Religions, Cults and Power › Part 5. The Greco-Roman World: Mysteries, Philosophy, Gnosis
Between the sixth and the fourth centuries BCE the Greek world produced a new kind of religious thinking. It did not replace the civic cults or the mysteries. It recast their promises (purification, the survival of the soul, a better lot after death) as doctrines that could be argued for. Pythagoras of Samos founded a community at Croton in southern Italy that was at once a school, a cult brotherhood and a political faction. Plato, two centuries later, turned Orphic-Pythagorean themes into the doctrines that later Jewish, Christian and Gnostic theologians would borrow, attack or claim as their own: the immortal soul, recollection, the Forms, the Good and the divine craftsman of the Timaeus. This chapter sets out what the library’s sources report about both men, the ancient claims about where their wisdom came from, and the political theology Plato built on these foundations.
Pythagoras: an uncertain life and a sacred community
The sources agree that the historical Pythagoras is hard to recover. Mario Livio writes that “most of the details of Pythagoras’ life and the reality of his mathematical contributions remain veiled in uncertainty” [Livio, The Golden Ratio, #83579]. Livio reports, as “some accounts”, that Pythagoras spent years in Egypt, “where he would have learned mathematics, philosophy, and religious themes from the Egyptian priests”, and that “after Egypt was overwhelmed by Persian armies, Pythagoras may have been taken to Babylon, together with members of the Egyptian priesthood”, where he would have met Mesopotamian mathematical lore [Livio, The Golden Ratio, #83579]. Even his death has two versions: self-starvation at the Temple of the Muses in Metapontum, or death at the hands of the Syracusans (Hermippus) [Livio, The Golden Ratio, #83579].
The course Pythagoras and Music of the Spheres begins its account at Samos, “the birthplace of Pythagoras, whose ideas dominate most of the material in this course”. It repeats the tradition that “it was Thales [who] advised his student to visit Egypt, and that student was Pythagoras” [Unknown, Pythagoras and Music of the Spheres, #48013, “Pythagoras”].
The fullest ancient biography in the library is Porphyry’s Life of Pythagoras, in the Romanian edition that also contains the Life of Plotinus. Its table of contents gives the shape of the tradition: travels in Egypt (§§7–8), returns to Samos and Italy (§§10–12), the episodes of Astraios and of Zalmoxis (§§13–15), and a journey “through Delphi and Crete to Croton” (§§16–20) [Porphyrios, Viața lui Pitagora; Viața lui Plotin, #84080]. Porphyry presents Pythagoras as an initiate of foreign mysteries. In Crete “he made contact with the initiates (mystai) of Morgos, one of the Idaean Dactyls, who purified him with a thunder-stone”, and he went down into the Idaean cave [Porphyrios, Viața lui Pitagora, #84080, §17]. The Romanian editors note that Herodotus (Histories II 81 and II 123) suggests an Egyptian origin for Pythagoras’ philosophy, and they quote Isocrates (Busiris 38): “Pythagoras of Samos … arriving in Egypt and becoming there a disciple of the priests, was the first to bring to Hellas the other teachings of philosophy” [Porphyrios, Viața lui Pitagora, #84080, editorial notes].
On doctrine, Porphyry separates what is certain from what is not. “Nevertheless,” he writes, “the master’s primary assertion is accepted without reservation: that the soul is immortal; secondly, that it migrates into other animal species” [Porphyrios, Viața lui Pitagora, #84080, §19]. He also explains the famous bean taboo through a cosmogony. At the origin of the universe, he says, germs lay mixed and rotting together in the earth, and men and beans sprang from one and the same putrefaction [Porphyrios, Viața lui Pitagora, #84080, §44].
Number, harmony and the spheres
The Pythagorean claim that reality is structured by number came out of acoustics. The Music of the Spheres course describes Renaissance woodcuts of Pythagoras sounding bells, strings and glasses marked 8 and 16, “an interval of 1:2 called the octave, or diapason”. It adds that the simple ratios of the consonances were “the very numbers in their beloved sacred tetractys” [Unknown, Pythagoras and Music of the Spheres, #48013, “Product of the first square numbers”]. It quotes Aristotle’s summary of the school: the Pythagoreans “saw that the … ratios of musical scales were expressible in numbers [and that] all things seemed to be modeled on numbers”, so that “they supposed the elements of number to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number” [Unknown, Pythagoras and Music of the Spheres, #48013]. Porphyry gives the “harmony of the spheres” its own section (§§30–33), in which Pythagoras is said to hear the music of the cosmos [Porphyrios, Viața lui Pitagora, #84080].
B. R. Hergenhahn shows how this mathematics carried a metaphysics. “The Pythagoreans assumed a dualistic universe: one part abstract, permanent, and intellectually knowable … and the other empirical, changing, and known through the senses.” Hence “sensory experience … cannot provide knowledge. In fact, such experience interferes with the attainment of knowledge and should be avoided” [Hergenhahn, An Introduction to the History of Psychology 6th ed, #30761, ch. 2]. Hergenhahn marks this as a break with the earlier philosophers: “In Pythagoras … we have a full-fledged dualism between the mind and the body and between the physical and the abstract” [Hergenhahn, History of Psychology, #30761].
Opting out of the city: diet, sacrifice and politics
In a Greek city, religion was carried out through animal sacrifice and the shared meal that followed it. Pythagorean abstinence was therefore a political act. John Wilkins and Shaun Hill write: “Purist followers of Pythagoras removed themselves from the Greek city states of southern Italy and opted out of the sacrificial system and therefore of civic life and identity” [Wilkins & Hill, Food in the Ancient World, #363193]. They cite Diogenes Laertius (Life of Pythagoras 13), who says the bloodless altar of Apollo was “the only altar at which Pythagoras worshipped”, and Diogenes’ explanation of the ban on meat: “his real reason for forbidding animal diet was to practise people and accustom them to simplicity of life, so that they could live on things easily procurable … for this was the way to a healthy body and a keen mind” [Wilkins & Hill, Food in the Ancient World, #363193, quoting Diogenes Laertius, trans. Hicks]. They also point to Marcel Detienne’s critique of Pythagorean food rules, which brings out “the political aspect of the cult” [Wilkins & Hill, Food in the Ancient World, #363193].
Metempsychosis and its fate
Norman McClelland’s encyclopedia treats Pythagoras and Plato as the classical “champion[s] of metempsychosis”. It also records the critics of the idea. “In specific regards to the platonic concept of metempsychosis Aristotle criticized the idea that a human soul could be reborn as an animal”. McClelland adds that it was this criticism “that allowed some of Aristotle’s views to find more acceptance in the late medieval Church than were the views of Plato” [McClelland, Encyclopedia of Reincarnation and Karma, #66947, “Arguments”]. He sets rebirth against the conceptions of “resurrection that have traditionally been favored by orthodox Christianity”. He also warns that Clement of Alexandria has been “mistakenly” claimed by reincarnationists because of a passage on the soul’s pre-existence that makes no reference to metempsychosis [McClelland, Encyclopedia of Reincarnation and Karma, #66947, “Anthropopathism”; “Clement”].
Hergenhahn links the Pythagorean soul doctrine to the Dionysiac-Orphic mysteries. “Both viewed the body as a prison from which the soul should escape … Both accepted the notion of the transmigration of souls” [Hergenhahn, History of Psychology, #30761, ch. 2].
Plato: the soul, the cave and the Good
According to Hergenhahn, Plato inherited and systematized this dualism: “Plato created a dualism that divided the human into a body, which was material and imperfect, and a mind (soul), which contained pure knowledge” [Hergenhahn, History of Psychology, #30761]. In the Republic the soul has three parts, and these mirror the three classes of the ideal city (“whether the soul has these three principles or not?”) [Platon, The Republic, #79552, Book IV]. The allegory of the cave and the Form of the Good in Books VI–VII, and the myth of Er in Book X, in which souls choose their next lives, carry this teaching into Plato’s best-known images [Platon, The Republic, #79552].
The Romanian commentary to Opere VII adds an esoteric dimension. It notes that adherents of the “unwritten doctrine” read passages of the Timaeus (e.g. 53d) as Plato’s allusions to “that esoteric theory of first principles which was to be communicated only to the initiated”. They rely on Aristotle, who in Physics 209b refers to Plato’s “unwritten teachings” [Platon, Opere vol. VII, #25718, n. 108].
The Demiurge of the Timaeus
The Timaeus gives Greek philosophy its creator god. The Opere VII commentary observes that the Demiurge’s “principal determination … is that of maker [făuritor] of the universe”, and that at 28c3–4 he is called “the author (poietes) and the father of the universe”. All his other traits are tied to the process of putting the world together [Platon, Opere vol. VII, #25718, commentary]. In the dialogue itself the Demiurge fashions time and the heavens, and models the universe on its eternal pattern so that it should “contain all the forms” [Platon, Opere vol. VII, #25718, Timaios 37–39]. The world-body, bound “by geometric proportion”, becomes “indissoluble by any other than the one who made it” [Platon, Opere vol. VII, #25718, Timaios 32]. This benevolent craftsman is the figure that later Gnostic systems would demote into an ignorant or hostile world-maker (see Chapter 46).
Ancient claims of borrowing: Egypt and Moses
Ancient authors argued about where Greek wisdom came from long before modern scholars did. The Opere VII commentary sets out the apologetic tradition: “It has been asserted of Plato that he was strongly influenced by the writings of Moses (Aristobulus of Alexandria; cf. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 5.14.97.7; Philo of Alexandria, De opif. mundi 6.25), that, like Orpheus, Homer, Solon and Pythagoras, he studied the teachings of Moses while he was in Egypt” [Platon, Opere vol. VII, #25718, commentary]. The commentator presents this as part of the “long tradition” of reading Platonism in Christian terms. On Egypt he takes a more cautious view. He lists passages showing Plato’s familiarity with Egyptian customs and religion (Gorgias 482b; Laws 656d–657, 799, 819; Statesman 264, 290d–e; Phaedo 80; Phaedrus 274c–275b; Timaeus 21e–25) and concludes that it would be “natural to suppose” Plato had direct access to Egyptian information [Platon, Opere vol. VII, #25718, commentary].
| Claim | Who makes it | Evidence offered | Status in the sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pythagoras studied with Egyptian priests | Herodotus, Isocrates; Porphyry | Biographical tradition | “Some accounts” (Livio); uncertain |
| Pythagoras taken to Babylon | Later biographers | Persian conquest of Egypt | “May have been” (Livio) |
| Plato learned from Moses | Aristobulus, Philo, Clement | Apologetic chronology | Ancient Jewish-Christian claim |
| Plato knew Egyptian religion | Modern commentary | Passages across the dialogues | Judged plausible (Opere VII) |
Plato’s political theology
Plato’s ideal states rest on religion managed by the rulers. In the Republic Socrates hesitates before introducing “an old Phoenician tale”. The citizens are to be told that they were born from the earth with gold, silver, brass or iron mixed into their souls. The guardians are told that “nature orders a transposition” if a golden parent produces a child of baser metal. Socrates concedes that the fiction must be believed by “their sons’ sons, and posterity after them”, and he defends it because “the fostering of such a belief will make them care more for the city and for one another” [Platon, The Republic, #79552, Book III]. The guardians “alone of all the citizens may not touch or handle silver or gold … And this will be their salvation” [Platon, The Republic, #79552, Book III]. The poets are censored for the same reason: terrifying tales of the underworld “will do harm to our future warriors” [Platon, The Republic, #79552, Book III].
The Laws goes further and makes theology a matter of statute. The Romanian edition summarizes Book X as a refutation of three forms of impiety: that of those who deny the gods exist, of those who “say there are gods, but that they do not care for us”, and of those “who imagine that rich sacrifices can corrupt the gods”. The counter-theses are that “the world is governed by the good soul”, that the gods “are good”, and that their providence follows from their perfection [Platon, Legile, #25711, summary of Book X]. Throughout the Laws belief is backed by penalties. The marriage law, for instance, imposes yearly fines and public dishonour on any man unmarried at thirty-five [Platon, Legile, #25711, Book IV]. A note in the same edition links the Athenian Stranger’s ritual rules to “the precepts of Pythagoras”: offerings to the heavenly gods in odd numbers, to the underworld gods in even [Platon, Legile, #25711, n. 2].
Key points
- Livio stresses that the details of Pythagoras’ life “remain veiled in uncertainty”. Egyptian and Babylonian study appear in the sources only as “some accounts”.
- Porphyry presents Pythagoras as an initiate of foreign mysteries (Crete, Egypt). He treats the soul’s immortality and its migration into animals as the one securely known Pythagorean doctrine.
- The Pythagorean number cosmology came from musical ratios (octave 1:2, the tetractys). Hergenhahn traces to it a split between an intelligible world and a sensible world.
- Wilkins & Hill show that Pythagorean vegetarianism meant withdrawal from civic sacrifice, and so from civic identity: a religious choice with political consequences.
- McClelland records Aristotle’s attack on transmigration and orthodox Christianity’s preference for bodily resurrection.
- Plato’s Timaeus gives the Demiurge, “maker and father” of the universe (28c), the figure later reinterpreted by the Gnostics.
- Aristobulus, Philo and Clement claimed Plato learned from Moses in Egypt. Modern commentary treats this as apologetic and finds Egyptian familiarity more plausible.
- The Republic‘s “Phoenician tale” and the Laws‘ theology of Book X make religion an instrument of political order.