Iamblichus on Pythagorean Sapience

Iamblichus, Thomas Taylor · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 6 pages

A short set of extracts from Iamblichus' life of Pythagoras in Thomas Taylor's translation, chosen to show the discipline rather than the doctrine. It opens with the music of the spheres — Pythagoras alone, Iamblichus says, hearing and understanding the universal harmony and consonance of the spheres and the stars moved through them — and then with the report that nearly all his biographers confidently assert he was present on the same day at Metapontum in Italy and at Tauromenium in Sicily, cities that cannot be travelled between in many days.

The remaining extracts concern practice. On self-control: the Pythagoreans so attended to their bodies as to remain always in the same condition, neither lean nor fleshy, since variation indicated an anomalous life, and they were careful to be mildly and uniformly joyful, expelling rage, despondency and perturbation; anyone overtaken by such a passion separated himself from the others until he had digested and healed it. On memory: nothing taught was dismissed until the rudiments were firmly grasped, and no Pythagorean rose from his bed before recollecting the whole of the previous day's transactions in order.

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