Part 7

Pythagoras brought music into closest relation with mathematics. As in numbers he recognized the most perfect “harmony,” so he must needs regard harmony of sounds as a necessary part of the harmony of numbers. By this association he became the discoverer of our present scale of seven musical notes—the octave. But his idea of harmony found most perfect embodiment in the universal creation, and in astronomy he was the first to surmise that the earth does not stand still, but has a revolution around a centre; hence, that it is not the principal existence in the universal frame of things, that all things do not exist for its sake, that Earth is not twin sister of the Heavens. True, Pythagoras had no idea, nor could have in the then existing lack of astronomical instruments, how the heavenly bodies were related: that was the discovery of Copernicus and Kepler. He took for the mid-point of the universe a “central fire” out of which were formed all the heavenly bodies—this the seat of the power that sustains the world, the centre of gravity of all things. Around this central fire revolve the “ten” heavenly bodies—farthest off the heaven of the fixed stars, then the five planets known to antiquity, then the sun, moon, earth, and lastly the “counter-earth”, which revolves between the earth and the central fire. Revolving along with the earth, the counter-earth is always interposed between the earth and the central fire: light comes to the earth only indirectly, by reflection from the sun. When the earth is on the same side of the central fire as the sun we have day; when it is on the other side, night. Thus, Pythagoras may be said to have surmised a central sun, though his theory did not contemplate the actual sun as that centre. He was also the first to explain the vicissitudes of the seasons by the obliquity of the earth’s axis to the ecliptic. Further, he discovered the identity of the morning and evening star. His school held the moon to be the home of fairer and larger plants, animals, and human creatures, than those of earth. In accordance with his doctrine of harmony he ventured to express the bold idea that the heavenly bodies by their movement produce tones which together constitute a perfectly harmonious music—the music of the spheres. We do not hear this harmony, being so wonted to it.

Nor did he fail to apply to the soul of man this doctrine of harmony. By harmony the opposition between reason and passion was to be reconciled. But as this consummation is never to be achieved as long as soul and body are tied together, the sage of Samos regarded this union as a measure of probation, destined to endure till man shall have made himself worthy of liberation from the same; and when he fails of this during his span of life, then his soul must migrate through the bodies of other men and animals till it shall become worthy of leading, in a higher region of light, an incorporeal life of purity and perfection. His disciples, furthermore, cherished the fantastic idea that the master was able to recognize in another body the man whose soul had transmigrated into it. That Pythagoras himself ever pretended or believed that he himself was in his fifth metempsychosis, or that he was son of Apollo, or that he had a golden hip, or a golden thigh, are either ridiculous extravaganzas of imaginative disciples or the sarcastic stories of his enemies. But noble and beautiful are the conclusions which he draws from his doctrine regarding purity of life, namely, the moral precepts which he laid down for the attainment of the supreme end. They required an absolutely stainless life. Pythagoras enforced the duty of reverence toward parents and the aged, fidelity in friendship, strict self-examination, circumspection in all our acts, patriotism, etc. Further, his disciples were required to be cleanly of body and cleanly in attire; they were to abstain from all “unclean” food, especially fleshmeat, and from intoxicating liquors, and hence to live on bread and fruits only, but beans were an exception to this rule; for some not fully explained reason beans were an abomination to the Pythagoreans. And that which was unfit as food was unfit also as matter for offerings to God: for the god our philosopher reverenced was a god of light and purity. His clear intellect rejected polytheism, though what his view of the unity of godhead was we know nothing save that his faith was an eminently pure and exalted one.

2. THE PYTHAGOREANS.

The life of Pythagoras was devoted entirely to his School and his League. The School was the seedfield or seminary of the League, and the League was the practical application of the School’s teaching. Thus the School was preparatory to the League, whose members were educated in the School.

Pythagoras enjoyed the boundless reverence of his disciples: when they wished to assert any proposition as indisputably true, they would say, He himself said it (Gr., autos ephe, Lat., ipse dixit). And this reverence for the Master increased as in time the School was changed from an open institution to a secret one. For at first everybody, even the most learned and most eminent of the citizens, attended the lectures of the Philosopher. Those who were simply hearers of the lectures were called Acusmatics (akusmatikoi). But those who were of proper age for receiving a further education, and who had leisure to devote themselves to learning, were afforded opportunity for pursuing higher studies under the personal direction of Pythagoras, and were known, not as simple Hearers, but as Students, or Mathematici. These were the nucleus of the Pythagorean sect. This class of disciples having grown considerably in numbers and influence, it became possible for Pythagoras, helped by the contributions that flowed in, to erect for his academy a special building, or, rather, group of buildings, in which he and his disciples might live secluded from the influences of the outerworld. This institution, called the Koinobion (coenobium, place where people live in community) was a world in itself, and embraced all the conveniences of plain living—gardens, groves, promenades, halls, baths, etc., so that the student did not regret the hurlyburly of the world without. Henceforth the Acusmatici, or Acustici, were no longer persons of all classes and degrees, admitted to attend the lectures, but the newly admitted pupils, who received instruction in the elements of the sciences, and were preparing themselves for the higher studies. They had to observe strict silence and to yield blind obedience, and were not permitted to see the Master’s face: at the lectures a curtain screened him from view. The advanced students were admitted behind the screen, and hence were called esoterikoi (esoterici, insiders): those before the curtain, exoterikoi (exoterici, outsiders). To gain admission to the esoteric class a pupil was required to spend from two to five years in study, and then had to undergo severe tests. If a student failed to answer the tests he was rejected: but if he passed successfully, he was no longer required to observe silence and to be content with listening only: he might now see the Master face to face, and under his direction might pursue a study chosen by himself, as philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, music, etc. Gymnastic exercise was practiced diligently, and was made the cornerstone of the Pythagorean therapeutic, which for the rest was a science of dietetic.

These approved and tested students formed the core of the celebrated League, which, in conformity with the division of the pupils in the School, comprised Exoterics and Esoterics. The Esoteric members of the League were, no doubt, the students admitted to the higher classes, as well as the graduates of the school: probably the number of these never exceeded 300. But to become an Exoteric member of the League, anyone was qualified who was a follower of the Philosopher, and who was ready to live according to his teaching and to spread the knowledge of the doctrine abroad: of these there may have been several thousand. Their mode of life was left to their discretion, while, on the contrary, the Esoterici were bound by strict rules. They lived in the Coenobium, always wore clothes of white linen, washed and bathed daily in cold water, at their common board abstained from the meats and drinks forbidden by the Master, and put in practice his doctrine. They divided the day among their various duties, meditating, mornings, how they might employ the hours most profitably, and evenings questioning themselves how their good resolutions had been kept. Harmony, that foundation-idea of the Pythagorean doctrine, was the lodestar of their lives. They studied to be just toward all men, toward the erring strict and kindly, faithful to friends and yokemates, to the law submissive, toward the unfortunate charitable, temperate in their pleasures; to keep their plighted word, and in their behavior to set a good example to all men. The League is said to have comprised several sections, but whether the sections were “degrees” rising one above another, or whether they were co-ordinate branches, is not clear. We hear of Mathematici, who devoted themselves specially to the sciences, of Theoretici, who were professors of ethics, of Politici, concerned with government, of Sebastici, whose province was religion. The religion of the Pythagoreans seems to have been compounded of doctrines of the ancient popular religion of the Greeks, of the mysteries, and of the monotheism of the Egyptian priests; and it had a secret cult, with elaborate ceremonial of initiation, the purpose of which, however, was to enforce the teaching of the Master.

The political principles of the Pythagoreans favored a transformation of the Dorian oligarchism into an aristocratism of culture. Democracy they hated. Their aim was to acquire for themselves powerful influence in the state, to fill the public offices with their own members, and to administer government according to their Master’s ideas. As matter of fact, they appear to have attained these ends fully or approximately in Crotona, Locri, Metapontum, Tarentum, and other cities of Magna Graecia. There is no doubt that the secrets that the Pythagoreans were sworn to keep had reference to these political aims. To bar out the uninitiated the members are said to have had a badge, a five-pointed star (pentagrammon, pentalpha) and to have employed a symbolic form of speech, by means of which they concealed their secrets under cover of apparently trivial words, or words not to be understood by outsiders.

But the League of the Sage of Crotona, after a glorious, though brief, ascendency, had a tragic end. The cities of Magna Graecia had grown rich by commerce, and with wealth and ease had come great corruption of manners. In Sybaris the lower classes of citizens—artisans and shopkeepers—rose in revolt, and five hundred patricians were banished, their property seized by the people, and the popular leader Telys administered the government in their stead. The exiles took refuge in Crotona, and there, according to Grecian custom, sitting around the altar in the agora, or market-place, implored the aid of that city, then ruled by the Pythagoreans. Thus for two reasons the rulers of Crotona were objects of hate to the tyrannos of Sybaris: they were the enemies of democracy, and they were protectors of the exiled oligarchs. He, therefore, demanded of Crotona surrender of the fugitives. The demand having been refused (at the urgent instance of Pythagoras it is said), war followed. A desperate battle was fought, and the Crotoniats, though inferior in number, were victorious (510 B. C.). Sybaris fell into their hands, and was looted without mercy, and the town leveled with the ground: in fact, a stream was made to flow through the once magnificent city.

This atrocious deed, which though no consequence of Pythagorean teaching, was nevertheless a consequence of Pythagorean exclusiveness and Pythagorean contempt for the people, had its nemesis. The democratic spirit, so mortally offended, took an equally atrocious revenge. In Crotona, too, as before in Sybaris, the democracy took action, and demanded a division of the conquered Sybarite territory among all the citizens of Crotona, and equal suffrage for all in the election of the rulers. At the head of the democracy stood Cylon, an enemy of the Pythagoreans. The aged Master, because of the hostility manifested toward him personally, was obliged to flee from the scene of his great labors. It is supposed that he died at Metapontum, hard on a hundred years old. In Crotona the strife of parties went on. The government unwisely rejected the demands of the democrats, and thereupon, about the middle of the fifth century B. C., the storm burst. The rage of the oppressed and despised people was vented first upon the Pythagoreans, a great number of whom were assembled in the house of Milo. The house was taken by storm, the assemblage butchered either on the spot or in flight, and their property distributed among the people. Aristocracy was also overthrown in Tarentum, Metapontum, and Locri. The Pythagorean League was annihilated, and its religious and political labors disappeared, leaving no trace.

3. THE ORPHICI.

The scattered fragments of the Pythagorean League attached themselves to another association, that of the Orphici, named after the fabled singer Orpheus. This curious association, a fantastic compound of the mysteries and Pythagorism, is rightly credited to Onomacritus, apostle and reformer of the Eleusinian and Dionysian mysteries, who lived in the time of the Athenian tyrannos Pisistratus: he was high in the favor of Pisistratus, and enjoyed much celebrity. By some of his contemporaries, men of sense and not easily imposed on, he was suspected of palming off his own compositions for poems of Orpheus (who never existed); but probably he did this without intent to deceive, but simply because of his irresistible passion for the mummery of secret societies and mysteries. This adventurer and mystic, who understood very well the meaning of the mysteries and the uses to which they could be turned, was one of the first to speak out the thought hidden in them: that man was born in sin and fallen away from God, and that he cannot be saved till grace shall be afforded him. His doctrine was just Pietism, with this exception, that instead of “the lord Jesus” we have here the god Dionysos, or the Iacchos of the mysteries, or Orpheus. Such inane babblement as this, and such doctrines as that the soul of man is confined in the body as in a prison, that the world is for it a vale of tears and a place of banishment, that it is pining and longing to return to its true home, Heaven, are an offense to the joyous spirit of Greece, an outrage against her religion of beauty, truth, and virtue, the last blow dealt at Grecian art and science. The outcome of them was a tedious, voluminous “Orphic literature” consisting of mythological poems full of mysticism and sentimentality.

The Orphic societies were not, like the mysteries, great assemblages of people in temples, but, after the Pythagorean pattern, secret schools or clubs; and they followed, at least ostensibly, the Pythagorean rule of life, abstaining from fleshmeat, beans, and wine; but with this they coupled two cults in themselves incompatible, that of the ideal god Apollo, and that of the sensual deity Dionysos. But being stript of the semi-public and official character attaching to the mysteries, and of the philosophic dignity of the Pythagorean sect, the Orphic societies became simply nests of swindlers and mendicants; and vagabond priests, Orpheotelestae, admitted to their ridiculous degrees, for a consideration, every credulous aid marvel-gobbeting postulant; there were even victims who had themselves with wife and children initiated every month. Other tricksters combined the Orphic cult with the Phrygian cult of Cybele, mother of the gods, and with that of Sabazios: these were known as Metragyrtae (mother-beggars) or Menagyrtae (monthly beggars). These and their like were regular mountebanks, giving out that they had the power of curing the insane, their method being to dance and caper around the patient to the sound of timbrels, the while flagellating themselves: for this they took up a little collection. One of these metragyrtae was capitally punished at Athens in the middle of the fifth century B. C.: but the judges, seized by remorse, questioned the oracle, and got response that in atonement they should build a temple to the Great Mother: thereupon the followers of the dead juggler were set free. A priestess of Sabazios, Ninus by name, was also put to death for brewing philters: she was the one sole victim of witchcraft trials in all antiquity. Thus did the Orphic sect in Greece degenerate to the same low estate as the mysteries, despised by all honest and enlightened men.

But both the mysteries and the Orphic as well as Pythagorean societies were links in a chain of phenomena that reached all through Grecian antiquity, indicating plainly a reaction against the popular religion, and an effort to introduce essentially different religious views—views which in aftertimes, in an improved form, were to triumph definitely over the Olympian gods.

4. MYSTERIOUS PERSONAGES OF ANCIENT TIMES.

In antiquity we are able to distinguish three religious systems, viz., polytheism, monotheism, mysticism. The first was a deification of nature: and as nature manifests herself in various forces, the religion, too, had to postulate a multitude of deities. This is the system of the Oriental and Graeco-Roman popular religion; and in these its two branches it is again differentiated by the fact that on the one side it assumed a gloomy, awe-inspiring character, while on the other side it wore a joyous aspect, inviting to mirth and pleasure. The second system rested on a total separation of God from nature, and thus it acquired a monotonous, one-sided character of abstruseness, without any feeling for form and beauty: it was the system of the Egyptian priests and of the Israelites, and in after times passed over into Mohammedanism and some Christian sects as Unitarianism, etc. The third system also postulated the separation of God and nature, but it was not a definitive separation, for there was hope of a reconciliation; it consisted, therefore, in a sense of alienation from God, and in an incessant longing for reunion with him. This system found embodiment in the Grecian mysteries and the Pythagoreo-Orphic societies, and later in “positive” Christianity: it was neither absolutely polytheistic nor absolutely monotheistic, but compact of these two systems, in that it contemplated many gods embraced under one form, or one god manifested in sundry forms. Even in the myths underlying the Eleusinian mysteries we have a conversion of the gods, especially Demeter and Dionysos, into human form and a resurrection and ascension of Persephone; an important part was played in the same mysteries by the bread and wine employed for religious purposes, by the purifications in water, and by the fasts observed; in the Bacchic mysteries Orpheus, Zagreus, and others appear as suffering and dying demigods; in the Orphic rites there is allusion to the natural sinfulness of man, and to grace and redemption; in the mysteries of Cybele sexual continence is commended as highly meritorious; in the mysteries and in the Pythagorean sect, even as in Christianity, the bodily life is regarded as an evil, an incorporeal immortality of the soul as true bliss, stress is laid on the soul’s delights, and on the punishment of the wicked, whereas, in polytheism the soul after death is but a shadow; and many are the other points of contact between those systems and Christianism, which, being of a more general nature, have not yet been mentioned in these pages, for example, certain mysterious and enigmatical personages who have remained hitherto quite unnoticed, except by the learned.

Commonly schools and the books give information only about the officially recognized Olympian gods, and perhaps the gods of sea and netherworld; but the “Best God,” in Greek Aristaios, is passed over in silence, just because one knows not what to make of him. This Aristaios passed for a son of Apollo the god of light. Held apart from the “scandalous chronicles” and naughty gossip that was in circulation around the rest of the gods, he was represented as inventor of sheep-husbandry, bee-keeping, the production of oil from the olive, etc., as man’s helper in drought and aridity, practicer of leechcraft (like his brother Aesculapius), subduer of the winds, originator of rites, laws, and sciences. As the little vogue of his name would indicate, he was less honored on the Grecian terra firma than in the Hellenic islands and colonies, and there ofttimes was joined with the father of the gods, as Zeus-Aristaios (particularly in his role of protector of the bees), with the god of light as Aristaios-Apollon, with the god of fertility as Aristaios-Dionysos. In the island Ceos he was the most highly reverenced of all the gods. Thus we see in Aristaios a conception of one almighty, allwise god, transcending all the conceptions of polytheism, and all the gods in human form worshiped by ancient Greece.

Now plainly Aristeas and Aristaios are one same name. Among the ancient Greeks there was a mythical personage named Aristeas. He was Apollo’s priest, as his paronymus was Apollo’s son. According to Herodotus (IV. 13–15) Aristeas was of Proconnesus, an isle in the Propontis (sea of Marmora), son of Castrobius; in the sacred trance received the inspiration of Apollo, journeyed into Scythia (north of the Black Sea), and died in his native place, in a fulling-mill. The place having been closed after his death, a citizen of the neighboring town of Cyzicus who happened to be passing, declared that he had just before met Aristeas in that town and spoken with him. The mill door was then opened, but no trace of Aristeas was there. Seven years afterward he appeared again in Proconnesus, there composed poems on his journey to Scythia (which Herodotus read), and disappeared a second time. But 340 years later he was seen at Metapontum, in lower Italy, where he ordered the citizens to erect to Apollo a statue with his name; then he disappeared for good. On questioning the oracle at Delphi what they should do, the burghers of Metapontum were counseled to obey the precept of Aristeas; which they did. Herodotus saw the statue surrounded by laurel trees. This “Best of Men,” ever reappearing, and anon disappearing, without leaving any vestige of bodily presence, is no doubt evidence of a pre-Christian need of a son of god rising from the dead and ascending into heaven; as far as it goes, it is also an argument for the reality of resurrection from the dead and for the union of the divine and human.