Pythagoras from Samos (532 B.C.)

He came from Samos and was considered as the founder of a new religious cult, called Pythagoreanism, a sect of Orphism. Being the founder and leader of a religious cult, Pythagoras' true picture was very obscure and not so easy to portray who he was and what he accomplished.
We find interesting words of reference to Pythagoreanism in Herodotus' Historia Book II18:

...in Egypt it is a religious custom to go to the temple, not wearing woolen clothes or to put on the dead no woolen clothes. Those who worship Orpheus and Bacchus, including Pythagorean, have their own 'customs' (in religion), for which they have their own religious reasons (ho hiros logos=the sacred reason).

We find in Plato's Laws the description of the lives of people who worship Orpheus:

...they have no taboo on the unanimated things, but on those animated...

It is important to note that traditionally the Greek religion of the Olympian Deities was based on the family, the clan, and the city state, where "to be religious" means to participate in the rite of the state as a citizen. Thus it makes sense that when Aristotle said that the human is the political animal (to zoon politikon), it was intended to signify that one is truly human insofar as he/she as a citizen of the city state is actively participating in the religio-political rites and decision making.
A new movement in religion, quite independently from the state religion, arose in Greece (although there existed such religions as ancestral worship and Baccheanism). This new trend which became popular, was responding to new needs of the people. Namely, Dionysian rites and Orphism (including Pythagoreanism) intended to satisfy the individual's personal needs of peace and immortality of soul in religion.

Orpheus is a mythological figure, who is much older than Homer. It is contended that the name of Orpheus in Orphism was used to distinguish itself from the Homeric religion.
Orpheus' myth:

Being depressed by Euridiké's death and strongly feeling inseparable from his deceased wife, Orpheus went to see Euridiké in Hades, the Nether world. She had him promise not to look back and see her until they had came out of the gate of Hades and yet Orpheus could not help but turn back and discover her in the skeleton with rotten fresh and worms. Thus Orpheus lost her forever.

Because Orpheus's connection with the Nether World and after life, the Orphic religion probably adopted that name, for it regarded life after death and the immortality of soul as the central question of the religion.
There were other ecstatic religious rites such as Zeus' Mainadés, Sisyphus' (Rhemnus') horses, Dionysian feasts, etc.(?)
The religion of Orpheus became independent of those fanaticism as one of the religious reformation.
The current materials and information about the Orphic religion derived from the much later period of the 5th Century B.C. We are, however, also told that Ho Onomatokikos was established in Athens in the 6th Century B.C. = The Orphism.
On the other hand, it may also be inferred that the origin of Orphism may not be so old. that may be clear on the basis of the archaeological findings from the Knossus Palace in Crete.
What are hoi hiroi logoi (the sacred reasons) of Orphism?
According to Porphyrius' Life and Works of Pythagoras:

1. All souls are immortal.
2. All souls of the humans, once dead, will reincarnate in other animals.
3. Everything on earth periodically returns.
Nothing new is on

earth.
4. Anyone who is newly born is considered as our kin.

The core of Orphism's teachings is :

1. The immortality of soul
2. The reincarnation of soul.
3. The task of religion is salvation, i.e., to liberate one from this chain of the reincarnation by the disciplines, rituals, and particular practices.

According to Xenophanes,

One day Pythagoras went by and saw a puppy tortured (by children), and said,
"Please stop torturing the puppy! Hearing the puppy's voice, I hear my old friend's soul."

As apparent form the above, which is the same as Hinduism as well as the Egyptian religion, the purpose of Orphism as religion consists in the salvation of one's soul, .i.e., the liberation of the soul from this trochos (rebirth and cycle of life).
According to Orphism, the means of the salvation of the soul are:

1) Do not violate the religious rules (hoi hiroi logoi).
2) Do not kill animals, but love the animals, for they are your own kin.
3) Participate in religious rites. (In case of Pythagoreanism, doing mousiké i.e., learning
mathematics to purify soul).

Following is the story which was to be told to the ones who had accomplished their disciplines:

On the left side of Hades' (Nether World King's) residence, you will find a lake (=a fountain): On its side, there will be white Italian cypresses. You should not approach this fountain with the white cypresses.
If you did not bother this lake and continue to proceed further, you will discover the fountain from which the cold water of mnémousyné (memory) is out-flowing. Beside the fountain of memory, you will find a guard.
Approach the guard and tell him as follows:
"Dear Guard! I am one of the children of the twinkling stars now residing on earth. Originally I came from Heaven.
"Listen Guard, I am very thirsty. Please do allow me to drink water from this fountain!"
"Then, the guard will allow you to drink water from that fountain and you will become a king together with the other heroes of the past.
"The blessed one, you will become a God. If you drink water from the fountain of memory, you will be liberated and return to your one primary nature, i.e. God!"

According to Orphism, it is promised to become a God by achieving salvation. However, Pindaros said that one should not try to become a God, then you will be punished.
Orphism promised it as a long, hard discipline as a bliss of the afterlife, while other religions such as the Dionysian feast promises participating women (no men were allowed) the salvation of the soul by mainadés,i.e., by ecstatic festivity of rituals.
The salvation here is understood as the transcendence of this life and identification with the Divine.
Indeed, life after death became a grave concern of the people at the time. Orphism promised life after death (i.e., the immortality and the transmigration of soul) in the afterlife, breaking the cycle of reincarnation and becoming one with the Divine (after a long period of discipline).
This thought is also associated with the conception that "we all are born in this world with sin" (Empedocles' words).

hé sóma (body) = hé séma (epitaph) of the soul (hé psyché).

As you will see, this notion of our body is the prison for soul seems to have been accepted by Plato in his middle period.
At the time of Pythagoras, the view of human being was changed. This can be seen in the Orphic myth of Zagreus.

Zagreus (= Dionysus) was born as the son of Zeus and Persephoné. Hera, Zeus' wife, became jealous and angry to have found out about Zagreus. Hera asked Titamés (Anti-Zeus God in Olympus) to kill Zagreus and Titamés swallowed Zagreus. Soon Zeus found out Titamés' murder of Zagreus and with fury Zeus burned Titamés to death. Out of the ashes Zeus created the humans. As Titamés swallowed Zagreus, the humans consist of two opposing elements:

1) The evil element of Titamés
2) The good element of Zagreus (= Zeus)

Thus, the humans are children of Heaven and Earth.
(Incidentally, there is another version of Zagreus: After Zagreus was swallowed by Titamés, the Olympian Gods saved Zagreus' heart by killing Titamés. Zeus ate Zagreus' heart and gave birth to Dionysus.)
Pythagoras adopted the fundamental disciplines of Orphism and was supposed to have added a new method of liberating oneself from the cycle of rebirth.
Namely, apart from practicing the orthodox disciplines and participating in the rituals, the practice of mousiké (mathematical learning) as the most important method of purifying one's soul.
It was said that just like the medicine for a sick body, the hé mousiké was regarded as the means of the purification of soul.
While according to Socrates in Plato's Phaedo, the most important mousiké is hé philosophia (= love of wisdom), Pythagoras' method of purification is mathematics, other sciences and arts.
Thus the pursuit of science (= scientia (Latin) = epistémé (Greek) = knowledge), philosophia (= love of wisdom) above all, and arts (and crafts) became very important to human life in our pursuit of liberation.
The fact that Pythagoras was the founder of Pythagoreanism as a religious cult makes it very difficult for us to grasp a true picture of Pythagoras himself. Nevertheless, followings are the results of consensus of the philosophers including Aristotle.

All things (in the universe) can be expressed
1) by numbers (numerically) or
2) by their ratios and proportions.

The model of this metaphysical doctrine may be found in the musical codes (i.e., the intervals of the string and their relations to the sounds). Therefore, a pitch depends on the number. As musical harmony depends on numbers, the harmony of the universe depends on numbers ultimately.
The problem of the conflicts in nature, the opposites such as hot and cold, light and heavy, hard and soft, may be reducible to those of the odd and the even numbers.
In other words, the Pythagoreans see the ultimate opposite in the opposites of the even and the odd numbers. The even numbers are called the indeterminates (= to apeiron), while the odds are called the determinates or limits (= to peras). Whereas to apeiron is formless, shapeless, undetermined, to peras is the form and determination and gives the form to to apeiron.
According to Pythagoras, the cosmic harmony can be elucidated and comprehended by the unity of those opposite principles, namely the ultimate ones are those of the odds and evens. This dualism developed later into Plato's principles of "idea" and "receptacle" (=hé hypodoché), and further into Aristotle's "form" and "matter".
According to Aristotle, the Pythagoreans "hold that the elements of number are the even and the odd, and of these the former is unlimited and the latter limited: and the 1 proceeds from both of these (for it is both the even and the odd), numbers from the 1; and the whole heaven, as has been said, is numbers."
According to the Pythagorean,

one (= unity) is the point,
two is the line,
three is the surface,
four is the solid.

To say that all things are ultimately numbers, means to maintain that all bodies consist of points or nits in space, which, when taken together, constitute a number.
This can be well illustrated by the Pythagorean ho tetraktys.

. 1
. . 2
. . . 3
. . . . 4
=10

It is the figure that the Pythagorean considered as sacred.
Virtually this figure of "tetraktys" shows that ten is the sum total of one, two, three, and four, that is, the first four integers.
The number 10 was considered by the Pythagoreans to be the sacred, most perfect number (which returns to oneness) that they even believed that there must be 10 planets in stead of 9 planets that was known then, so that they logically assumed that there must be the anti-earth, which, being on the other side of the sun, cannot be seen from the earth.
Thus they also believed that the earth is spherical and that the planetary system was not geocentric, but all the planets together with the sun, too, rotating around the Fire as its center, the Hearth of the universe. They maintained that each of these planets makes sound of its own and yet the harmony of these ten sounds are so perfect that we cannot hear the sound (as mentioned before, they were deeply impressed with the co-relations between the musical codes and the lengths of the string).
Aristotle also said that Eurytus used to represent numbers by pebbles, and it is in accord with such a method of representation that we get the "square" and "oblong" numbers. Namely if we start with one and add odd numbers successively in the form of the gnómons, we get square numbers, while if we start with two and add even numbers, we then get oblong numbers.
These figured numbers that illustrate the connection of numbers with geometry make it easier to comprehend why and how the Pythagoreans thought that all things are ultimately numbers. They saw the numbers and the numerical relations everywhere in the order of the universe.
Very significant it is that Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans held for the first time in Greek philosophy that the intangible, abstract, non-material beings such as soul and number were the principle of reality, although the first step toward the abstract, non-material being as the principle of reality was taken by Anaximander.

Heracleitus of Ephesus (504/501 B.C.)

Being melancholic in his character, Heracleitus was often called "weeping Heracleitus," or "depressed Heracleitus."
Heracleitus came from an Ephesian noble family.Heracleitus was thus guaranteed a seat of Basileus (the office called "King"), but he gave it to his brother. Many of Heracleitus' sayings are pithy and pungent in character, which may something to do with his isolation from, repugnancy to the masses, and anti-idiosyncracy.
Heracleitus is well known in saying, "Everything in flux." (Panta rhei)Heracleitus' central theme of his philosophical inquiry was the change in reality and tried to understand it by means of the opposite, in particular the most dominant opposite to the human beings, i.e., the opposite of life and death.
Despite his words are transmitted as fragments, his thoughts were regarded by many Ancient historians of philosophy as obscure, so Heracleitus was later nicknamed ho skoteinos (the obscure or the dark man). Because of this character, Burnett calls him very prophetic, together with Pinder and Aeschylus. The followings are examples:

Nature loves to hide.

The lord who is the oracle obeys Delphi, neither utters nor hides its meaning, but shows it by a sign.

Men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time, as before they have heard it at all.

Among Heracleitus' words, there are very few which refer to the proper names, and yet three of his fragments,more than anybody else, are about Pythagoras. They are all expressing Heracleitus' despise against Pythagoras:

A lot of knowledge does not give rise to wisdom, otherwise the learning of many things would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataes.

In reference to Pythagoras:

Pythagoras was the originator of lie. (Frag. 81)

Pythagoras was quite industrious and collected and read a lot of books, but he was the apprentice for his only possessing a log knowledge (instead of having wisdom): A liar! (Frag. 129)

These ill words about Pythagoras may be an indication for the fact that Heracleitus was apparently very conscious about Pythagoras to the degree of jealousy or hatred and particularly about his religion. Apparently did Heracleitus have a strong apathy to the new religion!?
Apathy to mysteries, occult, night festivities, ecstatic rites, e.g., worship for Bacchus, Dionysus' festival, Orphism, etc.: "The mysteries practiced among men are unholy mysteries." This kind of statements perhaps makes us believe that Heracleitus be a rationalist. However, such an interpretation of Heracleitus would be not only misleading, but also totally wrong.
It is contended that Heracleitus' concept of Divinity was pantheistic.
According to Aristotle's Theosophia 68:

Heracleitus said that...but they seek the purification (of blood-guilt) in such a way that they bathe in and stain themselves with blood, just like the one who enters into mud, believing that he/she can be cleansed if washed with mud: Those who discovered such a thing for people to do are certainly considered to be crazy.

They also pray to the images of gods as if they would talk to stones or a building, because they do not recognize gods and heroes as what they really are. (Frag. 5)

Homer should be purged from the (Olympic) race ground. Hesiod committed so many crimes.

These criticisms on religion by Heracleitus sound like those of Xenophanes, but Heracleitus showed an extraordinary, even abnormal hatred to Xenophanes, too.
This may be due to the fact that Heracleitus was aware of Xenophanes' philosophical thought, which was very likely similar to his. One tends to be more critical of those who are either close to oneself or are similar in view.
His religious consciousness was, as pointed later, based upon the existential experience of the transitoriness of our being, its nothingness, upon that of the inseparability of life and death and, more baldly said, their ultimate unity.
It is said that Heracleitus, suffering so much from depression, was unable to complete his books.

The weeping, depressed Heracleitus!

He was supposed to have written a book On Nature (tésphysieós). It could also mean On Essence):

1. On the universe (cosmos)
2. On politics
3. On Deities.

According to an old interpreter of Heracleitus, Heracleitus talked about Nature, but he did so only symbolically, and in reality, Heracleitus meant to discuss Politics. However, this interpretation cannot be accepted as far as Heracleitus' Fragments handed down to us are concerned.

The mass must defend and fight for hoi nomoi (the laws of the city state--nomos = law--) like they do for the city walls which defend the polis."

If one tries to think clearly, we must think rigorously and firmly of the "common" of all things. Because the nomoi (=the laws of the city state) have been nourished by the only one nomos (the Law) which is divine.

Behind the politics, God is always thought.

According to the hitherto existing history of philosophy (starting with Aristotle), Heracleitus has been considered to be a natural philosopher more than anything else:
Fire is the most fundamental element of all.

Where fire is extinguished, everything comes into being.
What is densified from water becomes earth.
What is rarefied from earth becomes water.
What is rarefied from water becomes air.
What is rarefied from air becomes fire.

According to Heracleitus, the world was not created by man or God, but everything derives from Fire and perishes into Fire.

Everything is a substitute for Fire, Fire for everything, just like money for any merchandise, the merchandise for money.

If the whole philosophical thought of Heracleitus consisted in this philosophy of nature, Heracleitus would be a mere follower of the Ionian philosophical tradition: Nobody would not have paid so much attention to Heracleitus.

On the contrary, what was so essential to Heracleitus was the question of Life and Death and further the problem of Change (=hé kinésis, the mutability of the human existence).

Fire dies the death of earth, earth lives the life of fire.

Heracleitus said,

For soul (=hé psyché) to be moistened is pleasure, but at the same time it is the death of soul.

For soul to become water is its death,
for water to become earth is its death.

Everything we experience while we are awakened is in reality death. We are in touch with death when we are asleep.

After Heracleitus mentioned about "descending from water to earth", he states in the way of ascending:

However, water is born from earth, soul from water. From death, those natural elements are born.

In describing the Change, Heracleitus employs the method of descending and the method of ascending.

It is the death that the soul is moistened: We live the earth of the soul, that is, the soul lives our death.

Death (ho thanatos) lives immortality (athanatos);
Ho athanatos (immortality) lives its death.

According to Orphism (also Pythagoreanism),

our life on this world is the grave of our authentic life.
Therefore, the purpose of religion is to help us transcend from our mundane life, that is "liberation".

The identity of life and death is a truth of principle to Heracleitus, while in the unauthentic, mundane world view life and death are considered as the primary opposites.
Life is ultimately no other than death itself, that is the limit of the soul.
Therefore, Heracleitus said,

I inquire into myself and know that death is at the bottom of life.

If, then, the universe is viewed from this point of view (the identity of life and death), "all things are one" according to Heracleitus.

"Listen not to me, but to Logos , and agree that all things are one."

Despite any apparent irreconcilable opposites:
life and death,
old and young,
wealthy and poor,
everything changes into each other,
and in its process of change,
everything is complementary to each other
(in order to form an absolute unity).

Ho logos (Reason) being intermediary of the opposites, grasps all things as One. It comprehends all things to be one beyond the appearance of the opposites and the multiplicity of our sense experience which are mere phenomena. As quoted above, that is why Heracleitus said:

(Do) not listen to me, but to "Logos," and agree that all things are one.

Reason = Sophia.
Here we see that Heracleitus is almost introducing the opposition between Reason and Senses, between reality and phenomena.
If this was indeed true, Heracleitus should be given the honor of the first Western philosopher who attempted to formally go beyond our sense knowledge and entrust Reason as the sole faculty of the human knowledge that is only capable of grasping the genuine Reality. Normally, however, this honor has been given to Parmenides (See the section on Parmenides of Elea) by the historian of the Western philosophy.
Nevertheless, due to the fragmentary nature of his sayings, it is very difficult to really comprehend what Heracleitus meant. We have a tendency to interpret Heracleitus words in the way we want to read them.