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The Authenticity of Archytas fr. 1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Carl A. Huffman
Carl A. Huffman
Affiliation:
DePauw University
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Extract

In a long note in his epoch-making book on ancient Pythagoreanism Walter Burkert raised some grave doubts about the authenticity of Archytas Fr. 1 which have recently been challenged in an article by A. C. Bowen. In this paper I have two goals. First, I will evaluate Burkert's doubts and the success of some of Bowen's arguments against them. Second, I will present a further consideration that both clarifies the text of the fragment and also removes the most serious problem raised by Burkert. The upshot of both these points is to increase the likelihood that the fragment is authentic.

I reproduce the text of just the first part of the fragment as given in DK followed by the text as it appears in the two primary sources, Nicomachus and Porphyry.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , December 1985, pp. 344 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1985

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References

1 Burkert, Walter, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, tr. Minar, Edwin (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), pp. 379–80 n. 46Google Scholar. Bowen, A. C., ‘The Foundations of Early Pythagorean Harmonic Science: Archytas, Fragment 1’, Ancient Philosophy II, 2 (1982), pp. 79–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See Bowen, pp. 84–5.

3 See Bowen in his text.

4 See Burkert, p. 380 n. 46.

5 Bowen, p. 85. He says that the distinction between multitude and magnitude was ‘commonplace in fifth and fourth century thought’. This is surely true, but it was not commonplace to call multitude and magnitude the primary two kinds of what is.

6 Bowen keeps the line in his text.

7 Burkert, pp. 379–80 n. 46. Bowen, p. 83 seems to think that Burkert's point is that Archytas assumes two roles in the fragment, one as a transmitter of wisdom of his predecessors and another as an independent theorist.

8 Burkert, pp. 379–80 n. 46.

9 Bowen, p. 84, makes the good point, however, that Plato thinks that ‘all the sciences…reach fruition only in the understanding of their dependence and kinship’. It would thus appear that Plato could call all the sciences ⋯δελɸεά as Archytas does.

10 Burkert, p. 380 n. 46.

11 The fact that it is the beginning of Archytas' book is one major reason that it has been preserved.

12 Indeed, another passage in Burkert's book seems to suggest that he recognises that the use of μαθήματα is not a good means of determining the authenticity of the fragment for the very reason which I have just given: ‘The question of the extent to which Pythagoreans anticipated Plato in the treatment of the four branches and the development of the concept of the μαθήματα depends on the genuineness of the long fragment of Archytas’ (p. 422 and n. 123).

13 Burkert himself draws attention to two such points. First, ‘the lack of clarity about the concept of speed (rapidity of propagation or frequency of vibration)’ makes the fragment a good target of Theophrastus' polemic (fr. 89). Second, the laborious enumeration of different pieces of evidence (σημεῖα) in the latter half of the fragment also suggests authenticity.

14 I would like to thank Myles Burnyeat and Walter Burkert for reading an earlier draft of this paper and for providing helpful comments.