Podcast episode
March 7, 2024
Episode 184: Hierocles of Alexandria and the Pythagorean Golden Verses
We lay out the life and times, surviving works, and a few points about the philosophy of Hierocles of Alexandria. Hierocles was a student of Plutarch of Athens who made good in Egypt (though he didn’t stay out of trouble). His Commentary on the Pythagorean Golden Verses is a tour-de-force of esoteric interpretation, preserves an immense amount of valuable theory (and practice!) to do with the luminous vehicle of the soul and its purification, and comes in many other ways highly recommended.
Having discussed Hierocles, we turn to the subject of all this exegesis, the Golden Verses themselves. In the end, having spent some time surveying the inconclusive scholarship as to the dating and authorship of this text, we decide to just read the damn thing and soak up some of that Pythagorean wisdom of old.
Works Cited in this Episode:
Primary:
Chrysippus cites the Verses: ap. Aulus Gellius 7.2.12 = SVF 2.1000, p. 294 25-29.
Damascius on Hierocles: a superb stylist: ap. Photius Bibl. cod. 242, 338b 28–35. His staunchness before the magistrate in Constantinople: P.H. 45B Athanassiadi = Vit. Isid. fr. 106 Zintzen = Suda II 616 7 (s.v. ἱεροκλῆς).
Hierocles:
- Describes himself as a student of Plutarch of Athens: ap. Photius Bibl. cod. 214. 173a 37–9.
- On the noetic demiurge: e.g. Photius cod. 251. 462a 26; Comm. 1.6; 20.19; 1.10.
- Seems to indicate a kind of ‘creation from nothing’ (but doesn’t): ap. Photius cod. 214. 172a 22–6; cf. cod. 251. 461b 6–12.
- On the purification of the ochēma: Comm. 26.46-49 Köhler; see also 25.18; 26.22; 26.25-27.
Iamblichus’ Protreptikos: see Édouard des Places, editor. Jamblique. Protreptique. Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 2018. Third edition.
Secondary:
Hans Daiber. Neuplatonische Pythagorica in arabischem Gewande. Der Kommentar des Iamblichus zu den Carmina aurea. Ein verlorener griechischer Text in arabischer Überlieferung. Amsterdam, 1995.
Julius Evola. I versi d’oro pitagorei. Atanòr, Rome, 1959.
Neil Linley. Ibn aṭ-Ṭayyib: Proclus’ Commentary on the Pythagorean Golden Verses. Number 10 in Arethusa Monographs. State University of New York Press, Buffalo, NY, 1984.
Holger Thesleff. An Introduction to the Pythagorean Writings of the Hellenistic Period. Abo Akademi, Abo, 1961.
Schibli 2010 [see below]: we quote p. 444 on creation e nihilo.
Recommended Reading:
A chart of the Athenian and Alexandrian schools in late antiquity.
On Hierocles
The standard Greek edition of the Commentary on the Golden Verses is Friedrich Wilhelm Köhler, editor. Hieroclis in aureum Pythagoreorum carmen commentarius. Teubner, Stuttgart, 1974. The remnants of On Providence are in Photius’ Bibliotheca cod. 214 (Henry 1962, vol. iii) and cod. 251 (Henry 1974, vol. vii).
lsetraut Hadot. Le problème du néoplatonisme alexandrin: Hiéroclès et Simplicius. Études Augustiniennes, Paris, 1978.
Karl Præchter. Hierocles 18. Real-Encyclopaedie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, 8:147987, 1913.
Hermann Sadun Schibli. Hierocles of Alexandria. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002 [or, for readers interested in the distilled version without the in-depth treatment, see Hermann Schibli. Hierocles of Alexandria. In Lloyd P. Gerson, editor, The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity, pages 437-56. The University Press, Cambridge, 2010].
On the Golden Verses
Friedrich Wilhelm Köhler. Textgeschichte von Hierokles’ Kommentar zum Carmen aureum der Pythagoreer. PhD thesis, Mainz, 1965.
Johan C. Thom. The Pythagorean Golden Verses with Introduction and Commentary. Number 123 in Religions in the Græco-Roman World. Brill, Leiden/New York, NY/Köln, 1995.
Themes
Ascent, Chaldæan Oracles, Esoteric Hermeneutics, Hierocles of Alexandria, Iamblichus, Julius Evola, Late Platonism, Plutarch of Athens, Proclus, Pythagoreanism, Soul-Vehicle, Subtle Body, Theurgy
Cam Larios
March 8, 2024
Never have I looked forward to a Storytime more.
Not to poke too much fun at Hierocles, who was surely one of history’s giants of being totally metal, but his project of applying esoteric reading to a list of sensible maxims suggests the possibility of applying it to something like Jordan Peterson’s “12 rules” or the TED talks of Brené Brown. Or Horatio Alger — surely there’s esoteric Platonizing to be done around the concept of “up by one’s bootstraps”. The old “Time for Timer” PSAs are so weird that they might actually make more sense read as Iamblichean.
Perhaps, somewhere buried deep in scholarly proceedings, someone has done some good joke Platonizing. If they have, I’d love to read it.
Kenneth Selens
March 9, 2024
David Bentley Hart indicates that the proper notion of creatio ex nihilo would be a creatio ex Deo. Although, it is of a different nature than non-Christian Platonism, there is a role to play for Divine will. This should not be confused with libertarian freedom, rather a “rational freedom”. Moreover, he implicates late medieval (voluntarism, nominalism) into early modern (mechanism, deism ) thinking for distorting this into something more along the lines of how you described the Christian stance on this now. My forays into this topic to a great extent corroborates DBH, but there were many different views throughout Christian history to say the least.
Steve Dempsey
April 8, 2024
It sounds like Kipling. Did he read this?
Earl Fontainelle
April 9, 2024
Steve,
I have no idea, but I kind of doubt it. Pythagoras and Kipling: both famous for all-purpose, good advice.
Steve Dempsey
April 9, 2024
You say that, but has anyone done a esoteric reading of If?
Earl Fontainelle
April 9, 2024
You might be the guy to do it, Steve. You’ll be a man, my Son.
James Lomas
April 20, 2024
The connection between Pythagoras and the Jews (and Druids!) was dismissed out of hand — but, actually, there are sources from antiquity and late antiquity!
In his “Life of Pythagoras,” Iamblichus describes his visit to Mount Caramel in the kingdom of Judah. Pythagoras was born around 570 BCE and left Samos when Polycrates took power around 538 BC. Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from Babylon in 538 BCE.
The cliffs of Mount Caramel are riddled with caves (including one with a stratigraphic record of 600,000 years of human/hominid activity—fun fact). These caves offered production and were home to bandits and holdouts.
That’s enough evidence to irresponsibly speculate that Pythagoras encountered either Jewish persons or Jewish lore among the people in the communities of the Mount Caramel caves. Further, the legendary Pythagoras surely left some kind of impression himself upon the waves of returning Jews. His number mysticism, per chance?
(There are other Jewish connections: When Pythagoras was captured in Egypt by Cambyses II around 525 BC, he was taken to Babylon, where he likely engaged with the rich Jews who had remained in the city. And let’s not forget the Pythagoreanism of the Essene Jews. In any case — Jews + Pythagoras are not an odd pairing)
Now, for the Druids, there is less evidence but it dates to Antiquity. For instance, Diodorus Siculus, 37BC, describes the Druid belief in “the Pythagorean Doctrine.” Then, Hippolytus claims that Zalmoxis, the servant of Pythagoras, went to founded the Pythagoreanism of the Druids.
This is why Pythagoras is so the best. He’s legendary. And probably had a life even more fantastic than the legends recall.
Earl Fontainelle
April 20, 2024
James,
Thanks for the Pythagorean lore! I do dismiss out of hand the likelihood that these connections are historical, but, as you say, they are definitely there in ancient lore. However, the lore is actually not what you say it is, so in the SHWEPian spirit of plodding attention to detail:
Mt Caramel is Mt Carmel, but Mt Caramel does sound much more delicious!
It’s Herodotus who reports about Zalmoxis (Histories 4.95-96), and he does not mention Druids (no one does until the Roman period). See our Episode 16 on Pythagoras, and on the history of the history of the Druids,
@Book{Hutton2009,
author = {Hutton, Ronald},
title = {Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain},
publisher = {Yale University Press},
year = {2009},
}
As for ancient Jewish ‘number mysticism’, there’s no evidence for any ‘number mysticism’ in this early period, and when it does show up, it’s Greek, not Jewish; the Jews get in on the arithmological side of things later (if we want to consider the Beast 666 in the Apocalypse of John Jewish, we have the earliest Jewish numerological stuff in the first century CE, still way later than Pythagoras). See our episode with Joel Kalvesmaki. The idea that arithmological manipulations are a typically Jewish thing is I think an artefact of much later Christian appropriations of kabbalah (which is very numerical at times, but also very high-medieval, and partly based on developments within Islamicate thought which also had not been dreamt of in Pythagoras’ time!).
‘That’s enough evidence to irresponsibly speculate that Pythagoras encountered either Jewish persons or Jewish lore among the people in the communities of the Mount Caramel caves’. No, it isn’t. Or at least it goes past the SHWEP irresponsiblility-threshold.
‘Pythagoras was captured in Egypt by Cambyses II around 525 BC, he was taken to Babylon’: very unlikely to have happened.
‘let’s not forget the Pythagoreanism of the Essene Jews’: Well, let’s not forget that the only evidence for this is from Josephus, who is trying to explain to a Roman audience what the Essenes are like. They are like the Pythagoreans, in that they have a peculiar, separate way of life from the mainstream of society, weird dietary rules, and so on. We do not hear anything about Essene numerical speculations or anything remotely ‘Pythagorean’ in the sense of doctrine.
So all this nitpicking is maybe contrary to the spirit of what you are doing, which is joining in enthusiastically with the myths that swirl around the name of Pythagoras and adding some new ones (probably by accident, the way you I assume unintentionally inserted some druids where there weren’t any; this is how legends change over time); this is also what Hierocles was doing, so you’re in good company. However, I just want to emphasise the point that this doesn’t leave us with reason to think Pythagoras was hanging out with Jews or Druids (and quite possibly there were no Druids to begin with; if there were, we know almost nothing about them with any certainty). Sorry to be a pedantic drag, but that’s my job-description. But long live the legendary Pythagoras!
James Lomas
April 20, 2024
https://www.academia.edu/40402912/THE_CHRONOLOGY_OF_THE_EARLY_GREEK_NATURAL_PHILOSOPHERS
See chronology of Pythagoras by Philip Thibodeau for the most exacting treatment of the evidence. There seems to be plenty to support the Cambysses connection. (Another connection to the Persian court was Democedes, a 6th century Pythagorean, who was the personal doctor to Darius.)
Porphyry directly claims that Pythagoras visited the Hebrews.
https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/porphyry_life_of_pythagoras_02_text.htm
Pythagoras was so early and legendary that one can easily get subsumed by doubt, but his MASSIVE impact speaks to a life larger than legend.
Multiple times, Clement of Alexandria refers to Philo as “the Pythagorean” — and, the parallels between the Therapeuts and Essences and the Pythagoreans have the potential to be more than a pure historical accident.
Defending the Pythagorean connection between both the Jews (easier) and the Druids (harder) is clearly too much for a single post. But someone needs to point out that these connections do have meaningful sources!
Earl Fontainelle
April 21, 2024
Cool. But I draw the line at the Druids.
James Lomas
April 22, 2024
To gently step over this line…
Here is a choice quote on Pythagorean Druidism from Hippolytus’ “Refutation of All Heresies” from David Litwa’s translation: M. David Litwa, editor and translator. Refutation of all Heresies. Society for Biblical Literature, Atlanta, GA, 2016
“The Druids among the Kelts peered into the inmost depths of Pythagorean philosophy. Zalmoxis the slave of Pythagoras, a Thracian by race, was the founder of their mode of life. He, after the death of Pythagoras, moved there and became for them the founder of this philosophy. The Kelts glorify the Druids as prophets and knowers of the future because they foretell events by the Pythagorean art from symbols and numbers.”
Litwa’s note on this is worth sharing, too:
“Strabo presents the Druids as students of nature and moral philosophy
(Geogr. 4.4.4; cf. Diodoros, Bibl. hist. 5.31.3). According to Caesar, the Druids taught
young disciples about the “stars and their motion,” the measurement of the earth,
nature, and the power and majesty of the immortal gods (Bell. gall. 6.14). Our author
is keen on tracing the learning of the Druids to Pythagoras (Clement of Alexandria
teaches the reverse, Strom. 1.1.15.71). Other authors associate Druids and Pythagoreans (e.g., Timagenes in Ammianus Marcellinus 15.9.8). Our author oddly fails to mention the Druid belief in the soul’s immortality, a point emphasized by others (Strabo,
Geogr. 4.4; Caesar, Bell. gall. 6.14).”
Zalmoxis also gets a nod in Plato’s Charmides—he must have had a big cult following.
Later in the refutations, Hippolytus directly links the Essenes to Pythagoras! I didn’t know it, but this book must be one of the richest sources for Pythagorean lore outside of Iamblichus/Porphyry. Also fascinating that all of the extant manuscripts attribute the refutations to Origen.