NEOPYTHAGOREANISM. – A philosophical and mystical movement originating with Pythagoras and remaining alive, after the violent destruction of the Pythagorean community in 450 B.C., as an orientation of life according to the ideal of the philosopher, steeped in Orphic elements. These ideals were embodied in respect for the Monad, the One considered as the principle of the universe; in faith in the survival of the soul through the cycle of rebirths (metempsychosis); in the observance of ritual prohibitions (the ban on eating meat and beans); in the tendency toward communal life; and in profound respect for the person and teachings of the founder (ipse dixit).
This ideal, which never died out in Magna Graecia—the principal theater of Pythagoreanism—penetrated, like so many other spiritual currents, into Rome, where by the 2nd century B.C. there is evidence of a pious fraud aimed at accrediting Neopythagorean teaching by simulating the discovery of two stone chests containing, one the corpse of Numa—traditionally said to have been a disciple of Pythagoras—and the other two rolls of recent writing, one in Latin containing seven books of pontifical law, the other in Greek containing seven books of philosophical material. These books were, after examination, burned before the people by the praetor Q. Petilius, who detected in them new ideas capable of undermining the religion of the State (Livy, XL, 29). But this self-deception did not prevent the spread of the Neopythagorean movement, of which a lofty echo is found in Cicero’s “Dream of Scipio” in Book VI of the Republic; in the reverence shown toward it by the theologian Varro, who wished to be buried according to the Pythagorean funeral rite: a clay chest with a bed of myrtle, olive, and black poplar leaves (Pliny, Nat. Hist., XXXV, 50); in the propaganda of the senator Nigidius Figulus, founder of the first Pythagorean chapel in Rome, accused of being a magician and Pythagorean; and in the principles that guided the decoration of the Neopythagorean basilica of Porta Maggiore, from the mid-1st century A.D., and toward the end of that century in the legendary figure of Apollonius of Tyana, whose life was written at the beginning of the 3rd century by the philosopher Philostratus, drawn from notes taken by Demades, a disciple of Apollonius.
The peak of Neopythagoreanism in Rome spans from the mid-1st century B.C. to the mid-1st century A.D. It is easily understood how, in such a troubled era, the Neopythagorean ideal could offer a refuge and hold out a radiant hope to so many anguished spirits, for whom neither the official religion—concerned only with the collective and not with individuals—nor the materialism of the Epicureans, nor the grand but cold vision of the Stoics sufficed to fill the void of the spirit. But precisely because it was reduced to a movement of a small circle communicable only to initiates, Neopythagoreanism did not win the trust of the people, nor that of the State, which distrusted the mantic and thaumaturgic powers claimed by its adherents, while being dismissed by free-thinking spirits as charlatanry (cf. Lucian’s *Pseudomancy* against Alexander of Abonoteichus). Hostility, which later became persecution, against Neopythagoreanism manifested itself in the second quarter of the 1st century A.D. during the reign of Claudius, under whom the trial of Statilius Taurus took place, accused of magical superstition (Tacitus, Ann., XII, 59).
The Statilia family, as F. Fornari—first illustrator of the monument—has demonstrated, owned a plot of land 100 meters east of the present Porta Maggiore (on the Via Prenestina), beneath which, at a depth of 13.50 meters, an underground hall was discovered in 1917. This hall has a basilica plan with three naves divided by two pillars with barrel vaulting and an apse at the far end, in which traces of a cathedra can be seen. The entire basilica is decorated with stuccoes depicting subjects from Greek mythology, while those of Oriental origin (Mithras, Attis, Osiris) are absent. The conch of the apse depicts Sappho descending with her lyre from a cliff toward the sea, where a Triton holds out a cloth to receive her, while above, to the left, stands Apollo with his bow. The stuccoes of the vault and walls—gymnasium, school—signify life understood as salutary exercise with a view to salvation; this, the ultimate end of Pythagorean discipline, is depicted in scenes of rapture: the Dioscuri and the Leucippides, Ganymede and the eagle; then Dionysus making wine (celestial intoxication), Demeter giving bread (nourishment of immortality), Hercules receiving the apples of the Hesperides (rest in beatitude).
The liturgy that took place in this basilica—whose Neopythagorean character, already intuited by F. Cumont, was definitively demonstrated by J. Carcopino (*La basilique pythagoricienne de la Porte Majeure*, Paris 1927)—was reconstructed by him primarily from the life of Pythagoras written by the Neoplatonist Iamblichus. Ablutions (amphorae, of which the sockets in the floor and the depictions on the stuccoes of the side aisles remain); the banquet of bread, wine, and cakes held around small tables (four sockets of which remain in the basilica between the arches); exercises and practices of spiritual elevation concluded by an exhortation delivered from the cathedra by the president of the assembly (the socket of the seat remains at the base of the apse). The conch of the apse is the synthesis of Pythagorean life, in that Sappho descending into the sea is not the poetess who committed suicide for love, but an idealized Sappho, symbol of the soul, intoxicated by the harmony of the spheres symbolized by the lyre, moving toward its divine Phaon, Apollo—for the Pythagoreans the supreme divinity (Plutarch, *De Iside*, 10; 75)—leaving behind the sorrows of earthly life to enter the divine life. This spiritualization of Sappho had already occurred in the Pythagorean milieu: *“et Phaonem Lesbium dilectum a Sappho: multa circa hoc, non magorum solum vanitate sed etiam Pythagoricorum”* (Pliny, Nat. Hist., XXII, 20).
This notable monument of Neopythagoreanism, which illuminates and is illuminated by the tradition preserved by the Neoplatonists about Pythagoras, shows no traces of decay or slow alteration; it therefore seems to have been suddenly put out of use, following a prohibition or confiscation that may date back to the condemnation of the Statilia family mentioned at the outset.
From this time onward, the mystical and devotional element of Neopythagoreanism continued to live on in Neoplatonism (q.v.).