Pythagoras

[M. Porcius Cato]

Fantastic review of two recent books on Pythagoras here. You'll never look at the number '7' in the same way again.

 

In the meantime, enjoy this advice from the man who didn't invent the Pythagorean Theorem:

Abstain from beans. Eat only the flesh of animals that may be sacrificed. Do not step over the beam of a balance. On rising, straighten the bedclothes and smooth out the place where you lay. Spit on your hair clippings and nail parings. Destroy the marks of a pot in the ashes. Do not piss towards the sun. Do not use a pine-torch to wipe a chair clean. Do not look in a mirror by lamplight. On a journey do not turn around at the border, for the Furies are following you. Do not make a detour on your way to the temple, for the god should not come second. Do not help a person to unload, only to load up. Do not dip your hand into holy water. Do not kill a louse in the temple. Do not stir the fire with a knife. One should not have children by a woman who wears gold jewellery. One should put on the right shoe first, but when washing do the left foot first. One should not pass by where an ass is lying.

[Gaius Octavius]

Just in case you don't read the whole article:

 

"But there was also numerological fancy in Philolaus:

Edited February 19, 2007 by Gaius Octavius

[Ursus]

It was good too see Walter Burkert, the world's foremost scholar on Greek religion, mentioned.

 

Those educated on Greco- Roman paganism have long known that Pythagoras' mystical cult was opposed (to put it politely) to mainstream religion and culture. But now that he is stripped of his mathematical credentials, what is left of him? A Hellenic David Koresh.

 

Truly interesting.

[Segestan]

Pythagoras was far more than a mathematics wizard. The author knows little or nothing of the power held within the being of Pythagoras' self-will.He did Not gain fame from deducting the mathematical designs of creation.

 

 

Pythagoras believed in the trans-migration of souls. Says Pythagoras;" he remembered in what bodies he had been before he was Pythagoras. But he went no farther back than the siege of Troy. He had first been Ethalides, the supposed son of Mercury, and having had permission to ask whatever he pleased of that God , except immortality, he desired that he might remember all things even after death. Some time after he was Euphorbus, and received a mortal wound from Menelaus at the siege of Troy. His soul passed afterwards into Hermotimus, at which time he entered the temple of Apollo in the country of the Branchidae, where he saw his buckler , ---a shield--, eaten up with rust , which Menelaus on his return from Troy had consecrated to that god in token of his victory. He was afterwards a fisherman of Delos , named Pyrrhus ; and lastly, Pythagoras. He affirmed that in a voyage which he had made to Hell , he had seen the soul of the poet Hesiod fastened with chains to a pillar of brass, and suffering great torments. That as for that of Homer , he had seen it hanging on a tree, surrounded with serpents, upon account of the many falsehoods he had invented and ascribed to the gods; and that the souls of the husbands , who had lived amiss with their wives , were severely tormented in that region.

Pythgoras was

[M. Porcius Cato]

"The power held within the being of Pythagoras' self-will"? Pythagoras was Apollo and could command animals? Are you really serious?

 

I agree with Ursus. The man was a loon and a Hellenic David Koresh.

Edited February 23, 2007 by M. Porcius Cato

[Segestan]

The claims of Pythagoras very much resemble those of Solomon. I do Not claim his story as given down to us, to be the facts in there entirety. However, I do think that this man had certain powers far beyond the common oracle of his day. Just were to many powerful followers of held him as a God for a mere magician. Many of his purported ideas on the condition of the soul in the afterlife , or the supposed recorded drama' in which those souls had lived , including his own, finding themselves in the mortal life is to a great degree factual. A topic beyond this thread. His ability to speak to animals is not as non-sensical as first might appear. This topic could venture into the trans-migration of souls therefore I will Not add on that. But he certainly was far more to those of his day than an mathematics wiz he was a philosopher who founded an Academy for the finest minds in all the known world.

[Ursus]

Mainstream Greco-Roman paganism allowed for many things which today would be considered fanciful. But Pythagoras' particular mystical cult was considered fanciful even by the normal religion of the day.

 

Whether or not he had supernatural gifts is, I think, beside the point. He created a closed cult, outside of normal civic religion, which was then used as a weapon against the established socio-political system. Even the mainstream pagan societies at the time considered this illicit.

[Rameses the Great]

Didn't he believe that a bean was like a human? He was chased down and refused to run across a field of beans meeting his untimely death. He was a good mathematician but clearly lacked what Greeks wanted, wisdom.

Edited February 25, 2007 by Rameses the Great