Pythagoras, the First Philosopher #364

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Dear friends,

Welcome back to Daily Philosophy! Today I’d like to take you back to ancient Greece, where we continue our journey through its times and culture, by visiting Pythagoras, who often has been called (and called himself) the first philosopher.

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And now, sit down comfortably and let’s travel back to times old but not forgotten.

Pythagoras of Samos

When I was a child, my mother would sometimes, in rather random moments of joy, or to extol the benefits of education to her son, recite from memory that book that she had been made to memorise when she had been in school herself, thirty or so years earlier. It was Friedrich Schiller's Ballads, and I can still hear her voice softly running over the musical rhythm of the poet's lines:

Firmly walled in earth, and steady,
Stands the mold of well burnt clay.
Quick, now, workmen, be ye ready!
Forth must come the bell to-day!
(Transl. T.C.Zimmermann)

But on special occasions, when something of more moral fabric and consequence was required, she would switch to Schiller's Pledge, a long, suspenseful, rhyming tale of friendship and sacrifice.

TO DIONYSIUS, the tyrant, would sneak
Damon, concealing a dagger;
He’s slapped by the guards in a fetter.
“What would you do with that dagger, speak!”
Demands the despot, his visage bleak.
“I would free the state from a tyrant!”
“For that, on the cross be repentant.”

“I am,” he replies, “ready to die
And do not beseech you to spare me,
But if you would show me mercy,
I ask you to let three days go by,
’Til my sister her marriage bonds may tie,
I’ll leave you my friend, in bondage,
If I flee, his life is hostage.”

The King then smiles with malice in his face,
And speaks after thinking just briefly:
“Three days I’ll give for your journey.
But beware! If you’ve used up your days of grace,
Before you’ve returned to me from that place,
Then he must to death be committed,
But your sentence will be remitted.”

The tyrant in the story was always close by in 1970's Greece, which was then ruled by a brutal dictatorship, with tanks and soldiers often lining the streets of the capital. Even if I didn't understand what exactly the Junta was, I could glimpse the tyrant of Schiller's poem every evening in the news, before my mother switched the TV off.

The story of the poem goes on: the friend takes the place of Damon, ready to die. The three days seem ridiculously short a time for the long journey:

Then the rain comes pouring down endlessly,
From the mountains the springs are rushing,
And the brooks and the streams are gushing.
To the bank with his wanderer’s staff comes he,
As the whirlpool is tearing the bridge away,
And the waves now break with a thunder
The arch of the vault asunder.

There is no way he can make it and save his friend's life, but he still has to try. He hurries through rain and storm and floods. And finally, he sees in the distance the towers of Syracuse. But then, someone sees him and comes out of the gates to stop him:

“Go back! It’s too late to save your friend,
So save your own life, for the future!
Even now to death does he suffer.
Your return he awaited for hours on end,
To you his hopeful soul did bend,
With a faith too strong and valiant
To be robbed by the scorn of the tyrant.”

But Damon cannot give up now. He has to run faster, to get there before his friend suffers his death in the hands of the brutal tyrant:

And the sun now descends, by the gate he stands nigh
And sees the cross elevated,
Which the gaping crowd has awaited,
On the rope already his friend’s lifted high,
Through the thick of the throng he goes charging by:
“Me, hangman! Kill me!” he’s crying,
“I’m the one, for whom he is dying!”

And amazement seizes the people all round,
The two friends give each other embraces,
Tears of sorrow and joy wet their faces.
No eye without tears is there to be found,
And the wonderful tale to the king is then bound,
Humanely his feelings are shaken,
To his throne are they quickly then taken.

And long he regards them with wondering eye,
Then he speaks: “You have prospered,
My heart you now have conquered,
And true faith, ’tis no empty vanity,
So into your friendship’s bond take me,
I would, if allowed my intention,
Become the third in your union.

I’ve always loved this poem (it sounds a lot better in German, by the way), and I see now why schools were eager to have their students memorise it — a story of friendship that does not bow to power. (My mother would have read this in a German school just two or three years after the end of the Nazi times and the great war, Hitler's face and shrill voice still fresh in everyone's minds). What I didn't know then is that this is a story that Schiller got from the ancient historian Diodorus Siculus, and that it was originally a tale of Pythagorean values:

So, for example, while Dionysius was tyrant and a certain Phintias, a Pythagorean, who had formed a plot against the tyrant, was about to suffer the penalty for it, he asked Dionysius for time in which to make such disposition as he wished of his private affairs; and he said that he would give one of his friends as surety for his death. And when the ruler expressed his wonder whether such a friend was to be found as would take his place in prison, Phintias called upon one of his acquaintances, a Pythagorean philosopher named Damon, who without hesitation came forward at once as surety for his death.

Now there were some who expressed approval of so great a love for one's friends, whereas some charged the surety with rashness and folly. And at the appointed hour all the people ran together, anxious to learn whether the man who had provided a surety for himself would keep faith. When the hour drew close and all were giving up hope, Phintias unexpectedly arrived on the run at the last moment, just as Damon was being led off to his fate. Such a friendship was in the eyes of all men a thing of wonder, and Dionysius remitted the punishment of the condemned man, urging the two men to include himself as a third in their friendship. (Diod. 10.4)

In a cruel twist of fate, the same Dionysius lost all his power later on, and ended up a schoolteacher in provincial Corinth [1]. Maybe he was not made of the right stuff to be a dictator, after all.

So this was the one side of the Pythagoreans: they were fabulous friends to each other. When one of them fell on hard times, the others would come together to support him, often replacing whole lost fortunes. But it wasn't all so nice. Being a Pythagorean could also come with certain drawbacks: