like leather, we should have a dodecahedron instead of a sphere. That proves that the dodecahedron was well known before Theaitetos, and we may infer that it was regarded as forming the "timbers" on which the spherical hulk of the heavens was built.
The tradition confirms in an interesting way the importance of the dodecahedron in the Pythagorean system. According to one account, Hippasos was drowned at sea for revealing "the sphere formed out of the twelve pentagons."[1] The Pythagorean construction of the dodecahedron we may partially infer from the fact that they adopted the pentagram or pentalpha as their symbol. The use of this figure in later magic is well known; and Paracelsus still employed it as a symbol of health, which is exactly what the Pythagoreans called it.[2]
149.The Soul as "harmony." The view that the soul is a "harmony," or rather an attunement, is intimately connected with the theory of the four elements. It cannot have belonged to the earliest form of Pythagoreanism; for, as shown in Plato's Phaedo, it is quite inconsistent with the idea that the soul can exist independently of the body. It is the very opposite of the belief that "any soul can enter any body."[3] On the other hand, we are told in the Phaedo that it was accepted by Simmias and Kebes, who had heard Philolaos at Thebes, and by Echekrates of Phleious, who was the disciple of Philolaos and Eurytos.[4] The account of the doctrine given by Plato is quite in accordance with the view that it was of medical origin. Simmias says: "Our body being, as it were, strung and held together by the warm and the cold, the dry and the
- ↑ Iambl. V. Pyth. 247. Cf. above, Chap. II. p.106, n. 1.
- ↑ See Gow, Short History of Greek Mathematics, p. 151, and the passages there referred to, adding Schol. Luc. p. 234, 21, Rabe, τὸ πεντάγραμμον] ὅτι τὸ ἐν τῇ συνηθείᾳ λεγόμενον πεντάλφα σύμβολον ἦν πρὸς ἀλλήλους Πυθαγορείων ἀναγνωριστικὸν καὶ τούτῳ ἐν ταῖς ἐπιστολαῖς ἐχρῶντο. The Pythagoreans may quite well have known the method given by Euclid iv. 11 of dividing a line in extreme and mean ratio, the so-called "golden section."
- ↑ Arist. De an. A, 3. 407 b 20 (R. P. 86 c).
- ↑ Plato, Phaed. 85 e sqq.; and for Echekrates, ib. 88 d.
