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45-448: Numenius can refer to: Numenius of Apamea , Syrian Greek philosopher of the 2nd century CE Curlew , any of 9 species of birds grouped in the genus Numenius Numenius, son of Antiochus in 1 Maccabees 12:16 Noumenios , Seleucid general and satrap of the 3rd/2nd century BCE Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with

90-421: A Platonist philosopher ( Porphyry , Life of Plot. 14.12, Eusebius , Prep. Ev. XI.21.7) and those that consider him a Pythagorean ( Origen , Against Celsus I.15, VI.51, V.38 frs. 1b–1c, 53, Porphyry, Ad Gaurum 34.20–35.2; fr. 36, Calcidius , In Timaeum 297.8 Waszink; fr. 52.2). We should not see any contradiction or even tension in this double classification. Numenius is a Pythagorean Platonist like Moderatus half

135-426: 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

180-469: A catchy language for didactic reasons. The function of the numbers in the explanations of the Pythagoreans corresponds to that of drawn figures in geometry; Just as the drawings are not themselves the geometric figures, but only illustrate them, so for the Pythagoreans the numbers are tools and symbols that are intended to make what is meant, difficult to express verbally, understandable. So the one stands for

225-514: A century earlier or Eudorus of Alexandria around the turn of the millennium. That is, Numenius accepted both Pythagoras and Plato as the two authorities one should follow in philosophy, but he regarded Plato's authority as subordinate to that of Pythagoras, whom he considered to be the source of all true philosophy—including Plato's own. For Numenius it is just that Plato wrote so many philosophical works, whereas Pythagoras' views were originally passed on only orally (cf. fr. 24.57-60)." His books On

270-512: 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. Apparently 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

315-450: A metaphysical doctrine of Moderatus, which he knows from an otherwise lost treatise by Porphyry. In this system, the term "the One" designates three different entities on three different ontological levels. At the highest level, the One is transcendent, that is, beyond the realm of beings and substance. Below that is a level where "the One" stands for true being or the world of (Platonic) ideas; that

360-472: A share in logos and also that Moses had a conception of the first principle similar to that of Plato, since both identified God with being." His chief divergence from Plato is the distinction between the "first god" and the " demiurge ." This is probably due to the influence of Jewish-Alexandrian philosophers (especially Philo and his theory of the Logos ). According to Proclus , his works were highly esteemed by

405-412: 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

450-406: Is not absolute, because it is subject to limits due to the ordering laws to which it is subject, it is mathematically structured and thus not completely withdrawn from the influence of the good. Apparently this doctrine is influenced by the spurious second epistle attributed to Plato. In a study published in 1928, Eric Robertson Dodds put forward his hypothesis that the ontological model of Moderatus

495-540: 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

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540-401: Is the intelligible one. Below that follows a third level, that of a sensible “One” that on the one hand has a share in the first and second One and on the other hand forms the starting point for the existence of things that can be perceived by the senses. The One—it is uncertain which One is meant—contains the principle of intrinsically empty, formless quantity, whose existence is made possible by

585-636: Is the result of a metaphysical interpretation of statements in Plato's dialogue Parmenides and that the Neo-Pythagorean metaphysics anticipate elements of Neo-Platonic thought (especially the Neo-Platonic Parmenides interpretation). This view has found favor in research, although the formulations handed down by Simplicius may not have come in part from Moderatus, but from the reporter Porphyry and reflect his neo-Platonic ideas. The extent to which Moderatus

630-402: Is to be regarded as a forerunner of Plotinus' Neoplatonism is debatable. In his conception of the soul, Moderatus followed a line that defined the soul within the framework of the theory of numbers and described its function as that of a factor creating harmony between different elements. From his point of view, this approach was compatible with the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, which

675-451: Is unclear and controversial in research whether Porphyry took his presentation from an opinion of Pythagoreans about the relationship of later philosophers to the Pythagorean teachings of a writing by Moderatus. According to this view communicated by Porphyry, which according to some researchers corresponds to the point of view of Moderatus, the main achievements of Greek philosophy are due to Pythagoras. Subsequent philosophers such as Plato,

720-554: 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

765-659: The Academy from Plato, to judge from its rather numerous fragments, contained a minute and wearisome account of the outward circumstances of those men, and was full of fabulous tales about their lives, without entering into the nature of their skepticism. George Karamanolis from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy noted, "The remains of Numenius' work leave no doubt that he relied primarily on texts of Plato in constructing his own system of principles. Ancient testimonies are, however, divided between those that classify him as

810-529: The Good ( Peri Tagathou – Περὶ Τἀγαθοῦ) seem to have been of a better kind; in them he had minutely explained, mainly in opposition to the Stoics , that existence could neither be found in the elements because they were in a perpetual state of change and transition, nor in matter because it is vague, inconstant, lifeless, and in itself not an object of our knowledge; and that, on the contrary, existence, in order to resist

855-518: The Jewish tradition is important for the early Christian theologians and apologists who want to establish the superiority of the Jewish-Christian tradition against that of the pagan culture. This attention however is not motivated by historical concerns on the part of Numenius but rather by philosophical ones. Numenius wanted to show that the Jewish nation must be counted among the ancient ones that have

900-573: The Neoplatonists, and Plotinus' student Amelius (who was critical of Gnosticism , see Neoplatonism and Gnosticism ) is said to have composed nearly two books of commentaries upon them. Contrary to orthodox Christian teaching (and more in line with the teachings of Gnosticism), like Orpheus and Plato Numenius wrote of the human body as a prison of the soul. Numenius, according to Professor Michael Wagner showed gnostic tendencies in viewing matter as coeval with God. Fragments of his treatises on

945-447: The One's divesting itself of its own principles and forms. The quantity is thus conceived negatively, it owes its existence to the fact that a logos is robbed of all its content. Moderatus expressly does not allow sense objects to participate in the transcendent One and in the intelligible world, but regards them only as a reflection of ideas. The material world is far from good and therefore appears to Moderatus as bad. However, its badness

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990-509: The Platonists Speusippus and Xenocrates, and Aristotle and Aristoxenus would have done no more than assimilate the fruitful contents of the Pythagorean doctrine, making only minor changes. On the other hand, they would have distanced themselves from everything that could appear questionable and vulnerable in the Pythagorean tradition by presenting it as the specifically Pythagorean body of thought. Moderatus probably arrived at this idea of

1035-478: 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

1080-486: The Pythagoreans finally died out first, because it was enigmatical, and then because their commentaries were written in Doric, which dialect itself is somewhat obscure, so that Doric teachings were not fully understood, and they became misapprehended, and finally spurious, and later, they who published them no longer were Pythagoreans. The Pythagoreans affirm that Plato, Aristotle, Speusippus, Aristoxenus and Xenocrates; appropriated

1125-423: 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

1170-415: The annihilation and decay of matter, must itself rather be incorporeal and removed from all mutability, in eternal presence, without being subject to the variation of time , simple and imperturbable in its nature by its own will as well as by influence from without. True existence is identical with the first god existing in and by itself, that is, with good , and is defined as spirit ( nous ). But as

1215-452: The best of them, making but minor changes (to distract attention from this their theft), they later collected and delivered as characteristic Pythagorean doctrines whatever therein was most trivial, and vulgar, and whatever had been invented by envious and calumnious persons, to cast contempt on Pythagoreanism. A difficulty in determining the doctrines of Moderatus arises from the fact that Porphyry does not indicate exactly where in this account

1260-401: The first (absolute) god existing in itself and being undisturbed in its motion, could not be creative ( demiurgikos – δημιουργικός), he thought that we must assume a second god, who keeps matter together, directs its energy to it and to intelligible essences, and imparts its spirit to all creatures; its mind is directed to the first god, in whom it beholds the ideas according to which it arranges

1305-407: The form of this Triad. So also with the other numbers, which were ranked according to the same reasons. All other things were comprehended under a single form and power which they called Decad, explaining it by a pun as decad, meaning comprehension. That is why they called Ten a perfect number, the most perfect of all as comprehending all difference of numbers, reasons, species and proportions. For if

1350-572: The fragments which have come down to us. Numenius is quoted by multiple ancient writers as having referred to Plato as the "Atticizing Moses ," i.e., the Hellenic Moses. "But what is Plato", Numenius said, "but Moses speaking in Attic Greek?" In On the Good (Book 3, fr 10a), Numenius even sets out a story about Jesus (though he doesn't mention the name), and speaks of Moses and Egyptian sages. George Karamanolis further notes: "Such attention to

1395-519: The genuine Pythagorean and mediator between Socrates and Pythagoras in its original purity, cleared from the Aristotelian and Stoic doctrines, and purified from the unsatisfactory and perverse explanations, which he said were found even in Speusippus and Xenocrates , and which, through the influence of Arcesilaus and Carneades had led to a bottomless skepticism . His work on the apostasy of

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1440-468: The history of philosophy by reading pseudepigraphic Pythagorean treatises in which he found Platonic and Aristotelian ideas. He mistook these writings for the authentic works of Pythagoreans who lived before Plato, and concluded that the early Pythagoreans already possessed the philosophical insights set forth in Plato's dialogues. Moderatus understood the Pythagorean theory of numbers as an attempt to communicate statements about metaphysical circumstances in

1485-473: The most perfect number, can also be interpreted in this way. It is uncertain whether another passage in Porphyry is also based on the explanations of the Moderatus. There it is said that Pythagoras showed his students a path to happiness by leading them in small steps from dealing with the material and perishable to contemplating the incorporeal, imperishable and real. The Neoplatonist Simplicius also reports on

1530-456: The nature of his Platonist-Pythagorean philosophy, and its approximation to the doctrines of Plato . Numenius was a Neopythagorean , but his object was to trace the doctrines of Plato up to Pythagoras , and at the same time to show that they were not at variance with the dogmas and mysteries of the Brahmins , Jews , Magi and Egyptians . His intention was to restore the philosophy of Plato ,

1575-488: The nature of the universe be defined according to the reasons and proportions of members, and if that which is produced, increased and perfected, proceed according to the reason of numbers; and since the Decad comprehends every reason of numbers, every proportion, and every species, why should Nature herself not be denoted by the most perfect number, Ten? Such was the use of numbers among the Pythagoreans. This primary philosophy of

1620-1091: The points of divergence between the Academicians and Plato, On the Good (in which according to Origen , Contra Celsum , iv. 51, he makes allusion to Jesus Christ ), and on the mystical sayings in Plato, are preserved in the Praeparatio Evangelica of Eusebius . The fragments are collected in F. W. A. Mullach, Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum iii.; see also F. Thedinga , De Numenio philosopho Platonico (Bonn, 1875); Heinrich Ritter and Ludwig Preller , Hist. Phil. Graecae (ed. E. Wellmann , 1898), 624–7; T. Whittaker , The Neo-Platonists (1901); E.-A. Leemans , Studie over den Wijsgeer Numenius van Apamea met Uitgave der Fragmenten , Brussels 1937; E. Des Places , Numénius, Fragments , Collection Budé , Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1973; and Robert Petty , The Fragments of Numenius of Apamea: Text, Translation and Commentary (2012) Westbury, UK. Moderatus of Gades Moderatus of Gades ( Greek : Μοδερᾶτος )

1665-456: The principle of eternal unity and equality, the continuance of what is always self-identical. This points to the essential togetherness of all things, which results from their common origin. The dyad is the principle of diversity and inequality, of divisible things and of that which is constantly changing. The triad expresses the essence of something that has a beginning, a middle and an end and thus proves to be complete. The other numbers up to ten,

1710-449: 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

1755-660: 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

1800-429: The rendering of Moderatus' statements begins and ends. Depending on how much of the text handed down by Porphyry is attributed to Moderatus, the picture that emerges from his philosophy changes. Another problem is that Porphyry may have inserted or altered individual passages of text, so that it is to be expected that in his account Moderatus' way of thinking and terminology appears more neoplatonic than it actually was. It

1845-619: The title Numenius . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Numenius&oldid=1044051404 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Numenius of Apamea Statements and fragments of his apparently very numerous works have been preserved by Origen , Theodoret , and especially by Eusebius , and from them we may learn

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1890-551: 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

1935-462: The world harmoniously, being seized with a desire to create the world. The first god communicates its ideas to the second, without losing them itself, just as we communicate knowledge to one another, without depriving ourselves of it. In regard to the relation existing between the third and second god, and to the manner in which they also are to be conceived as one (probably in opposition to the vague duration of matter), no information can be derived from

1980-567: 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

2025-422: 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,

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