Free The Music of Pythagoras by Kitty Ferguson Page B

Mesopotamia, and perhaps (if Josephus was right) with the beliefs of the Hebrews near Mount Carmel or in Babylon. Regardless of the authenticity of the details, the impression that comes across, reinforced by the story of his initiation into the rites of the priests of Morgos on Crete, was of a man intent on exploring in depth and becoming personally involved in many religious ideas and beliefs.
    In Croton, Pythagoras and his followers did not abandon the polytheism of the Homeric/Olympic tradition. Some thought Pythagoras was an incarnation of Apollo, and that god’s association with moderation, intelligence, and order was in accord with Pythagorean ideals. As for other gods, the fact that the building boom at the temple of Hera occurred when Pythagoras’ influence was strong in Croton is probably no coincidence. However, when Pythagoras chose what he would believe and teach with regard to immortality, he came down decisively with the Orphic cult, with the doctrine of transmigration of the soul or reincarnation. This was no secret. It was “very well known to everyone,” wrote Porphyry.
    An early fragment bears witness that Pythagoras believed a good man would be rewarded in the next life. The fragment is from Ion of Chios, the near contemporary of Pythagoras who attributed an Orphic poem to him, and who, though perhaps not a member of the Pythagorean community, adopted Pythagorean ideas:
    So he [a good human being], endowed with manliness and modesty, has for his soul a joyful life even in death, if indeed Pythagoras, wise in all things, truly knew and understood the minds of men.
    Pythagoras went further than belief in reincarnation. He claimed he could remember his past lives. This, too, had roots in Orphism. An inscription on an Orphic document known as the Petelia tablet instructs a soul how to show itself worthy of joining the divine and worthy of “Memory,” an Orphic reference to the special kind of memory that Pythagoras claimed to have. 2
    The earliest reference to Pythagoras’ ability to remember his past lives is from the fifth century B.C . poet-philosopher Empedocles, who came from Acragas in Sicily and like Ion was born near the time Pythagoras died. He was often called Empedocles the Pythagorean, but much of his philosophy was different from Pythagorean teaching. On the doctrine of transmigration he was in enthusiastic agreement:
    There was among them a man of immense knowledge
    who had obtained vast wealth of understanding
,
    a master especially of every kind of wise deed [or “cunning act”]
.
    For when he reached out with all his mind
    he easily saw each and every thing
    in ten or twenty human lives
.
    Iamblichus, without a murmur, accepted Pythagoras’ ability to recall his past lives, but not all the details of how he acquired that ability and what he remembered. The memories began with Pythagoras’ life as Aethalides, a son of the god Hermes—the sort of paternity Iamblichus found impossible to believe. However that may be, Hermes allowed Aethalides to choose a gift, anything short of the immortality of the gods. Aethalides asked to be able to remember everything that had happened to him in his former lives. So it came about that Pythagoras could recall not only his life as Aethalides but also as Euphorbus, as Hermotimus, and as Pyrrhus, a Delian fisherman, and much else besides. Euphorbus was a hero in the Trojan War who was immortalized in Homer’s
Iliad
. Iamblichus and Porphyry both pictured Pythagoras singing the funeral verses Homer wrote for Euphorbus, accompanying himself “most elegantly” on a lyre:
    The shining circlets of his golden hair
    Which even the Graces might be proud to wear
,
    Instarred with gems and gold, bestrew the shore
    With dust dishonored, and deformed with gore.
    . . . .
    Thus young, thus beautiful Euphorbus lay
,
    While the fierce Spartan tore his arms away
. 3
    Diogenes Laertius gave the full version of a tale that many thought constituted proof of