Pythagoreanism and Orphism: introduction

At the end of antiquity the relationship between Orpheus and Pythagoras seemed unproblematic. These two founding figures of Greek culture were thought to proclaim the same theological and metaphysical doctrines, although formulating them in different genres. Proclus, writing a millennium after Pythagoras founded his association (hetairia), declares that

For Proclus, just as for his teacher Syrianus, Plato expresses the very same teaching in his dialogues. The Muse Calliope, Orpheus, Aglaophamus, Pythagoras, the Pythagorean Timaeus, and Plato are links in the unbroken chain of transmission of divine wisdom that constitutes the backbone of the Greek philosophical tradition and is at the same time the foundation of the right religious attitude towards the gods.

Proclus reproduces here almost verbatim a text that Iamblichus quotes from a work called Sacred Discourse (Hieros Logos), in which Pythagoras, its purported author, gives a first-person account of the story (Iambl. VP 146–7). The quotation enables Iamblichus to demonstrate that the core of Pythagorean theology, which takes numbers to be the divine first principles, as well as the exemplary piety of Pythagoras and his followers manifested in their religious taboos and precepts, issue from Orpheus’ teaching. “If someone, then, wishes to learn from whence these men received such a degree of piety, it must be said that a clear model for Pythagorean theology according to number is laid down in (the writings of) Orpheus” (Iambl. VP 145, tr. Dillon and Hershbell, slightly modified).