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    Carmelics

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    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Epicharmus should not be classified as a Pythagorean

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.No fifth- or fourth-century source identifies Epicharmus as a Pythagorean
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    • 2.Epicharmus does not appear in the catalogue of Iamblichus
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    • 3.The earliest explicit identification of Epicharmus as a Pythagorean is in Plutarch in the first century CE, far removed from Epicharmus' own era
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Epicharmus' comedic fragments show cosmological and ethical views closely resembling Heraclitean flux doctrine, not Pythagorean number theory.
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    • 2.Ancient doxographers like Diogenes Laërtius categorize Epicharmus independently, treating him as a comic poet-philosopher without Pythagorean affiliation.
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    • 3.Pythagorean identity in antiquity was marked by distinctive practices—acousmatic rules, dietary prohibitions—of which no trace appears in Epicharmus' extant work.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.The pseudo-Epicharmus corpus, which contains explicitly Pythagorean content, was identified by Wilamowitz and subsequent scholars as later forgeries designed to claim Pythagorean priority for Platonic ideas.
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    • 2.Attributing Pythagorean views to Epicharmus depends almost entirely on these pseudepigraphical texts, making the classification an artifact of ancient literary fraud rather than historical fact.
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