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.

Life

Little is known about the life of Theano, and the few details on her life from ancient testimony are contradictory.

These writings are all widely considered by modern scholarship to be pseudepigrapha,^[1][9] works that were written long after Theano's death by later Pythagoreans, which attempt to correct doctrinal disputes with later philosophers^[10] 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.^[11]

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.^[10]

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:^[7]

• 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 wikt:οἰκοδεσπότης.^[7]

Notes

References

Ancient testimony

•  
  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
  .

Wikiquote has quotations related to Theano (philosopher).

• 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.