La catábasis de Pitágoras

Two peripatetic authors from the 3rd century BC, Hieronymus of Rhodes and Hermippus of Smyrna, each offer testimonies of Pythagoras’ catabasis. The first refers to Pythagoras’ observation of souls punished in Hades, while the second upholds the view that the entire experience was false, and that he in fact remained concealed in an underground chamber. An older version of Hermippus’ story appears to be the source of a similar account on Zalmoxis recorded by Herodotus and of a brief allusion in Sophocles’ Electra. There are several testimonies of Pythagoras’ and Epimenides’ using caves to achieve spiritual experiences and attain a divine knowledge, which could be the starting point of the story of the Samian master’s descent to the Hades, later denounced as a fraud. The stimulus to transform the sojourn in a cave into a catabasis may have been competition between the Pythagoreans and the Orphics, and the desire to attribute to the sect’s founder, Pythagoras, equivalent authority to Orpheus regarding the afterlife