On Wisdom

By Perictione II (she was probably a Pythagorean philosopher of the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC)
Translated by Michael Wiitala*

1. Humankind has come into being and exists in order to contemplate the order (logos) of the
nature of the Whole. The proper work of wisdom is (a) to possess the order of the nature of the
Whole and (b) to contemplate the purpose of the things that are.
2. So geometry and arithmetic and other disciplines and sciences study what is, but wisdom is
concerned with every kind of thing that is. For in this way wisdom is concerned with everything
that is, as sight is concerned with everything that can be seen, and hearing with everything that
can be heard. But with respect to what is true of the things that are,† some things are true of
everything that is, some things are true of things generally, and some things are true of a
particular kind of thing. The scope of wisdom is seeing and contemplating what is true of
everything that is, the scope of the natural sciences is seeing and contemplating what is true of
things generally, and the scope of each particular science is seeing and contemplating what is
true of the particular kind of thing with which that science is concerned [e.g., arithmetic is
concerned with numbers, biology is concerned with living beings, etc.]. And because of this,
wisdom discovers the principles of everything that is, natural science the principles things that
happen naturally, geometry, arithmetic, and music the principles of quantity and harmony.
Therefore, whoever is able to analyze every kind of thing by one and the same principle, and in
turn from these things to synthesize and enumerate, this person seems to be the wisest and truest,
and still more, to have discovered a beautiful look-out from which he will be able to look upon
God and upon all the things that have been distinguished, arranged in rank and file.

*
For the Greek text, see Holger Thesleff, ed., The Pythagorean Texts of the Hellenistic Period (Turku: Abo
Akademi, 1965), 146. For an alternative English translation, which I have drawn on in the translation above, see Ian
M. Plant, ed., Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome: An Anthology (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
2004), 76.
†
τὰ δὲ συμβεβακότα τοῖς ἐοῖσιν.... Here and throughout I have rendered τὰ συμβεβακότα as “what is true of.” A
more literal translation is “the things having happened” or “what happens to be the case for”; hence, “But with
respect to the what happens to be the case for the things that are….”