Teachings, Not Books

Pythagoras taught, accordingly, that he himself had first been Euphorbus, then Callides, third Hermotimus, fourth Pyrrhus, and last Pythagoras; and that the things that had existed come into being again after certain cycles of time, so that nothing in the world should be thought of as new. He said that true philosophy is a meditation on death; that its daily struggle is to draw the soul out of the prison of the body into freedom; that our learning is recollection; and many other things that Plato works out in his dialogues, especially in the Phaedo and the Timaeus. For Plato, after founding the Academy and gaining countless disciples, felt that his philosophy fell short on many points. So he went to Magna Graecia, and there learned the teachings of Pythagoras from Archytas of Tarentum and Timaeus of Locri; and he set this system out in the elegant form and style he had learned from Socrates. The whole of this, as we can prove, Origen carried over into his On First Principles, only changing the name. What mistake, then, was I making when I said that in my youth I had attributed to the apostles ideas I had found in Pythagoras, Plato, and Empedocles? I did not speak, as you slanderously claim, of what I had read in the books of Pythagoras, Plato, and Empedocles, but of what I had read as having existed in their writings: that is, what other men’s writings showed me had existed in them. This way of speaking is quite common. I might say, for instance, “The opinions I read in Socrates I believed to be true,” meaning what I read as his opinions in Plato and others of the Socratic school, though Socrates himself wrote no books. So too I might say, “I wished to imitate the deeds I had read of in Alexander and Scipio,” meaning not that they described their own deeds, but that I had read in other men’s works of the deeds I admired as done by them. So although I may not be able to tell you of any records of Pythagoras himself that survive, vouched for by his son or daughter or others of his disciples, you cannot hold me guilty of falsehood, because I said that I had read not his books but his teachings. You are quite mistaken if you thought you could make this a screen for your own falsehood, and maintain that because I cannot produce any book written by Pythagoras, you have the right to claim that six thousand books of Origen have been lost. [a]