The Pythagorean Acusmata

Abstract

The collection of sayings known as acusmata represent some of the earliest evidence for Pythagorean teaching. The sayings are therefore potentially of extreme importance in determining the ethics and way of life of the early Pythagorean community; but their original meaning is often disputed. “The Pythagorean Acusmata” allows for both literal and non-literal interpretations, striving to achieve some balance between the two. The first part of the discussion is devoted to a survey of acusmata that have a bearing on ethics, followed by some general, tentative conclusions about the ethics of the sayings. These include that it is overly simplistic to postulate two mutually exclusive ancient approaches to the acusmata, that is, a literal approach and an allegorical one, or to try to distinguish between two types of ethics, an “acusmatic” ethics based on a narrow, literal interpretation, and a “mathematic” ethics based on a more open, rational interpretation.