Introduction

Pythagoras – the statesman

Friendship of all with all: the speeches to the city fathers, the young and the women of Croton, the ordered state of the soul as the aim of education and music as the first educator.

After he arrived in Croton, word of Pythagoras’ wise speeches spread quickly, and soon the city fathers asked him to speak to them too. His first advice was to build a sanctuary of the Muses to preserve concord among the citizens. That he put the guardians of all harmony first reveals the basic attitude of Pythagoreanism.

Friendship of all with all

The goal was friendship of all with all. Iamblichus describes it in many stages:

• between gods and humans, through piety and knowing worship
• among the teachings themselves
• between soul and body
• between the rational and the beings without reason, through philosophy and spiritual vision
• among fellow citizens, through loyalty to the laws that keep the state healthy
• between people of different origin, through right knowledge of nature
• between husband and wife, children, siblings and household, through unbreakable community
• within one’s own body, as a balance of opposing forces through health, a moderate life and prudence, on the model of the cooperation of the cosmic elements

Here we meet a truly all-embracing aim for humanity: a chain linking all who strive for perfection. That was the goal of his education for statesmen, young men and women.

To the city fathers

He began his education of the politicians roughly like this: regard your country as a pledge you have received jointly from your fellow citizens. Govern it so that your trustworthiness can pass on to your heirs. This will succeed if you put yourselves on a level with all citizens and are ahead of them only in justice. One would like to write these sentences in large letters over every parliament today.

From this he derived the individual virtues:

• Those who govern should choose their words so that they are reliable even without an oath.
• Their own household must live up to the trust their office demands: through marital fidelity and loving care for their children.
• They should be models through their orderly nature and banish sloth from their actions.
• The worst misdeed is to separate children and parents.
• Best is the one who foresees what is useful from his own insight. Second best, the one who learns it from the experience of others. Worst, the one who learns only through misfortune what would have been better.

This catalogue seems written for our time. So does his advice on competing for office. Whoever wants to make an effort should take the winners of a race as a model: they do their opponents no harm but only try to win themselves. Likewise politicians should not wish ill to those who contradict them but should support those who listen. And whoever seeks true fame should really be what he wants to seem to others.

Pythagoras accepted the first of a community only if he was also the most worthy. No house and no state had ever been well governed unless one person was truly the first and ruled with the consent of the citizens.

To the young

He urged the young men to respect their elders and to value their parents more than themselves. They should meet one another so that they never became enemies to friends and turned enemies into friends as quickly as possible.

The most important virtue of youth for him was self-control, since at that age desires are strongest. As a warning he used the Trojan War, known to everyone from the Iliad: because of the licentiousness of one man, Paris, who carried off Helen, Greeks and Trojans alike plunged into misery.

He set the highest value on education. “Education is an inner beauty,” said the admirer of the Muses.

He also gave room to a natural sexual education, citing the school of Asclepius. Neither in plants nor in animals does the premature bear good fruit. Children should be raised with work, exercise and simple food suited to an industrious, prudent life. Some things are better learned late, including the gifts of Aphrodite, and a young man should not seek them before the age of twenty and remain moderate even after.

Whatever we think of this today, the educational route to the goal is telling. It succeeds when the ordered state of the soul is regarded as something venerable and beautiful, for licentiousness and inner order are never found in the same person. The ordered soul as the aim of education is a concept worth pondering. The Pythagoreans knew that the practical virtues of everyday life, without which people and nations cannot live together in peace, grow almost by themselves out of an ordered soul.

Before birth

Pythagoras gave remarkable attention to preparation before children are conceived. Parents should have lived prudently and healthily beforehand, not eat to excess, not take anything harmful and above all not be drunk. To the Pythagoreans it seemed reckless to create a life without taking every care that the new person’s entry into existence should be as happy as possible.

Dog lovers and bird breeders, so the comparison goes, choose parents, timing and condition of the animals with great care so that the young turn out well. People, by contrast, pay no attention to their own offspring, beget them at random and raise them carelessly. The Pythagoreans saw this as the main reason for the wickedness of most people.

Pythagoras also valued courage highly for a free community. He himself is said to have ended tyrannies and restored order to troubled cities, or so Iamblichus says.

To the women

To the women he is said to have spoken first about sacrifice. Whoever prays or makes a vow must be upright, for the gods listen to such people. They should prepare their offerings with their own hands and bring them to the altar themselves, not through slaves. Blood sacrifices do not honour the divine, and one should never spend so much on one occasion as if one would never return to the altar.

On the relationship to the husband he advised not to resist him, or else to count giving way as a victory. After being with her own husband a woman might enter the sanctuary the same day, but never after forbidden intercourse. All their lives they should speak few and good words and see to it that others could say only good of them.

There follows a praise of women: they lend each other clothes and jewellery without witnesses, and no dispute ever arises from it. Hence the myth of the three women who shared a single eye, so well did they get on. No one would believe such a thing of men.

He also preached simplicity. The women of Croton are then said to have stopped wearing their costly garments and hung them up by the tens of thousands as offerings in the sanctuary.

Music as the first educator

In the end all Pythagorean aims of education lead back to one path: seeing beautiful forms and hearing beautiful rhythms and melodies. That is why Pythagoras gave education through music first place. Iamblichus tells many examples of how he calmed the angry with music, spurred the idle and supported the healing of the sick, especially the mentally ill.