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A sarcophagus found in Tarquinia at the end of the 19th century discloses an original iconography featuring infernal scenes with banqueters, Turms, Vanth, and winged snakes. One interpretation proposed in the 1990s was that this monument bears witness to esoteric doctrines of Greek origin in Etruria, in particular Orphism and Pythagoreanism. However, this proposal is not satisfactory and needs to be reconsidered. It seems more likely that this sarcophagus refers to the world of perfumes and, potentially, to the well-known anecdote of the flying snakes guarding the frankincense trees. This new interpretation sheds further light on the role of scents in Etruria, particularly in the world of the dead.

Abstract According to Glaucus of Rhegium Democritus was \"a disciple of a Pythagorean\" (dk 68 A1, 38). The tetralogical catalog of his works prepared by Thrasylus begins its section on ethics with the three following works: Pythagoras; On the Disposition of the Wise Man; On the Things in Hades (dk 68 B0a-c). The very order of the first three ethical works of Democritus could point to some sort of dependence on Pythagoreanism. This was suggested earlier by Frank (1923: 67), who believes that this is due to the fact that Democritus saw Pythagoras as basically the founder of an ethic-religious sect. Without being forced to agree with Frank, it is undeniable that there are many similarities between Pythagorean and Democritean ethics. The Democritean sentences that speak about the sense of shame before oneself as a way of preventing evil deeds (dk 68 B84, 244, and 264) recalls the practice of anamnesis, the examination of conscience in the Pythagorean tradition. Even more important are the parallel uses of measure as a basis for ethical reasoning. This paper aims to review this connection between Pythagorean traditions and Democritus, examining what emerges as the most probable core issue to determine how close this relation between atomists and Pythagoreans could have been: the Aristotelian testimony (de An. 1.2 404a16-20 [dk 58 B40]) on the material conception of the Pythagorean soul. In fact, a corpuscular conception of the soul (\"dust in the air\"), foreshadowing the psychology of Democritus, is attributed to the Pythagoreans. Is the argument of de An. 1.2 404a16-20 a misunderstanding by Aristotle? Or does this testimony represent an actual dialogue that Pythagoreans were having with atomists in the fifth century bce?

This essay uses one difficult sentence from Pindar’s Olympian 2 as a jumping-off point to address larger issues about the relationship between literature and belief. Section II tackles Pindar’s judgement of the dead (56–60) and argues that this passage is better understood as an instance of unusual particle usage rather than as an elliptical expression of recondite doctrine. Here the posthumous fate of humanity is decided on the grounds of ethical conduct. Section III discusses the unfinished conditional beginning in line 56 and probes the connection between eschatological knowledge and pragmatic action. Scholars have focused on the unusual details of Pindar’s eschatology, but its overarching practical thrust is to reinforce a conventional ethic. Section IV examines the knowledge of the future mentioned in line 56 and other gestures towards privileged knowledge. Scholars have considered Olympian 2 an ‘intimate’ text intended for a select audience, but there is reason to think that this epinician aimed at a panhellenic reception. Combining motifs from various sources, Pindar creates a unique vision of the afterlife that is capable of transcending doctrinal labels and appealing to many. Section V briefly concludes by considering how this poem works as both a victory ode and a religious text. Pindar’s ode is not a ‘corrupt paraphrase’ of anything else; the text creates a world of its own and inscribes core epinician values into the very architecture of the cosmos.

This paper aims to analyze the tradition of the theory of the immortality of the soul and its metempsychosis, with the intention, on the one hand, of determining whether it can be traced back to the practice and doctrine of proto-Pythagoreanism, and on the other hand, of understanding to what extent it has contributed to the definition of the category of Pythagoreanism throughout history. The oldest testimonies attributing that doctrine to Pythagoras suggest two different hermeneutic routes. First, although old, the theory of the immortality of the soul, apocalyptic by its very nature, does not imply the existence of a dogmatic system of beliefs. That is to say that throughout the various strata of the Pythagorean tradition, the concept of this immortality significantly differed. Second, as a result of the first route, it turned out to be necessary to verify how the reception of the theory by later sources contributed to the construction, through it, of the category of Pythagoreanism. The testimonies of Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Ion and Empedocles suggest that metempsychosis is quite an old theory, corresponding to the proto-Pythagorean stratum. One finds in Aristotle the most explicit testimony of the existence of a proto-Pythagorean theory of metempsychosis: the use of the term mýthoi to refer to the Pythagorean doctrines of the soul suggests that Aristotle considered them sufficiently old, and therefore in all probability proto-Pythagorean. The Aristotelian lexicon ultimately will reveal proto-Pythagoreanism as the source of the doctrines of the immortality of the soul and its transmigration.

In contemporary development, feminism is divided into two major trends, that of difference and that of equality. The former tends to rely more on ontology and religious symbolism, and the latter on sociology and political praxis. This paper aims to show that this antagonism has as its background the complementarity and unity between both approaches, which are based on religious symbolism. Religious symbolism has both an ontological value and a sociological value, which give both internal consistency and external form to society.