Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (28 page)

But as for the books of Pythagoras the sage, which Archytas the Tarentine philosopher collected by himself, they are eighty books. But those that he made special effort, with all his strength, to compile, compose (
ta’l
ī
f
), and collect, from all the old men who were of the type of Pythagoras the philosopher, his school, and the inheritors of his sciences, man after man, these were two hundred books in number. And he who was unique in the essence of his intellect [i.e., Archytas] set aside from them the false books ascribed to the tongue of the sage and his name, which shameless people fabricated.

Ibn Abi Usaybi’a goes on to list twelve of the forged books.

Baum argues that in the passage Porphyry differentiates between eighty books that Pythagoras wrote, two hundred that his followers wrote (with impunity) in his name, and twelve that were later forgeries misrepresenting his views. But as can be seen, what the passage instead says is that Pythagoras wrote eighty books, that older men who belonged to the Pythagorean group wrote two hundred books, and that other books, of which Porphyry names twelve, were forgeries in the name of Pythagoras. The key point is this: Porphyry decidedly does not indicate that the two hundred books by Pythagoras’ followers were written
in Pythagoras’ name
. They were simply written by students of his school.

There is no problem with thinking that the followers of Pythagoras wrote books. We have these books more fully attested. They were written by the likes of Hippodamus, Okkelos, Philoaus, Periktyone, and Phyntis. They are orthonymous, and
have been discussed in a number of important studies.
⁶²
In other words, Baum has gotten the situation precisely wrong. The overarching claim of his study is that a book in antiquity was considered a “forgery” only if the
content
was judged not to derive from the named author, and Porphyry is appealed to as a witness—on the false assumption that Porphyry accepted the two hundred pseudepigraphic Pythagorean books since they taught the views of Pythagoras himself. But in fact, Porphyry is irrelevant to the question, because he does not mention two hundred books written by Pythagoras’ followers in his name. He speaks only of two hundred books written by Pythagoras’ followers.

Moreover, there can be no question about what Porphyry, at least according to this text, thought about books that were falsely produced in Pythagoras’ name. Of these he says the following (again, from a private translation of Ernst):

The criminal individuals who fabricated these lying books that we have mentioned, according to traditions that have reached us, are Aristotle the Younger, Nikos (Nuq
ū
s) known as the essentially erroneous, one of the Cretans called Konios, M
é
galos, and F
ū
khajaw
ā
q
ā
(?), along with others even more reprehensible than they. And that was who proposed to them (others?) the fabrication of these lying books with the tongue of the philosopher Pythagoras and his name, so that [these writings] would be accepted among the moderns because of him, so they would honor, prefer, and share them.

Those who produced books in Pythagoras’ name are called “criminal.” Their books are “lying” “fabrications.” They were written pseudepigraphically because by putting Pythagoras’ name on them, the books were more likely to be accepted by their readers. For Porphyry this is a nefarious motivation.

In short, Porphyry cannot be used to establish the “common” practice in the philosophical schools—or even in the Pythagorean school—of publishing writings in the name of a revered teacher with impunity. Some followers of Pythagoras did produce such forged works, but the books were labeled lies and fabrications and the authors were called shameless criminals.

The only other witness to the pseudepigraphic practices of the Pythagorean school writing within a full millennium of the death of its founder (apart from Diogenes Laertius) is another late antique neo-Platonist, Iamblichus (245–325
CE
). Two passages from Iamblichus’ writings are sometimes cited to establish the Pythagorean practices, but only one of them is germane to the question. The first
occurs in Iamblichus’
Life of Pythagoras:
“Of the [Pythagoric] writings that are now circulating, some were written by Pythagoras himself, but others consist of what he was heard to say
for this reason the authors do not attach their own names to these books but attribute them to Pythagoras as being his
.”
⁶³
At first glance, this may indeed seem to indicate that Pythagoras’ students published their own treatises in his name; but in fact, Iamblichus is referring to a very different phenomenon: the publication of Pythagoras’ lecture notes by his students. These publications literally contain his own words, not those of the writers, and so it would not have been proper for them to claim the books for themselves. I will be dealing with the question of published lecture notes shortly.

The other reference in Iamblichus’
Life of Pythagoras
, on the other hand, does in fact deal with the publication of works by others in Pythagoras’ name, and appears to say what scholars have said it says: “It was a fine custom of theirs also to ascribe and assign everything to Pythagoras, and only very seldom to claim personal fame for their discoveries, for there are very few of them indeed to whom works are ascribed personally.”
⁶⁴
Here Iamblichus indicates his own view about what happened among the followers of Pythagoras so many centuries earlier. But the relevance of this passage for understanding widespread views in antiquity is much open to dispute.

The first thing to note is that Iamblichus is referring only to the followers of Pythagoras. Nowhere does he say this was a widespread practice—or indeed, a practice at all—in any of the other philosophical schools. Moreover, it cannot be stressed enough that Iamblichus is writing eight hundred years after Pythagoras. Are there any grounds for thinking that he would actually know the practices of his school? If he does know, what are his sources of information? If they once existed, they do not exist any longer; this is the first we learn of such a practice.

It may be that Iamblichus is referring not to Pythagoras’ immediate followers but to the later Pythagoreans of the Hellenistic period. But here too he would be speaking of literary practices from four hundred to five hundred years earlier. How would he know about these? And if he is right, why are these practices not mentioned by any authors—including biographers of Pythagoras—writing earlier? In fact, the questions keep on coming.

It is true that two much-later Neoplatonists—Olympiodorus from the mid-sixth century
CE
and somewhat later his student Elias—also make this claim about the Pythagoreans. Elias is dependent on Olympiodorus and so cannot count as independent evidence. And Olympiodorus himself may simply be relying on the same neo-Platonic tradition as found in Iamblichus from more than two centuries earlier. In any event, Olympiodorus is the first writer to give us anything resembling a taxonomy of motives for the practices of pseudepigraphy. In his
Prolegomenon
Olympiodorus states his desire to establish the ways in which books are “forged” (or better, “bastardized,” provided with false names;
) and the criteria one can use to “distinguish the genuine from the forged” (
In Olympiodorus’ judgment, books are forged/provided with false authorial names for three reasons: from the ambition/ambitious rivalry (
) of kings; the affection/good will of students/disciples; and the homonymy of writers, writings, or notes/commentaries
⁶⁵