolation from doctrines of astral immortality and from elaborate demonologies. Whatever the later Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic contributions to the understanding of the poems, this core was already available for elaboration: a redefined Odysseus, far removed from the archaic Homeric hero and transformed by a complex and unrecoverable process into a hero of the denial of the flesh.

Finally, a word should be said about possible Pythagorean interpolations in the text of Homer. This is clearly not the place to reopen the question of the analysis of the Homeric text that dispersed the energies of so much of the classical scholarship of the nineteenth century. Suffice it to say that virtually every passage of Homer with a "Pythagorean" flavor has at one time or another been branded on internal evidence as "late." Burkert, who doubts that Pythagoreans ever were in a position to modify the received text, provides a list^[151] that includes among other passages the larger part of the nekyia (the journey to the dead) of Odyssey 11

[147] Cf. Buffière, Mythes d'Homère , pp. 289-90.

[148] Carcopino, De Pythagore aux apàtres , pp. 180-82.

[149] See ch. 3B below.

^[150]

[151] Burkert, Lore and Science , p. 279, n. 10.

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as well as the second nekyia of Odyssey 24. Delatte^[152] made a strong case for Pythagorean interference with the received text and pointed to evidence for a Pythagorean editorial team behind the Pisistratean recension. The question cannot be solved here and the most judicious attitude to adopt is a prudent doubt akin to Burkert's.

The evidence for early Pythagorean concern with Homer, then, is considerable, but evidence that demonstrates the early Pythagorean sources of the reading of the Iliad and Odyssey as mystical allegories is slim at best. Buffière's reluctance to believe that early Pythagoreanism was concerned with physical allegory does, however, seem unnecessary. Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from this inquiry is that we should not insist too strongly on discrete categories of physical, moral, and mystical allegory. There is no reason to believe that the distinction was made in the classical period and the lines separating the categories are difficult to draw.

All the same, the chief aspects of the Neoplatonic tradition of interpretation as passed on to the Middle Ages are the ideas (1) that Homer was a sage who was acquainted with the fate of souls, and (2) that the model of the universe he articulated was characterized by an idealism compatible with the thought of Plotinus and the later Neoplatonists. The first of these aspects may well have had pre-Platonic Pythagorean roots, but the second cannot have done, for the simple reason that the concepts involved are, by Aristotle's testimony,^[153] absent from pre-Platonic Pythagoreanism.

[152] Delatte, Littérature pythagoricienne , pp. 134-36.

[153] Arist. Metaph . A 989b29-990a32. Cf. Burkert, Lore and Science, p. 31.

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