Chapter LI: Appendix: X

PREVIOUS LIVES OF PYTHAGORAS. HIS DESCENT TO HADES

Pythagoras' miraculous power of remembering what had happened long ago in previous lives seems to be already alluded to in the lines of Empedokles, 430 ff. M. = _fr._ 129 D. The legend in which it was related how Pythag. showed that he had once been **Euphorbos the son of Panthous who had been slain by Menelaos in the Trojan war, must, at any rate, have been put forward at an early period. The story is often told or alluded to: D.S. 10, 6, 1-3; Sch. V. {599} on ~R~ 28: Max. Tyr. 16 (i, 287 f. R.); Porph., _VP._ 26-7; Iambl., _VP._ 63; Philostr., _V. AP._ 1, 1, 1; 8, 7, 4; _Her._ 17, p. 192, 23 ff. Ks.; Tatian, _Gr._ 25; Hor., _C._ 1, 28, 10; Ov., _M._ 15, 160 ff.; Hygin. 112; Lact., _Inst._ 3, 18, 15; cf. also Call., _fr._ 83a (completely misunderstood by Schneider) who even calls Pythag. "Euphorbos", as Hor. does and Luc., _DM._ 20, 3. The story is always told in such a way as to imply that no intermediate **~ensômatô/sis~ of his soul had taken place between Pythag. himself and Euphorbos (they are definitely excluded in Luc., _Gall._ 17).--Why was Euphorbos in particular selected? The fact that through his father Panthous he had a special connexion with Apollo, like Pythagoras (a true ~psuchê\ Apollôniakê/~: cf. also Luc., _Gall._ 16), can hardly have been sufficient reason (as Göttling, _Opusc._ 210; Krische, _Soc. Pythag._ 67 f. suggest).--Euphorbos was taken up and made one of a whole series of previous incarnations (Aithalides--Euphorbos--Hermotimos--Pyrrhos the Delian fisherman--Pythagoras) by Herakleides Pont.: D.L. viii, 4-5 (with which agree Hippol., _RH._ 1, 2, p. 12, 54 f. D.-S.; Porph., _VP._ 45; Tert., _An._ 28, 31; Sch. Soph., _El._ 62). Starting with Aithalides (to whom Herakleides was perhaps the first to ascribe the gift of miraculous memory in addition to other miraculous powers) the power of ~ana/mnêsis~ in life and death was transmitted through all the links in the chain down to Pythag. himself. (The story of the shield of Euphorbos was now transferred to Hermotimos for obvious reasons.) According to D.L. Herakleides ~phêsi\n peri\ hautou= ta/de le/gein (to\n Puthago/ran)~. It is very possible that the language is here inexact and Herakleides did not (as the words of D.L. would strictly suggest) appeal to a statement of Pythagoras (in a book) but represented him as saying all this (in a dialogue). If this is correct, apart from the incarnation as Euphorbos which he took over from the tradition, Herakleides invented all the rest, according to his own fancy. The fable was then taken up with variations by others: in Sch. A.R. i, 645, two versions derived from the fiction of Herakl. but diverging in some points are mentioned (one being supported by ~hoi Puthagorikoi/~, the other by Pythagoras himself--in a book? ~Puthago/ras phêsi/n~ are the actual words). What Gellius 4, 11, 14, has to say on the authority of Klearchos and Dikaiarchos differs (except in the matter of Euphorbos) entirely from Herakleides (and the names given should not be altered). But it may, nevertheless, be essentially the same fable over again, this time in the form of a parody of Herakl. (which is not very likely in the case of Klearchos but suits Dikaiarch. very well). Encouraged by these predecessors Lucian in the _Cock_ (19-20) carried still further the parody of the fabulous tale. The story of Herakleides seems to be seriously used in the ~graphê/~ in which Pythagoras ~auto/s phêsi di' hepta\ kai\ diêkosi/ôn etô=n ex ai/deô paragegenê=sthai es anthrô/pous~, D.L. viii, 14. As Diels, _Archiv. f. Gesch. Philos._ iii, 468 f., shows to be very probable, this was in the ps.-Pythagorean book written in the Ionic dialect, not before the third century and divided into three parts, which D.L. quotes and makes use of (viii, 6; 9; 14; cf. also Sch. Pl., _Rp._ 600 B). {600} Pyth. here states that he appears on earth from the underworld "every 207 years", and the calculation may possibly be based on the series of lives invented by Herakleides and the Chronology of Apollodoros (in which case it could not be before the last century B.C.), thus: Pythag. born 572, Pyrrhos 779, Hermotimos 986, Euphorbos 1193 (in the first year of the ~Trôika/~ acc. to Eratosthenes and Apollodor.), Aithalides 1490. It must indeed be admitted that this method of reckoning makes the gross error of calculating from birth to birth instead of from the death of A to the birth of B. (Other intervals are given in _Theologum. Arithm._, p. 40 Ast [216 = 6^3: D.L. viii, 14, should not be altered to suit this as I once proposed]; Sch. Bern. Lucan, ix, 1, p. 289, 12 Us. [462, ? an error for 432 = 2 x 216; cf. _Theol. Arith._, p. 40, 30])--The existence of a Pythagorean writing belonging to the period before Herakleides, in which these previous lives of Pythag. were mentioned cannot be certainly proved. It might be supposed (as I once supposed: _Rh. Mus._ 26, 558) that the conjunction of the legend of Pythagoras' previous lives with the descent of P. to Hades, which appears in Sch. Soph., _El._ 62, and Tert., _An._ 28, is ancient and original; in which case the previous lives would have been described in a Pythagorean ~kata/basis eis ha/|dou~. But the conjunction is quite arbitrary and is not such as would be likely in a Pythagorean book on the descent: the descent is, in fact, told as a parody, the form which had been given to it by Hermippos, and with the implication that it is untrue. Nor is it very likely that the previous lives would be described in connexion with a descent to Hades, considering that Pyth. remembered them while alive on earth and not in a condition of ecstasy, and did not learn of them in Hades. It would be more natural that, vice versa, an account of the previous lives should also include something about ~ta\ en ha/|dou~--the ~ana/mnêsis~ included that also: cf. D.L. viii, 4 fin. (see the decisive objections to my previous view raised by G. Ettig, _Acheruntica_, Leipz. Stud. 13, 289 f.). This applies equally to the view of Diels[1\A10] (_Archiv_, p. 469) that Herakleides (in his work ~p. tô=n en ha/|dou~) told of the previous lives of P. in connexion with the descent of P. to Hades and that Herakl. was the first to make P. go down to Hades. There is nothing to prove that Herakl. did this or to make it even probable. Without any {601} grounds for doing so Diels supposes that what Pythagoras (acc. to Sch. Ambros. on ~a~ 371) ~"phêsi/n"; e/xô geno/menos tou= sô/matos akê/koa emme/lous harmoni/as~, was said by Pythag., not in a book going under his name, but in a dialogue by Herakleides (who is not even mentioned in that Schol.). There is no reason at all to doubt that these words (as Lobeck supposed, 944) came from a book ascribed to Pythagoras himself, in which he described his ekstasis and ecstatic visions (cf. Sch. Arist. 496b, 1 f., 13 ff. Br.). There is no further definite evidence for the existence of such a Pythagorean ~Kata/basis eis ha/|dou~ (for the ~graphê/~ of D.L. viii, 21, has another and better interpretation, as already remarked). But a fairly early date for the origin of at least a legend about a descent of P. to Hades (and of quite definite statements about it with a propagandist aim) is attested by Hieronymos of Rhodos ap. D.L. viii, 21. (But we should not without more definite reason ascribe the invention of the fable itself to Hieron., as is done by Hiller, _Hier. Rh. frag._, p. 25. What reason could Hieron. have had for inventing anything of the kind?) Further, the lines of the comic poet Aristophon ap. D.L. viii, 38 [_fr._ 12 K.], already suggest that such legends were in existence in the third century B.C. Whether the work on the subject of Pythagoras' descent to Hades called forth the legend or whether the legend was already current and called forth the book, must remain undecided. But in any case the book included no account of the previous lives of Pythagoras: these (apart from the older legend of P. and Euphorbos) were first put forward by Herakleides Pont. (but not the Descent of P. to Hades).

[1\A10: What Diels, _Parmenides_, p. 15 (1897) says in support of his view might stand if we were willing to ignore the fact that Pythag., as has already been remarked, remembered his previous lives while he was still alive, and not in the ecstatic condition--not ~e/xô geno/menos tou= sô/matos~. But this is a fact, so that Diels' view remains untenable.--I cannot see what there is of a "rationalist" character (Diels) in the fact that Pyth. saw Hesiod and Homer in Hades undergoing punishment ~anth' hô=n ei=pon peri\ theô=n~ (D.L. viii, 21). This is, in fact, an anti-rationalist, priestly invention (and so I see Dieterich also understands it, _Nekyia_, 130). This fact certainly does not tell against the view that the Hades poem had its origin in the sixth (or the first half of the fifth) century B.C.]