Caterina Pellò

This chapter[aut]Pellò, Catérina is about a PythagoreanPythagoreans woman philosopher from the first century BCE, named Phintys the Spartan, who is credited with authoring an ethical treatise titled *On the ModerationModerationof WomenWomen*. I first introduce the study of ancient Greek women philosophers, its problems, challenges, methodologies, questions, and answers. Next, I review the evidenceEvidence, evidentfor womenWomen in the PythagoreanPythagoreans tradition. Finally, I turn to the writings ascribed to Pythagorean women in the Hellenistic and Post-Hellenistic period. I assess Phintys’ arguments and analyse how she engages with and reacts to her philosophical predecessors, Plato[aut]Platoand Aristotle[aut]Aristotle, thus contributing original ideas to ancient virtueVirtues ethics. Phintys’ *On ModerationModeration* revolves around two highly disputed philosophical questions: what is virtue? And which virtuesVirtues are most appropriate for womenWomen? Phintys replies by combining the functionalist definition of virtue as excellence in performing one’s job with a tripartite divisionDivision between proper, common, and preferable things. The argument is that, whilst some virtuesVirtues, such as moderationModeration, might be more appropriate, or preferable, for women because of their social roles, as a group virtuesVirtues are common to and shared by womenWomen and men. This in turn is used as an argument to justify women’s ability to pursue philosophy. As such, Phintys rejects both the Platonic notion that sex and genderGender distinctions are irrelevant to one’s individual excellence, and the AristotelianAristotelian argument that men and womenWomen are virtuous in different ways. The notion of *preferable* virtue represents Phintys’ original contribution to ancient ethics.

This chapter is about women and ancient Pythagorean philosophy. Specifically, the focus is on the letters and treatises written in the Hellenistic and Imperial Age under the name of Pythagorean female authors. Scholars have primarily raised two objections against these texts: first, they are likely to be spurious and might not have been authored by women, but rather male philosophers writing under female pseudonyms. Second, these texts are not philosophical. After a brief introduction to the role of women in Pythagoreanism and overview of the authorship issue, I show that, regardless of the original authors, these texts are written for women who are considered capable of reading philosophy. As such, they establish women’s philosophical potential in two ways: on the one hand, they ascribe philosophical arguments to female authors and, on the other hand, they encourage women to pursue philosophy. This makes the texts the first case of philosophical prose ascribed to Greek women and, I argue, an early example of female philosophical protreptics.

What is Leucippus and Democritus’ theory of the beginning of life? How, if at all, did Leucippus and Democritus distinguish different kinds of living things? These questions are challenging in part because these Atomists claim that all living beings – including plants – have a share of reason and understanding. We answer these questions by examining the extant evidence concerning their views on embryology, the soul and respiration, and sense perception, thereby giving an overview of life and lifeforms in early Greek atomism. We show, first, that the generation of all living beings happens through the combining of miniature copies of their parents’ atomic structures. Second, we argue that the Atomists take respiration to mark the beginning of life. Yet they do not consider respiration nor being ensouled to distinguish humans, animals, and plants from each other. Finally, because Leucippus and Democritus make little distinction between sense perception and thought, these too cannot sharply distinguish between different kinds of living beings. We conclude that Leucippus and Democritus advocated a less anthropocentric and more holistic view of the cosmos.

The Pythagorean women are a group of female philosophers who were followers of Pythagoras and are credited with authoring a series of letters and treatises. In both stages of the history of Pythagoreanism – namely, the fifth-century Pythagorean societies and the Hellenistic Pythagorean writings – the Pythagorean woman is viewed as an intellectual, a thinker, a teacher, and a philosopher. The purpose of this Element is to answer the question: what kind of philosopher is the Pythagorean woman? The traditional picture of the Pythagorean female sage is that of an expert of the household. The author argues that the available evidence is more complex and conveys the idea of the Pythagorean woman as both an expert on the female sphere and a well-rounded thinker philosophising about the principles of the cosmos, human society, the immortality of the soul, numbers, and harmonics.

According to Dicaearchus, metempsychosis was the best known among Pythagoras’ teachings. In this paper, I investigate two features of Pythagorean metempsychosis: its non-retributive character and its epistemological value. I argue that the Pythagoreans did not conceive of reincarnation as a punishment for the wicked and a reward for the virtuous, but rather as a way to gain experience, knowledge and therefore wisdom. This reading enables us to throw light on the puzzling list of Pythagoras’ past lives, which includes Aethalides son of Hermes, Euphorbus the warrior, Pyrrhus the fisherman and even Alco the harlot.