Theano (philosopher)

Theano (/θiˈænoʊ/; Greek: Θεανώ) was a 6th-century BC Pythagorean philosopher. She has been called the wife or student of Pythagoras, although others see her as the wife of Brontinus. Her place of birth and the identity of her father is uncertain as well. Many Pythagorean writings were attributed to her in antiquity, including some letters and a few fragments from philosophical treatises, although these are all regarded as spurious by modern scholars.

Theano
Θεανώ
Born	c. 6th century BC Croton or Metapontum
Spouse	Pythagoras or Brontinus
Era	Ancient Greek philosophy
School	Pythagoreanism

Life

Little is known about the life of Theano, and the few details on her life from ancient testimony are contradictory.^[1] According to Porphyry, she came from Crete and was the daughter of Pythonax.^[2][3] In the catalog of Aristoxenus of Tarentum quoted by Iamblichus, she is the wife of Brontinus, and from Metapontum in Magna Graecia, while Diogenes Laertius reports a tradition from Hermesianax where she came from Crotone, was the daughter of Brontinus, married Pythagoras,^[4][5][3] and while some claim that after Pythagoras' passing, she took over his school,^[6] the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that was not the case.^[7]

Writings

Many writings were attributed to Theano in antiquity^[8] - The Suda^[3] attributes to her works with the titles Pythagorean Apophthegms, Advice to Women, On Pythagoras, On Virtue and Philosophical Commentaries, which have not survived. In addition, a short fragment attributed to her from a work titled On Piety is preserved in the Anthologium of Stobaeus, and several epistles have survived through medieval manuscript traditions that are attributed to her.^[9]

These writings are all widely considered by modern scholarship to be pseudepigrapha,^[1][10] works that were written long after Theano's death by later Pythagoreans, which attempt to correct doctrinal disputes with later philosophers^[11] or apply Pythagorean philosophy to a woman's life.^[1] Some sources claim that Theano wrote about either the doctrine of the golden mean in philosophy, or the golden ratio in mathematics, but there is no evidence from the time to justify this claim.^[7]

On Piety

The surviving fragment of On Piety preserved in Stobaeus concerns a Pythagorean analogy between numbers and objects;

I have learned that many of the Greeks suppose Pythagoras said that everything came to be from number. This statement, however, poses a difficulty—how something that does not even exist is thought to beget things. But he did not say that things came to be from number, but according to number. For in number is the primary ordering, by virtue of whose presence, in the realm of things that can be counted, too, something takes its place as first, something as second, and the rest follow in order.^[11]

Walter Burkert notes that this statement, that "number does not even exist" contradicts the Platonic idealism of the Neopythagoreans and Neoplatonists, and attributes it to the Hellenistic period, before the advent of Neopythagoreanism in the early Roman period.^[11]

Letters

The various surviving letters deal with domestic concerns: how a woman should bring up children, how she should treat servants, and how she should behave virtuously towards her husband.^[1]

The preserved letters are as follows:^[8]

• To Eubule: On caring for infants.
• To Euclides: A short letter to a physician who is ill.
• To Eurydice: On behavior when a husband is unfaithful.
• To Callisto: On etiquette towards maids.
• To Nicostrate: On behavior when a husband is unfaithful.
• To Rhodope: On a philosopher named Cleon.
• To Timonides: Addressed to an unfaithful lover

There are also references to a letter addressed To Timareta, which is referenced by Julius Pollux in his Onomasticon for its use of the word οἰκοδεσπότης.^[8]

Notes

1. Plant 2004, p. 69.
2. Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras, 4
3. Suda, Theano.
4. Suda, Pythagoras.
5. Laërtius 1925, 42.
6. "Theano". www.brooklynmuseum.org. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
7. Deakin 2013.
8. Thesleff 1961, p. 22-23.
9. Hercher 1873.
10. Voula Lambropoulou, Some Pythagorean female virtues, in Richard Hawley, Barbara Levick, (1995), Women in antiquity: new assessments, page 133. Routledge
11. Burkert 1972, p. 61.

References

Ancient testimony

•  Laërtius, Diogenes (1925). "Pythagoreans: Pythagoras" . Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Vol. 2:8. Translated by Hicks, Robert Drew (Two volume ed.). Loeb Classical Library.
• Porphyry. Life of Pythagoras. Translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie – via Tertullian Project.
• Iamblichus. Life of Pythagoras. Translated by Thomas Taylor. Retrieved 20 June 2023.
• "Puthagoras". Suda On Line. Retrieved 2023-05-04.
• "Theano". Suda On Line. Retrieved 2023-05-04.

Modern scholarship

• Burkert, Walter (1972). Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-53918-1. Retrieved 20 June 2023.
• Deakin, Michael A.B. (15 April 2013). "Theano: the world's first female mathematician?". International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology. 44 (3): 350–364. doi:10.1080/0020739X.2012.729614.
• Hercher, Rudolf (1873). "Pythagoreans". Epistolographoi hellenikoi. Epistolographi graeci, recensuit, recognovit, adnotatione critica et indicibus instruxit Rudolphus Hercher; accedunt Francisci Boissonadii ad Synesium notae ineditae (in Ancient Greek and Latin). Parisiis A.F. Didot. pp. 603–607. Retrieved 20 June 2023.
• Plant, Ian Michael (2004). Women writers of ancient Greece and Rome: an anthology. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 68-75. ISBN 978-0-8061-3621-9.
• Thesleff, Holger (1961). An Introduction to the Pythagorean Writtings of the Hellenistic Period.
• Zhmud, Leonid (31 May 2012). Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-928931-8.

Further reading

• Dancy, R. M. (1989). "On A History of Women Philosophers, Vol. I". Hypatia. 4 (1): 160–171. ISSN 0887-5367.
• Huizenga, Annette (27 March 2013). Moral Education for Women in the Pastoral and Pythagorean Letters: Philosophers of the Household. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-24518-1. Retrieved 20 June 2023.