The Sayings of Pythagoras

To fend off the charge of falsehood, it is your whim to become very exacting. You are not to be called on to produce the six thousand books of Origen you speak of; but you expect me to know all the records of Pythagoras. What truth is there in all the boastful talk you blurted out from your puffed-up cheeks, declaring that you had corrected On First Principles by bringing in words you had read in other books of Origen, and so had not put in other men’s words but restored his own? Out of this whole forest of his works you cannot produce a single bush or shoot. You accuse me of raising smoke and mist. Here you have smoke and mist indeed! You know that I have scattered them and done away with them. But though your neck is broken, you do not bow it. With an impudence that exceeds even your ignorance, you say that I am denying what is quite obvious, so as to excuse yourself for not producing so much as a leather coin from your treasury, after promising mountains of gold. I admit that your hostility toward me rests on good grounds, and that your rage and passion are genuine: for unless I kept demanding what does not exist, you would be thought to have what you do not have. You ask me for the books of Pythagoras. But who told you that any books of his survive? It is true that in my letter, which you criticize, these words occur: “Suppose that I erred in my youth; that, trained in secular literature, I had no sufficient knowledge of doctrine at the beginning of my Christian life, and that I attributed to the apostles things I had read in Pythagoras or Plato or Empedocles.” But I was speaking not of their books but of their teachings, which I was able to learn through Cicero, Brutus, and Seneca. Read the short speech for Vatinius, and others in which secret societies are mentioned. Turn over Cicero’s dialogues. Search the coast of Italy that used to be called Magna Graecia, and you will find various teachings of Pythagoras inscribed on bronze on their public monuments. Whose are those Golden Rules? They are Pythagoras’s, and in them all his principles are contained in summary form. Iamblichus wrote a commentary on them, following in this, at least in part, Moderatus, a man of great eloquence, and Archippus and Lysides, who were disciples of Pythagoras. Of these, Archippus and Lysides held schools in Greece, that is, in Thebes. They kept their teacher’s precepts so fully that they used their memory instead of books. One of these precepts is: “We must drive away by every device, and cut out with fire and sword and contrivances of every kind, disease from the body, ignorance from the soul, luxury from the belly, sedition from the state, discord from the household, and excess from all things alike.” There are other precepts of Pythagoras, such as these: “Friends have all things in common.” “A friend is a second self.” “Two times are especially to be watched, morning and evening: that is, the things we are going to do and the things we have done.” “Next to God we must worship truth, for this alone makes men akin to God.” There are also riddles, which Aristotle collected with great care in his works. “Never go beyond the scales,” that is, “Do not overstep the rule of justice.” “Never stir the fire with the sword,” that is, “Do not provoke with hard words a man who is angry and worked up.” “We must not touch the crown,” that is, “We must uphold the laws of the state.” “Do not eat your heart out,” that is, “Put sorrow out of your mind.” “Once you have set out, do not turn back,” that is, “After death, do not long for this life.” “Do not walk on the public road,” that is, “Do not follow the errors of the crowd.” “Never let a swallow into the household,” that is, “Do not take chatterers and talkative people under the same roof with you.” “Put fresh burdens on the burdened; put none on those who lay them down,” that is, “When people are on the road to virtue, ply them with fresh precepts; when they give themselves up to idleness, leave them alone.” I said that I had read the teachings of the Pythagoreans. Let me tell you that Pythagoras was the first to discover the immortality of the soul and its passing from one body to another. Virgil gives his support to this view in the sixth book of the Aeneid, in these words: [a]