"VI. And Sosicrates, in his Successions, relates that…" — Diogenes Laertius (#c1526)

Card #c1526IR // #c1526Synthesis

VI. And Sosicrates, in his Successions, relates that he, having being asked by Leon, the tyrant of the Phliasians, who he was, replied, “A philosopher.” And adds, that he used to compare life to a festival. “And as some people came to a festival to contend for the prizes, and others for the purposes of traffic, and the best as spectators; so also in life, the men of slavish dispositions,” said he, “are born hunters after glory and covetousness, but philosophers are seekers after truth.” And thus he spoke on this subject. But in the three treatises above mentioned, the following principles are laid down by Pythagoras generally. He forbids men to pray for anything in particular for themselves, because they do not know what is good for them. He calls drunkenness an expression identical with ruin, and rejects all superfluity, saying, “That no one ought to exceed the proper quantity of meat and drink.” [...] And once, when he was asked when a man might indulge in the pleasures of love, he replied, “Whenever you wish to be weaker than yourself.” — Diogenes Laertius, *Lives of Eminent Philosophers*, Book VIII, Section VI, trans. C. D. Yonge (1853). **Surface Gloss:** Coining the word "philosopher" before the tyrant Leon of Phlius, Pythagoras compares human life to the Olympic festival: some come to compete for fame, some to buy and sell for profit, and the noblest strictly as spectators (*theatai*) of truth. **The Panegyric Triangulation:** In any high-stakes arena (a conference, an industry, a crisis), immediately sort every participant—including yourself—into one of three roles: the **Contender** (playing for status/ego), the **Trafficker** (playing for transaction/extraction), or the **Spectator** (playing for structural comprehension). The Spectator holds the highest leverage because they are the only party not owned by the crowd or the till.

— In our words · Source: Lives of Eminent Philosophers (Diogenes Laertius)

[Use when]

Use when entering a status-obsessed or hyper-commercialized environment where maintaining independent judgment requires consciously refusing both the trophy and the trade. ---

[Why it matters]

Coining the word "philosopher" before the tyrant Leon of Phlius, Pythagoras compares human life to the Olympic festival: some come to compete for fame, some to buy and sell for profit, and the noblest strictly as spectators (*theatai*) of truth. Diogenes transmits (via Sosicrates’ *Successions*, drawing ultimately on Heraclides Ponticus’s fourth-century BCE dialogue *On the Inanimate*) the foundational charter myth of the word *philosophos* ("lover of wisdom") and the concept of *theoria* ("contemplative spectatorship"). At a panhellenic festival (*panegyris*), three distinct motivational classes occupy the same physical ground: the athletes sweating for status (*doxa*), the merchants haggling for gain (*kerdos*), and the freeborn spectators (*theatai*) who want neither prize nor coin, but only to see the whole order of the games clearly. Pythagoras maps this onto the tripartite psychology of human life, labeling both the status-chaser and the money-chaser "slavish" (*andrapododeis*) because both are bound to external masters (the crowd's applause or the market's appetite). This detachment is reinforced by the accompanying ascetic maxims: refusing specific petitionary prayers (since only the cosmic whole knows what is fitting) and treating sensual indulgence as a voluntary leakage of vital strength ("weaker than yourself"). [INTERPRETATION: PRISCA THEOLOGIA / ESOTERIC] In the esoteric tradition from Iamblichus to Ficino, the "festival" (*panegyris*) is not merely a social metaphor; it is the visible cosmos (*kosmos*, a word VIII.25 notes Pythagoras himself coined for the universe because of its ornate order). The soul descends into the sublunary amphitheater from the starry spheres. Those who get entangled in the dust of competition (martial/political ambition) or the stalls of traffic (material accumulation) forget their celestial origin and bind themselves to the wheel of rebirth. The *theates*—the practitioner of *theoria*—uses the eyes as "the gates of the sun" (VIII.19) to behold the harmonic ratios of the cosmic spectacle without grasping at its objects, thereby turning contemplation itself into the rite of return.

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