Pythagoras & the Western Greeks

A History of Mankind (88)

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Uniquely in history, Pythagoras was long deemed to have influenced a person who lived before he did: Zaleucus, a Greek lawgiver in the polis of Epizephyrian Locri[1] in southern Italy, was widely believed to have been a Pythagorean even though he almost certainly died, in the Seventh Century BC, before Pythagoras was even born – a sign of how intense Pythagoras' aura was.[2]

Zaleucus’ alleged connection may have stemmed from the fact that Locri was pretty close to Croton, and had for centuries a tradition of abiding no-matter-what to the code of Zaleucus[3], which may have been the first written Greek legal code; there are many legends about Zaleucus’ life, some of which may actually be true.

The code itself is a combination of stern patriarchal oversight and modern trolling that does have a strong Pythagorean flavor, including stipulations such as these: 

“A free-born woman may not be accompanied by more than one female slave, unless she is drunk; she may not leave the city during the night, unless she is planning to commit adultery; she may not wear gold jewelry or a garment with a purple border, unless she is a courtesan; and a husband may not wear a gold-studded ring or a cloak of Milesian fashion unless he is bent upon prostitution or adultery.“

Perhaps the most Pythagorean part of the code, at least in the eyes of Greeks who knew of Pythagoras' teaching, was the requirement that anyone who proposed a new law, or the alteration of one already existing, had to appear before the Citizen's Council with a rope round his neck. This made it easier to immediately strangle that person if the Council voted against the proposal.

Centuries after Pythagoras' passing, in 181 BC, a scribe came across a cache of Pythagorean writings, inside of a valuable stone sarcophagus, while working on a field on the slopes of Janiculum Hill in Rome. Praetor Quintus Petilius felt that the Pythagorean doctrine posed a danger to state religion and convinced the Senate to have the books burned at the Comitium.[4]

That's how Pythagoras was perceived: as perhaps the most valuable thinker in all of Greek philosophy, one whose writings were worth going the extra mile so that they would be preserved for posterity, and the most dangerous.

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

Pythagoras' influence on other pre-Socratic philosophers was obviously profound. Like himself, they were also influenced by an external influence unavailable to Chinese thinkers of the era: contact with a comparable Other, the powerful foreign civilizations of the East and their Persian rulers who fought and often defeated the Greeks, forcing he brightest minds of Ionia toward the western colonies. But Pythagoras’ influence on the Western Greeks, after his arrival in Italy, was particularly strong.

More isolated from the main currents of Greek thought than the Ionians, the Western Greeks tended to display less cultural sophistication, and were thus more easily moved by Pythagoras, the one Greek wise man to have come to them, and his followers. They didn’t face ancient, literate kingdoms stepped in the traditions of the Fertile Crescent, but Italian barbarians and less impressive powers like the sea-going Ligurians, who dominated the inner Adriatic by the Seventh Century BC and were only brought under control by the fleets of Corinth.

Western Greece, the region closest to the poleis in the western Mediterranean, was as a rule sparsely populated, rugged and rather backward. Locals from Epirus tried to give themselves airs with the recurrent argument that they descended from some character in the Iliad: while many small Epirus poleis claimed they were founded by returned soldiers, the Chaones explained that their royal house was actually descended from Helenus, son of Priam, and Andromache, widow of Hector, no less. Before their stellar rise in the Fourth Century BC, neighboring Macedonians – who were so primitive that didn’t use the pottery wheel as late as the Seventh Century BC[5] – were widely considered half-Greek at best. Nobody was much impressed.

Southwest of Epirus, Thessaly and other regions of central Greece were only somewhat more influential for the greater Greek culture. Like Epirus and Macedonia, these were agricultural regions fairly isolated from the trade revolution elsewhere; Jason – the legendary hero who supposedly looked for the Golden Fleece in the Black Sea, together with this argonauts – was Thessaly’s only great merchant-explorer.

In the absence of a trader class aspiring to greater power, this allowed for a continuation of traditional, oligarchic-style control without recourse to anti-democratic tyrants, or anti-tyrannical democratic mobs. However, the closer proximity of Thessaly and surrounding areas to big cities on the mainland, like Corinth and Athens, gave them a patina of sophistication and meant they were often involved with politics there.

In fact, various Thessalian poleis – famous for their fine horses and cavalry, since they had at least some plains where they could exercise the animals, unlike many other Greeks – sent a force to help the Athenian tyrants in 511 BC, in a move that may have convinced the geopolitically-minded Spartans to intervene in favor of their democratic rivals.

Not everyone appreciated the Thessalians’ ways; when asked why Thessalians were the only people he never cheated, the poet Simonides replied: “Because they are too stupid.”[6]

Thebes, the large Boeotian capital city smack in the middle between northern and southern Greece, functioning as a conduit towards Thessaly, also remained oligarchical for centuries. Aristotle noted that the city, looking to curb trader influence, had a rule that political office was only available to those who hadn’t conducted any commerce in at least ten years.

All this led to pretty bad press from Greeks hailing from trader-friendly areas[7]. Boeotian stupidity was proverbial, and “Boeotian hog” was an old insult by the early Fifth Century BC – when Thebans enthusiastically sided with the Persians of Xerxes during their invasion of Greece. Thucydides gives the Thebans a single speech in his History of the Peloponnesian War, in which they egg on the Spartans to butcher the entire population of the rival Boeotian town of Plataea. Not for the first or the last time, Thucydides here stinks of demagoguery, particularly since everyone at the time knew it was Athens that was famous for indiscriminate massacres.

The fact that it was a Theban poet like Pindar (519-438 BC) who turned self-reflection into self-performance for a fee can’t really have helped Thebes improve its reputation for dubious pragmatism: extremely popular in Hellenic times – his works were compiled and well preserved for prosperity – he composed all sorts of hymns, songs for dance and praise, victory odes and laments, a frantic activity displaying professionalism directed to well-paying customers who required appropriate sentiments at public festivals and gatherings.

Many of his works memorialize athletic victories, and revolve around ideas of blood, appropriate ancestors and glory attained in closely fought contests, evoking an idea of a superior man of great achievement that was very intriguing for future thinkers. Plato, for example, often cited Pindar and may have inherited a concern with the proper breeding of humans from the Theban poet[8].

Pindar – who hailed from a wealthy, aristocratic background – was first commissioned to write for other wealthy patrons when he was twenty years of age, and he never looked back. Democratic Athens made him diplomatic consul (“proxenos”) for Athenian interests in Thebes; and yet, in 470 BC, he wrote to praise anti-democratic Sicilian tyrant Hiero and the always anxious-for-recognition Macedonian king Alexander I (an ancestor of the famous conqueror); in 462 BC, he wrote odes lobbying for the return from exile of a friend, which perhaps he didn’t charge anyone for.

Basking in fame in middle age, he competed with other poets for commissions, losing several to Corinna of nearby Tanagra, the most famous Greek woman poet after Sappho and perhaps Argos’ Telesilla; he also attacked his rival Simonides in writing, calling him a “hireling journeyman.” Sadly, we don’t have the (almost certainly indignant) reply.

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[1]    Epizephyrian Locri, founded around 680 BC as the sole colony of the “double” region of Locris in Greece, had an extraordinarily eventful history as Greek polis, before becoming a sleepy provincial town in Southern Italy. According to Aristotle and (vehemently) Polybius, the ancestors of the settlers were slaves who had inseminated noble Locrian matrons during the absence of their husbands in Spartan service during the First Messenian War, a version which is endearing but clearly false; according to Timaeus, they were free men who reproduced in Italy the free society of their homeland, which is infinitely likelier, but less fun. This Locri founded two colonies of its own, and was the site for an important, albeit inconclusive, battle during the tail end of the Second Punic War. In addition, it supposedly was the birthplace of Timeus, a perhaps fictitious character in two key Plato dialogues (including the one named after himself) and Nossis, one of the best-known Greek women poets, who lived in the Third Century BC.

[2]    There also was an old, and obviously even more false, Roman tradition that Roman king Numa (753–673 BC) was a disciple of Pythagoras!

[3]    Now, this was sui-generis law-abiding: Thucydides reports that West Locrians had a long tradition of piracy and brigandage, and a mid-5th century BC treaty between the cities of Oeanthea and Chaleum devotes itself entirely to the regulation (not suppression) of those activities. The legislation, though local and implemented in a relatively backward region, was refined to a degree beyond anything ever seen outside of Greek lands: procedures are laid down for the appointment of jurors, the imposition of fines, the conduct of cases, the lines of inheritance, taxation, relations between old and new members of the community; in one case (at Oeanthea) there is mention of a special court for suits involving foreigners. East Locris, meanwhile, had something resembling a federal government.

[4]    Cit. by Paolo Carafa, in “The atlas of Ancient Rome,” XIV, edited by A. Carandini et al (2012).

[5]    Another argument against the Greekness of the Macedonians was that they didn’t make serfs out of conquered populations: they killed many off, and kept those they liked, typically women and children. On about 504 BC^, Alexander I of Macedon, then still a prince, was only allowed to take part in the Olympic Games because of a dubious connection to the Temenid family of Argos. 

[6]    Cit. Plutarch of Chaeronea, “Moralia.”

[7]    Thebes was notoriously stable and conservative: a single law from local law-giver Philolaus is recorded. It regards adoption and is designed to maintain the number of property-owners; Pagondas, Boeotian general in 424 BC, likely claimed descent from another Pagondas, who was an Olympic victor in 680 BC.

[8] See “Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy” (self-published in 2023), by Costin Alamariu.