Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans,
Fragments and Commentary
Arthur Fairbanks, ed. and trans.
The First Philosophers of Greece
(London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1898), 132-156.

Hanover Historical Texts Project
Scanned and proofread by Aaron Gulyas, May 1998.
Proofread and pages added by Jonathan Perry, March 2001.

Fairbanks's Introduction
Passages in Plato referring to the Pythagoreans
Passages in Aristotle referring to the Pythagoreans
Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: Passages in the Doxographists

Fairbanks's Introduction

[Page 132] Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchos, a native of Samos, left his fatherland to escape the tyranny of Polykrates (533/2 or 529/8 B.C.). He made his home for many years in Kroton in southern Italy, where his political views gained control in the city. At length he and his followers were banished by an opposing party, and he died at Metapontum. Many stories are told of his travels into Egypt and more widely, but there is no evidence on which the stories can be accepted. He was a mystic thinker and religious reformer quite as much as a philosopher, but there is no reason for denying that the doctrines of the school originated with him. Of his disciples, Archytas, in southern Italy, and Philolaos and Lysis, at Thebes, are the best known. It is the doctrine of the school, not the teaching of Pythagoras himself, which is known to us through the writings of Aristotle.

Heraclitus fr. 40: Polymathy (the learning of many things) does not teach good sense. For otherwise it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras and again Xenophanes and Hekataios.

Passages in Aristotle referring to the Pythagoreans

Physics iii. 4; 203 a 1. For all who think they have worthily applied themselves to such philosophy, have discoursed concerning the infinite, and they all have asserted some first principle of things-some, like the Pythagoreans and Plato, a first principle existing by itself, not connected with anything else, but being itself the infinite in its essence. Only the Pythagoreans found it among things perceived by sense (for they say that number is not an abstraction), and they held that it was the infinite outside the heavens.

iii. 4; 204 a 33. (The Pythagoreans) both hold that the infinite is being, and divide it. iv. 6; 213 b 22. And the Pythagoreans say that there is a void, and that it enters into the heaven itself from the infinite air, as though it (the heaven) were breathing; and this void defines the natures of things, inasmuch as it is a certain separation and definition of things that lie and this is true first in the case of numbers, for the void defines the nature of these.

Harmony of the Spheres: Physics ii.9 ; 290 b 15. Some think it necessary that noise [of the planets] should arise when so great bodies are in motion, since sound does arise from bodies among us which are not so large and do not move so swiftly; and from the sun and moon and from the stars in so great number, and of so great size, moving so swiftly, there must necessarily arise a sound inconceivably great. Assuming these things and that the swiftness has the principle of harmony by reason of the intervals, they say that the sound of the stars moving on in a circle becomes musical. And since it seems unreasonable that we also do not hear this sound, they say that the reason for this is that the noise exists in the very nature of things, so as not to be distinguishable from the opposite silence; for the distinction of sound and silence lies in their contrast with each other, so that as blacksmiths think there is no difference between them because they are accustomed to the sound, so the same thing happens to men.

ii. 13; 293 a 19. They say that the whole heaven is limited, the opposite to what those of Italy, called the Pythagoreans, say; for these say that fire is at the centre and that the earth is one of the stars, and that moving in a circle about the centre it produces night and day. And they assume yet another earth opposite this which they call the counter-earth, not seeking reasons and causes for phenomena, but stretching phenomena to meet certain assumptions and opinions of theirs and attempting to arrange them in a system. . . . And farther the Pythagoreans say that the most authoritative part of the All stands guard, because it is specially fitting that it should, and this part is the centre; and this place that the fire occupies, they call the guard of Zeus, as it is called simply the centre, that is, the centre of space and the centre of matter and of nature.

iii.1; 300 a 15. The same holds true for those who construct the heaven out of numbers; for some construct nature out of numbers, as do certain of the Pythagoreans.

Aristotle Metaphysics i. 5 ; 985 b 23-986 b 8. Comtemporary with these philosophers and before them (Anaxagoras, Empedokles, Atomists) the Pythagoreans, as they as called, applied themselves to the sciences, and first developed them; and being brought up in them they thought that the first principles of these (i.e. numbers) were the first principles of all things. And since of these sciences numbers are by nature the first, in numbers rather than in fire and earth and water they thought they saw many likenesses to things that are and that are coming to be, as, for instance, justice is such a property of numbers, and soul and mind are such a property, and another is opportunity, and of other things one may say the same of each one. And further, discerning in numbers the conditions and reasons of harmonies also; since, moreover, other things seemed to be like numbers in their entire nature, and numbers were the first of every nature, they assumed that the elements of numbers were the elements of all things, and that the whole heavens were harmony and number. And whatever characteristics in numbers and harmonics they could show were in agreement with the properties of the heavens and its parts and with its whole arrangement, these they collected and adapted; and if there chanced to be any gap anywhere, they eagerly sought that the whole system might be connected with these (stray phenomena). To give an example of my meaning: inasmuch as ten seemed to be the perfect number and to embrace the whole nature of numbers, they asserted that the number of bodies moving through the heavens were ten, and when only nine were visible, for the reason just stated they postulated the counter-earth as the tenth. We have given a more definite account of these thinkers in other parts of our writings. But we have referred to them here with this purpose in view, that we might ascertain from them what they asserted as the first principles and in what manner they came upon the causes that have been enumerated. They certainly seem to consider number as the first principle and as it were the matter in things and in their conditions and states; and the odd and the even are elements of number, and of these the one is infinite and the other finite, and unity is the product of both of them, for it is both odd and even, and number arises from unity, and the whole heaven, as has been said, is numbers.

A different party in this same school say that the first principles are ten, named according to the following table: -finite and infinite, even and odd, one and many, right and left, male and female, rest and motion, straight and crooked, light and darkness, good and bad, square and oblong. After this manner Alkmaeon of Kroton seems to have conceived them, and either he received this doctrine from them or they from him ; for Alkmaeon arrived at maturity when Pythagoras was an old man, and his teachings resembled theirs. For he says that most human affairs are twofold, not meaning definite opposites, as did the former party, but any chance opposites - as, for example, white-black, sweet-bitter, good-bad, small-great. This philosopher let fall his opinions indefinitely about the rest, but the Pythagoreans declared the number of the opposites and what they were. From both one may learn this much, that opposites are the first principles of things; but from the latter he may learn the number of these, and what they are. But how it is possible to bring them into relation with the causes of which we have spoken if they have not clearly worked out; but they seem to range their elements under the category of matter, for they say that being is compounded and formed from them, and that they inhere in it.

987 a 9-27. Down to the Italian philosophers and with the exception of them the rest have spoken more reasonably about these principles, except that, as we said, they do indeed use two principles, and the one of these, whence is motion, some regard as one and others as twofold. The Pythagoreans, however, while they in similar manner assume two first principles, add this which is peculiar to themselves: that they do not think that the finite and the infinite and the one are certain other things by nature, such as fire or earth or any other such thing, but the infinite itself and unity itself are the essence of the things of which they are predicated, and so they make number the essence of all things. So they taught after this manner about them, and began to discourse and to define what being is, but they made it altogether too simple a matter. For they made their definitions superficially, and to whatever first the definition might apply, this they thought to be the essence of the matter ; as if one should say that twofold and two were the same, because the twofold subsists in the two. But undoubtedly the two and the twofold are not the same; otherwise the one will be many - a consequence which even they would not draw. So much then may be learned from the earlier philosophers and from their successors.

i. 8; 989 b 32-990 a 32. Those, however, who carry on their investigation with reference to all things, and divide things into what are perceived and what are not perceived by sense, evidently examine both classes, so one must delay a little longer over what they say. They speak correctly and incorrectly in reference to the questions now before us. Now those who are called Pythagoreans use principles and elements yet stranger than those of the physicists, in that they do not take them from the sphere of sense, for mathematical objects are without motion, except in the case of astronomy. Still, they discourse about everything in nature and study it; for they construct the heaven, and they observe what happens in its parts and their states and motions; they apply to these their first principles and causes, as though they agreed entirely with the other physicists that being is only what is perceptible and what that which is called heaven includes. But their causes and first principles, they say, are such as to lead up to the higher parts of reality, and are in harmony with this rather than with the doctrines of nature. In what manner motion will take place when finite and infinite, odd and even, are the only underlying realities, they do not say; nor how it is possible for genesis and destruction to take place without motion and change, or for the heavenly bodies to revolve. Farther, if one grant to them that greatness arises from these principles, or if this could be proved, nevertheless, how will it be that some bodies are light and some heavy ? For their postulates and statements apply no more to mathematical objects than to things of sense; accordingly they have said nothing at all about fire or earth or any such objects, because I think they have no distinctive doctrine about things of sense. Farther, how is it necessary to assume that number and states of number are the causes of what is in the heavens and what is taking place there from the beginning and now, and that there is no other number than that out of which the world is composed? For when opinion and opportune time are at a certain point in the heavens, and a little farther up or down are injustice and judgment or a mixture of them, and they bring forward as proof that each one of these is number, and the result then is that at this place there is already a multitude of compounded quantities because those states of number have each their place-is this number in heaven the same which it is necessary to assume that each of these things is, or is it something different? Plato says it is different ; still, he thinks that both these things and the causes of them are numbers; but the one class are ideal causes, and the others are sense causes.

[Page 142] xii. 4; 1078 b 21. The Pythagoreans (before Demokritos) only defined a few things, the concepts of which they reduced to numbers, as for instance opportunity or justice or marriage. . .

xii. 6; 1080 b 16. The Pythagoreans say that there is but one number, the mathematical, but things of sense are not separated from this, for they are composed of it; indeed, they construct the whole heaven out of numbers, but not out of unit numbers, for they assume that the unities have quantity; but how the first unity was so constituted as to have quantity, they seem at a loss to say. b 31. All, as many as regard the one as the element and first principle of things, except the Pythagoreans, assert that numbers are based on the unit; but the Pythagoreans assert, as has been remarked, that numbers have quantity.

ii. 5; 1106 b 29. The evil partakes of the nature of the infinite, the good of the finite, as the Pythagoreans conjectured.

v. 8; 1132 b 21. Reciprocity seems to some to be absolutely just, as the Pythagoreans say; for these defined the just as that which is reciprocal to another.

Mor. i. 1; 1182 a 11. First Pythagoras attempted to speak concerning virtue, but he did not speak correctly for bringing virtues into correspondence with numbers, he did not make any distinct.

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