Pythagoras is one of the few ancient thinkers whose name everyone knows, and yet almost nothing attributed to him can be verified with certainty. He wrote no books, or at least none survive. The most detailed biographies, by Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry and Iamblichus, were written many centuries after his death and blend historical information with edifying tales. This very distance is what makes him interesting for the history of esotericism: Pythagoras soon became the model of the sage who unites knowledge, discipline of life and care of the soul.
From Samos to Magna Graecia
The sources agree on a few essential points. Pythagoras was born on Samos, an island in the eastern Aegean, in the sixth century BC. In his mature years he left his homeland, then ruled by the tyrant Polycrates, and settled in Croton, in today's Calabria, one of the most prosperous Greek colonies of southern Italy.
In Croton he founded a community that was not only a philosophical school, but a group of people sharing rules of life, religious practices and a strong mutual bond. The group's influence extended to the politics of the city and of other colonies of Magna Graecia.
The Pythagorean way of life
What struck contemporaries was the bios pythagorikos, the Pythagorean way of living. Ancient traditions recall:
- a period of silence and listening for new members;
- the sharing of property within the community;
- dietary rules, including the famous abstention from beans and, according to some sources, from certain kinds of meat;
- evening examinations of conscience, in which one asked what good and what wrong had been done during the day;
- the use of music to bring the soul into harmony.
Many rules circulated as akousmata, short precepts to be heard and observed, often enigmatic, such as "do not stir the fire with a knife". Already in antiquity they were given moral or symbolic interpretations.
Acousmatics and mathematicians
Later sources describe an internal division between the acousmatics, who preserved the inherited precepts and practices, and the mathematicians, who developed the rational study of number and harmony. Whatever the details, this distinction suggests that Pythagoreanism had two souls from the start: one religious and ritual, the other speculative and scientific.
The expression "he himself said it", autos epha, later rendered in Latin as ipse dixit, expressed absolute respect for the master's teaching.
The transmigration of the soul
The most secure doctrinal feature is belief in the transmigration of souls, metempsychosis. The poet Xenophanes, a contemporary of Pythagoras, relates satirically that the philosopher, seeing a puppy being beaten, asked for it to stop because he had recognised in its yelp the voice of a dead friend. Irony aside, the testimony confirms that the idea was already linked to him.
In this view the soul is immortal and passes through several lives. The discipline of life served to purify it, and respect for animals also stemmed from the kinship of all living beings.
Number and harmony
Tradition credits the Pythagoreans with discovering that the basic musical intervals correspond to simple numerical ratios: the octave to 2:1, the fifth to 3:2, the fourth to 4:3. From this arose the conviction that number was the principle of cosmic order, and that the universe itself produced a harmony, the "music of the spheres".
The first Pythagorean whose written fragments we possess is Philolaus of Croton, who lived in the fifth century BC. Later, Archytas of Tarentum, a mathematician and statesman, was a leading figure and had contacts with Plato, who in the Timaeus and other dialogues shows close knowledge of Pythagorean ideas.
Crisis and diaspora
The community's political influence provoked hostility. The sources tell of a revolt in Croton, led by a man named Cylon, during which the Pythagoreans were attacked. Pythagoras is said to have moved to Metapontum, where according to tradition he died. During the fifth century further outbreaks of violence scattered the Pythagorean groups, though they survived in several cities.
A long legacy
In the Hellenistic and Roman periods Neopythagoreanism arose, turning Pythagoras into an almost divine sage. Figures such as Apollonius of Tyana looked to him as a model. The Neoplatonists, Iamblichus in particular, wrote his life as a pattern of philosophical existence.
For Studio Esoterico Cornelio, Pythagoras stands for a precise and still relevant idea: spiritual knowledge cannot be separated from the way one lives every day. Silence, measure, self-examination and attention to harmony are concrete practices, not mere concepts.
In short
- Pythagoras, born on Samos in the sixth century BC, founded in Croton a community of life, study and religious practice.
- Pythagoreans followed precise rules: silence, common property, dietary prescriptions and examination of conscience.
- The best-attested doctrine is the transmigration of the soul; the study of numerical ratios in music founded the idea of a harmonious cosmos.
- Pythagoreanism survived its political crisis and shaped Plato, Neopythagoreanism and Neoplatonism.