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Theano (philosopher)

6th-century BC Pythagorean philosopher

Field	Value
name	Theano
native_name	Θεανώ
native_name_lang	grc
birth_date
birth_place	Croton or Metapontum
era	Ancient Greek philosophy
school_tradition	Pythagoreanism
spouse	Pythagoras or Brontinus

Theano (; ) 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.

Life

Little is known about the life of Theano, and the few details on her life from ancient testimony are contradictory. According to Porphyry, she came from Crete and was the daughter of Pythonax. 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, and while some claim that after Pythagoras' passing, she took over his school, the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that was not the case.

Writings

Many writings were attributed to Theano in antiquity - The Suda 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.

These writings are all widely considered by modern scholarship to be pseudepigrapha, works that were written long after Theano's death by later Pythagoreans, which attempt to correct doctrinal disputes with later philosophers or apply Pythagorean philosophy to a woman's life. 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.

''On Piety''

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

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.

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.

The preserved letters are as follows:

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.

Notes

References

Ancient testimony

Modern scholarship

References

Porphyry, ''Life of Pythagoras'', 4
{{cite LotEP
"Theano".
Voula Lambropoulou, ''Some Pythagorean female virtues'', in Richard Hawley, Barbara Levick, (1995), ''Women in antiquity: new assessments'', page 133. Routledge

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