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Moderatus of Gades
Moderatus of Gades (Greek: Μοδερᾶτος) was a Greek philosopher of the Neopythagorean school, who lived in the 1st century AD. He was a contemporary of Apollonius of Tyana. He wrote a great work on the doctrines of the Pythagoreans, and tried to show that the successors of Pythagoras had made no additions to the views of their founder, but had merely borrowed and altered the phraseology.
Moderatus was from Gades, in Andalusia. He was probably a relative of the writer Columella (Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella), who shared the same cognomen and was also from Gades. Almost nothing is known about the life of Moderatus. The only concrete clue is provided by Plutarch, who reports that when he, Plutarch, returned to Rome after a long absence, Lucius, a disciple of Moderatus, who came from Etruria, was attending a banquet hosted by Sextius Sulla, a friend of Plutarch's. Since the banquet took place around 90 AD, it can be assumed that the teaching activity of Moderatus fell in the second half of the 1st century.Moderatus lived in Rome, at least part of the time. According to Plutarch's description, Lucius adhered to the rules of the Pythagorean way of life, so he valued the practice of a lifestyle oriented towards philosophical goals. It is unclear whether this is due to the influence of his teacher, Moderatus, and thus no concrete conclusions can be drawn about his adherence to this lifestyle.
The writings of the Moderatus have been lost except for fragments. In his biography of Pythagoras, the Neoplatonist Porphyry quotes or paraphrases a passage from a work by Moderatus in which the doctrines of the Pythagoreans were compiled, which apparently concerned primarily the Pythagorean theory of numbers. It is uncertain whether this writing consisted of ten or eleven books. Another Moderatus fragment is preserved in Simplicius's commentary on Aristotle's Physics, which is taken from a lost treatise by Porphyry on matter. The late antique scholar Stobaeus also preserves two fragments of Moderatus' work in his Eclogae about the theory of numbers, which John M. Dillon notes bear a strong resemblance to the work of Theon of Smyrna, implying that either Theon used Moderatus work as a principal source, or that Stobaeus misattributed the source of the quote. The Byzantine author Stephanus of Byzantium mentions a writing "Pythagorean Lectures" in five books that Moderatus wrote. The Neoplatonist Iamblichus reports on a doctrine of Moderatus about the soul; It is not known which work he is referring to. The Neoplatonists Syrianus and Proclus also mention Moderatus' views. The church father Jerome calls Moderatus an excellent writer (virum eloquentissimum), whom Iamblichus imitated.
Moderatus wrote a work titled "Lectures on Pythagoreanism" in either ten or eleven books, which Porphyry characterized in his Life of Pythagoras. as containing all of the doctrines of the Pythagoreans:
Among others, Moderatus of Gades, who [learnedly] treated of the qualities of numbers in seven books, states that the Pythagoreans specialized in the study of numbers to explain their teachings symbolically, as do geometricians, inasmuch as the primary forms and principles are hard to understand and express, otherwise, in plain discourse. A similar case is the representation of sounds by letters, which are known by marks, which are called the first elements of learning; later, they inform us these are not the true elements, which they only signify.
As the geometricians cannot express incorporeal forms in words, and have recourse to the descriptions of figures, as that is a triangle, and yet do not mean that the actually seen lines are the triangle, but only what they represent, the knowledge in the mind, so the Pythagoreans used the same objective method in respect to first reasons and forms. As these incorporeal forms and first principles could not be expressed in words, they had recourse to demonstration by numbers. Number one denoted to them the reason of Unity, Identity, Equality, the purpose of friendship, sympathy, and conservation of the Universe, which results from persistence in Sameness. For unity in the details harmonizes all the parts of a whole, as by the participation of the First Cause. .
Number two, or Duad, signifies the two-fold reason of diversity and inequality, of everything that is divisible, or mutable, existing at one time in one way, and at another time in another way. After all these methods were not confined to the Pythagoreans, being used by other philosophers to denote unitive powers, which contain all things in the universe, among which are certain reasons of equality, dissimilitude and diversity. These reasons are what they meant by the terms Monad and Duad, or by the words uniform, biform, or diversiform.
The same reasons apply to their use of other numbers, which were ranked according to certain powers. Things that had a beginning, middle and end, they denoted by the number Three, saying that anything that has a middle is triform, which was applied to every perfect thing. They said that if anything was perfect it would make use of this principle and be adorned, according to it; and as they had no other name for it, they invented the form Triad; and whenever they tried to bring us to the knowledge of what is perfect they led us to that by the form of this Triad. So also with the other numbers, which were ranked according to the same reasons.
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Moderatus of Gades
Moderatus of Gades (Greek: Μοδερᾶτος) was a Greek philosopher of the Neopythagorean school, who lived in the 1st century AD. He was a contemporary of Apollonius of Tyana. He wrote a great work on the doctrines of the Pythagoreans, and tried to show that the successors of Pythagoras had made no additions to the views of their founder, but had merely borrowed and altered the phraseology.
Moderatus was from Gades, in Andalusia. He was probably a relative of the writer Columella (Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella), who shared the same cognomen and was also from Gades. Almost nothing is known about the life of Moderatus. The only concrete clue is provided by Plutarch, who reports that when he, Plutarch, returned to Rome after a long absence, Lucius, a disciple of Moderatus, who came from Etruria, was attending a banquet hosted by Sextius Sulla, a friend of Plutarch's. Since the banquet took place around 90 AD, it can be assumed that the teaching activity of Moderatus fell in the second half of the 1st century.Moderatus lived in Rome, at least part of the time. According to Plutarch's description, Lucius adhered to the rules of the Pythagorean way of life, so he valued the practice of a lifestyle oriented towards philosophical goals. It is unclear whether this is due to the influence of his teacher, Moderatus, and thus no concrete conclusions can be drawn about his adherence to this lifestyle.
The writings of the Moderatus have been lost except for fragments. In his biography of Pythagoras, the Neoplatonist Porphyry quotes or paraphrases a passage from a work by Moderatus in which the doctrines of the Pythagoreans were compiled, which apparently concerned primarily the Pythagorean theory of numbers. It is uncertain whether this writing consisted of ten or eleven books. Another Moderatus fragment is preserved in Simplicius's commentary on Aristotle's Physics, which is taken from a lost treatise by Porphyry on matter. The late antique scholar Stobaeus also preserves two fragments of Moderatus' work in his Eclogae about the theory of numbers, which John M. Dillon notes bear a strong resemblance to the work of Theon of Smyrna, implying that either Theon used Moderatus work as a principal source, or that Stobaeus misattributed the source of the quote. The Byzantine author Stephanus of Byzantium mentions a writing "Pythagorean Lectures" in five books that Moderatus wrote. The Neoplatonist Iamblichus reports on a doctrine of Moderatus about the soul; It is not known which work he is referring to. The Neoplatonists Syrianus and Proclus also mention Moderatus' views. The church father Jerome calls Moderatus an excellent writer (virum eloquentissimum), whom Iamblichus imitated.
Moderatus wrote a work titled "Lectures on Pythagoreanism" in either ten or eleven books, which Porphyry characterized in his Life of Pythagoras. as containing all of the doctrines of the Pythagoreans:
Among others, Moderatus of Gades, who [learnedly] treated of the qualities of numbers in seven books, states that the Pythagoreans specialized in the study of numbers to explain their teachings symbolically, as do geometricians, inasmuch as the primary forms and principles are hard to understand and express, otherwise, in plain discourse. A similar case is the representation of sounds by letters, which are known by marks, which are called the first elements of learning; later, they inform us these are not the true elements, which they only signify.
As the geometricians cannot express incorporeal forms in words, and have recourse to the descriptions of figures, as that is a triangle, and yet do not mean that the actually seen lines are the triangle, but only what they represent, the knowledge in the mind, so the Pythagoreans used the same objective method in respect to first reasons and forms. As these incorporeal forms and first principles could not be expressed in words, they had recourse to demonstration by numbers. Number one denoted to them the reason of Unity, Identity, Equality, the purpose of friendship, sympathy, and conservation of the Universe, which results from persistence in Sameness. For unity in the details harmonizes all the parts of a whole, as by the participation of the First Cause. .
Number two, or Duad, signifies the two-fold reason of diversity and inequality, of everything that is divisible, or mutable, existing at one time in one way, and at another time in another way. After all these methods were not confined to the Pythagoreans, being used by other philosophers to denote unitive powers, which contain all things in the universe, among which are certain reasons of equality, dissimilitude and diversity. These reasons are what they meant by the terms Monad and Duad, or by the words uniform, biform, or diversiform.
The same reasons apply to their use of other numbers, which were ranked according to certain powers. Things that had a beginning, middle and end, they denoted by the number Three, saying that anything that has a middle is triform, which was applied to every perfect thing. They said that if anything was perfect it would make use of this principle and be adorned, according to it; and as they had no other name for it, they invented the form Triad; and whenever they tried to bring us to the knowledge of what is perfect they led us to that by the form of this Triad. So also with the other numbers, which were ranked according to the same reasons.