Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras, or Pythagoric Life: Accompanied by Fragments of the Ethical Writings of certain Pythagoreans in the Doric dialect; and a collection of Pythagoric Sentences from Stobaeus and others, which are omitted by Gale in his Opuscula Mythologica, and have not been noticed by any editorIamblichus
Philosophy
Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras, or Pythagoric Life: Accompanied by Fragments of the Ethical Writings of certain Pythagoreans in the Doric dialect; and a collection of Pythagoric Sentences from Stobaeus and others, which are omitted by Gale in his Opuscula Mythologica, and have not been noticed by any editor
Iamblichus
Ethics, Ancient; Philosophers -- Greece -- Biography; Philosophy, Ancient; Pythagoras; Pythagoras and Pythagorean school
FROM
POLUS,
IN HIS TREATISE
ON JUSTICE.
It appears to me that the justice which subsists among men, may be
called the mother and the nurse of the other virtues. For without this a
man can neither be temperate, nor brave, nor prudent. For it is the
harmony and peace, in conjunction with elegance, of the whole soul. The
strength however of this virtue will become more manifest, if we direct
our attention to the other habits. For they have a partial utility, and
which is referred to one thing; but this is referred to whole systems,
and to a multitude. In the world therefore, it conducts the whole
government of things, and is providence, harmony, and Dice, by the
decree of a certain genus of Gods. But in a city it is justly called
peace, and equitable legislation. And in a house, it is the concord
between the husband and wife; the benevolence of the servant towards the
master; and the anxious care of the master for the welfare of the
servant. In the body likewise, which is the first and dearest thing to
all animals, [so far as they are animals,] it is the health and
intireness of all the parts. But in the soul, it is the wisdom, which
among men subsists from science and justice. If therefore, this virtue
thus disciplines and saves both the whole and the parts [of every thing]
rendering things concordant and familiar with each other, how is it
possible it should not be called by the decision of all men, the mother
and the nurse of all things?
The following fragments also, from the Treatise of Archytas on Wisdom,
are preserved by Iamblichus, in the 3rd Chapter of his
Protreptics, or Exhortations to Philosophy.
“Archytas therefore, in the beginning of his Treatise on Wisdom, exhorts
to the possession of it as follows:
1. “Wisdom as much excels in all human affairs as the sight does the
[other] corporeal senses, intellect the soul, and the sun the stars. For
the sight is the most far-darting, and the most multiform of all the
senses; intellect is the supreme part of the soul, judging by reason and
dianoïa what is fit, and existing as the sight and power of the most
honorable things; and the sun is the eye and soul of things which have a
natural subsistence. For through it all things become visible, are
generated, and rise into existence.[74] Deriving also their roots, and
being generated from thence, they are nourished, increased and excited
by it in conjunction with sense.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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