Tiresias: The Ancient Mediterranean Religions Source Database

4479

Diogenes Laertius, Lives Of The Philosophers, 8.41

nan Hermippus gives another anecdote. Pythagoras, on coming to Italy, made a subterranean dwelling and enjoined on his mother to mark and record all that passed, and at what hour, and to send her notes down to him until he should ascend. She did so. Pythagoras some time afterwards came up withered and looking like a skeleton, then went into the assembly and declared he had been down to Hades, and even read out his experiences to them. They were so affected that they wept and wailed and looked upon him as divine, going so far as to send their wives to him in hopes that they would learn some of his doctrines; and so they were called Pythagorean women. Thus far Hermippus.

Intertexts (texts cited often on the same page as the searched text):

7 results
1. Herodotus, Histories, 4.13-4.15, 4.36, 4.94-4.96 (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE) 4.13. There is also a story related in a poem by Aristeas son of Caüstrobius, a man of Proconnesus . This Aristeas, possessed by Phoebus, visited the Issedones; beyond these (he said) live the one-eyed Arimaspians, beyond whom are the griffins that guard gold, and beyond these again the Hyperboreans, whose territory reaches to the sea. ,Except for the Hyperboreans, all these nations (and first the Arimaspians) are always at war with their neighbors; the Issedones were pushed from their lands by the Arimaspians, and the Scythians by the Issedones, and the Cimmerians, living by the southern sea, were hard pressed by the Scythians and left their country. Thus Aristeas' story does not agree with the Scythian account about this country. 4.14. Where Aristeas who wrote this came from, I have already said; I will tell the story that I heard about him at Proconnesus and Cyzicus . It is said that this Aristeas, who was as well-born as any of his townsfolk, went into a fuller's shop at Proconnesus and there died; the owner shut his shop and went away to tell the dead man's relatives, ,and the report of Aristeas' death being spread about in the city was disputed by a man of Cyzicus, who had come from the town of Artace, and said that he had met Aristeas going toward Cyzicus and spoken with him. While he argued vehemently, the relatives of the dead man came to the fuller's shop with all that was necessary for burial; ,but when the place was opened, there was no Aristeas there, dead or alive. But in the seventh year after that, Aristeas appeared at Proconnesus and made that poem which the Greeks now call the titleArimaspea /title, after which he vanished once again. 4.15. Such is the tale told in these two towns. But this, I know, happened to the Metapontines in Italy, two hundred and forty years after the second disappearance of Aristeas, as reckoning made at Proconnesus and Metapontum shows me: ,Aristeas, so the Metapontines say, appeared in their country and told them to set up an altar to Apollo, and set beside it a statue bearing the name of Aristeas the Proconnesian; for, he said, Apollo had come to their country alone of all Italian lands, and he—the man who was now Aristeas, but then when he followed the god had been a crow—had come with him. ,After saying this, he vanished. The Metapontines, so they say, sent to Delphi and asked the god what the vision of the man could mean; and the Pythian priestess told them to obey the vision, saying that their fortune would be better. ,They did as instructed. And now there stands beside the image of Apollo a statue bearing the name of Aristeas; a grove of bay-trees surrounds it; the image is set in the marketplace. Let it suffice that I have said this much about Aristeas. 4.36. I have said this much of the Hyperboreans, and let it suffice; for I do not tell the story of that Abaris, alleged to be a Hyperborean, who carried the arrow over the whole world, fasting all the while. But if there are men beyond the north wind, then there are others beyond the south. ,And I laugh to see how many have before now drawn maps of the world, not one of them reasonably; for they draw the world as round as if fashioned by compasses, encircled by the Ocean river, and Asia and Europe of a like extent. For myself, I will in a few words indicate the extent of the two, and how each should be drawn. 4.94. Their belief in their immortality is as follows: they believe that they do not die, but that one who perishes goes to the deity Salmoxis, or Gebeleïzis, as some of them call him. ,Once every five years they choose one of their people by lot and send him as a messenger to Salmoxis, with instructions to report their needs; and this is how they send him: three lances are held by designated men; others seize the messenger to Salmoxis by his hands and feet, and swing and toss him up on to the spear-points. ,If he is killed by the toss, they believe that the god regards them with favor; but if he is not killed, they blame the messenger himself, considering him a bad man, and send another messenger in place of him. It is while the man still lives that they give him the message. ,Furthermore, when there is thunder and lightning these same Thracians shoot arrows skyward as a threat to the god, believing in no other god but their own. 4.95. I understand from the Greeks who live beside the Hellespont and Pontus, that this Salmoxis was a man who was once a slave in Samos, his master being Pythagoras son of Mnesarchus; ,then, after being freed and gaining great wealth, he returned to his own country. Now the Thracians were a poor and backward people, but this Salmoxis knew Ionian ways and a more advanced way of life than the Thracian; for he had consorted with Greeks, and moreover with one of the greatest Greek teachers, Pythagoras; ,therefore he made a hall, where he entertained and fed the leaders among his countrymen, and taught them that neither he nor his guests nor any of their descendants would ever die, but that they would go to a place where they would live forever and have all good things. ,While he was doing as I have said and teaching this doctrine, he was meanwhile making an underground chamber. When this was finished, he vanished from the sight of the Thracians, and went down into the underground chamber, where he lived for three years, ,while the Thracians wished him back and mourned him for dead; then in the fourth year he appeared to the Thracians, and thus they came to believe what Salmoxis had told them. Such is the Greek story about him. 4.96. Now I neither disbelieve nor entirely believe the tale about Salmoxis and his underground chamber; but I think that he lived many years before Pythagoras; ,and as to whether there was a man called Salmoxis or this is some deity native to the Getae, let the question be dismissed.
2. Plato, Republic, 364a (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) 364a. employed by both laymen and poets. All with one accord reiterate that soberness and righteousness are fair and honorable, to be sure, but unpleasant and laborious, while licentiousness and injustice are pleasant and easy to win and are only in opinion and by convention disgraceful. They say that injustice pays better than justice, for the most part, and they do not scruple to felicitate bad men who are rich or have other kinds of power to do them honor in public and private, and to dishonor
3. Sophocles, Electra, 63-64, 62 (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
4. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation To The Greeks, 2.17 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
5. Pausanias, Description of Greece, 8.37.5 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE) 8.37.5. By the image of the Mistress stands Anytus, represented as a man in armour. Those about the sanctuary say that the Mistress was brought up by Anytus, who was one of the Titans, as they are called. The first to introduce Titans into poetry was Homer, See Hom. Il. 14.279 . representing them as gods down in what is called Tartarus; the lines are in the passage about Hera's oath. From Homer the name of the Titans was taken by Onomacritus, who in the orgies he composed for Dionysus made the Titans the authors of the god's sufferings.
6. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 8.7, 8.21, 8.32, 8.36 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE) 8.7. But the book which passes as the work of Pythagoras is by Lysis of Tarentum, a Pythagorean, who fled to Thebes and taught Epaminondas. Heraclides, the son of Serapion, in his Epitome of Sotion, says that he also wrote a poem On the Universe, and secondly the Sacred Poem which begins:Young men, come reverence in quietudeAll these my words;thirdly On the Soul, fourthly of Piety, fifthly Helothales the Father of Epicharmus of Cos, sixthly Croton, and other works as well. The same authority says that the poem On the Mysteries was written by Hippasus to defame Pythagoras, and that many others written by Aston of Croton were ascribed to Pythagoras. 8.21. The same authority, as we have seen, asserts that Pythagoras took his doctrines from the Delphic priestess Themistoclea. Hieronymus, however, says that, when he had descended into Hades, he saw the soul of Hesiod bound fast to a brazen pillar and gibbering, and the soul of Homer hung on a tree with serpents writhing about it, this being their punishment for what they had said about the gods; he also saw under torture those who would not remain faithful to their wives. This, says our authority, is why he was honoured by the people of Croton. Aristippus of Cyrene affirms in his work On the Physicists that he was named Pythagoras because he uttered the truth as infallibly as did the Pythian oracle. 8.32. The whole air is full of souls which are called genii or heroes; these are they who send men dreams and signs of future disease and health, and not to men alone, but to sheep also and cattle as well; and it is to them that purifications and lustrations, all divination, omens and the like, have reference. The most momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or to evil. Blest are the men who acquire a good soul; they can never be at rest, nor ever keep the same course two days together. 8.36. This is what Alexander says that he found in the Pythagorean memoirs. What follows is Aristotle's.But Pythagoras's great dignity not even Timon overlooked, who, although he digs at him in his Silli, speaks ofPythagoras, inclined to witching works and ways,Man-snarer, fond of noble periphrase.Xenophanes confirms the statement about his having been different people at different times in the elegiacs beginning:Now other thoughts, another path, I show.What he says of him is as follows:They say that, passing a belaboured whelp,He, full of pity, spake these words of dole:Stay, smite not ! 'Tis a friend, a human soul;I knew him straight whenas I heard him yelp !
7. Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, 178, 143 (3rd cent. CE - 4th cent. CE)

Subjects of this text:

subject	book bibliographic info
abaris	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
afterlife	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
apollo, apollonian, apolline, apollo hyperborean	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
apollo, apollonian, apolline	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
apollo	Tor, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology (2017) 276
aristeas	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
bassaras, bassarides, bassarae	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
boeotia, boeotian	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
cave	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
demeter	Tor, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology (2017) 276
diasparagmos διασπαραγμός	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
diogenes laertius	Cornelli, In Search of Pythagoreanism: Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category (2013) 161
dionysos, rebirth	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
dionysos	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
dismemberment	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
hades place	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
heracles	Tor, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology (2017) 276
hesiod	Cornelli, In Search of Pythagoreanism: Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category (2013) 161
homer	Cornelli, In Search of Pythagoreanism: Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category (2013) 161
huffman, c.a.	Cornelli, In Search of Pythagoreanism: Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category (2013) 161
hyperborean	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
iamblichus	Cornelli, In Search of Pythagoreanism: Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category (2013) 161
initiation, initiatory rites	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
katabasis	Tor, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology (2017) 276
katabasis κατάβασις, of orpheus	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
katabasis κατάβασις, of pythagoras	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
katabasis κατάβασις	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
myth, mythical	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
night, nocturnal	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
orgia ὄργια	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
orpheus, death	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
orpheus, katabasis	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
orpheus	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154; Cornelli, In Search of Pythagoreanism: Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category (2013) 161
orphica	Tor, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology (2017) 276
orphics	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
orphism, orphic	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
parmenides, and becoming like god	Tor, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology (2017) 276
parmenides, the kouros journey, as a journey of the soul	Tor, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology (2017) 276
parmenides, the proem	Tor, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology (2017) 276
possession, possessed	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
priest, priesthood	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
purification	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
pythagoras, katabasis	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
pythagoras	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154; Cornelli, In Search of Pythagoreanism: Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category (2013) 161; Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity (2011) 322
pythagoras and the pythagoreans	Tor, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology (2017) 276
pythagoras as (semi-)divine	Tor, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology (2017) 276
pythagorean quietude, the katabasis of pythagoras	Tor, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology (2017) 276
rite, ritual	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
sacrifice, sacrificial	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
semele	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
sophocles	Tor, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology (2017) 276
sparagmós σπαραγμός	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
theology, theological	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
thracians	Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity (2011) 322
timarchus of chaeronea	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
titans/titanic	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
tragedy, tragic	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
trophonius	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
woman	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154
zalmoxis'	Cornelli, In Search of Pythagoreanism: Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category (2013) 161
zalmoxis	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154; Tor, Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology (2017) 276
zeus	Bernabe et al., Redefining Dionysos (2013) 154