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05 Scientific knowledge and scholarly lore
11 Language, communication, libraries and education
06 Visual arts and architecture
01 Religious and ideological doctrines and imagery
01 Religious and ideological doctrines and imagery
01 Religious and ideological doctrines and imagery
11 Language, communication, libraries and education
Keywords
presocratics
primordial causes
Period
3rd century CE
Roman Empire
Channel
Christian-Roman philosophers and scholars
Text
A certain Zaratus the Chaldean met Pythagoras and gave him a teaching on the cosmic harmony.
Hippolytus, Refutatio 1.2.12-13: Diodorus Siculus of Eretria and Aristoxenus the musician say Pythagoras went to Zaratas the Chaldean, who explained to him that everything derives from two primordial causes: a father and a mother. And the father is light; the mother is darkness. The constituent parts of the light are: cold, wet, heavy and slow. Out of these the entire cosmos is composed - that is, from female and male. And he says the cosmos is also a musical harmony, and that this is why the sun performs its cyclical orbit in accordance with the laws of harmony.
Dalley, S. and A. T. Reyes. “Mesopotamian Contact and Influence in the Greek World.” In: S. Dalley (ed.). The Legacy of Mesopotamia. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998, 85-124.
Kingsley 1990, 248-249
Kingsley, Peter. “The Greek Origin of the Sixth-Century Dating of Zoroaster.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 53 (1990) 245-265. [JSTOR (requires subscription)]
