Ebook: On the Pythagorean Life

Translated with notes and introduction by Gillian Clark.

Why should Iamblichus, a Platonist philosopher of the fourth century AD, write about Pythagoras, a pre-Platonic philosopher or sage or religious genius of the sixth century B.C.? It was neither an easy nor an obvious task. Nobody was sure what exactly Pythagoras had taught, let alone what (if anything) he had written. Nor is it likely that there was a widespread desire to know more about him. A few philosophers in the early centuries AD were counted as Pythagorean, because of their concern with number as an organising principle of the universe, and a few people were "Pythagorean" in the popular sense: they were vegetarian, or they believed in reincarnation. But there was no major Pythagorean revival, and any need for information had recently been met by Iamblichus's senior contemporary Porphyry. Porphyry's "Life of Pythagoras" was not a special study, but part of a four-book history of philosophy from Homer to Plato. Iamblichus's book is also, conventionally, known as the "Life of Pythagoras" (hence the standard abbreviation VP, from "de vita Pythagorica"), but that is a misleading translation. He uses, but does not duplicate, Porphyry. His title is "On the Pythagorean Life", and his book was the introduction of a ten-volume sequence on Pythagorean philosophy.