According to Proclus, Hermes is the overseer of all paideia, which includes such various disciplines as sports, music, mathematics, logic and grammar. The present section Paideia (meaning ‘education’ or ‘culture’) is for texts that are so comprehensive as to not fit into any one particular category. They are usually relatively short and written for students to give them an overview of mainstream ideas about various topics.
Currently, this category includes some texts that are, or claim to be, Pythagorean:
- An abbreviated Life of Pythagoras, which in its surviving form tells us little about the life of the philosopher Pythagoras, but gives a singularly efficient overview of a mainstream Greco-Roman worldview. A good complement and counter to the more sectarian book of Sallustius.
- A description of certain Pythagoric Memoirs by Alexander Polyhistor, giving a more markedly Pythagorean but still wide-ranging worldview.
And the following Neoplatonic works:
- The famous Book of Sallustius the Philosopher, also known by its Renaissance title On the Gods and the Cosmos, which gives an introduction to the worldview of Neoplatonism.
- The anonymous Prolegomena to Plato’s Philosophy, a more technically Platonic counterpart to Sallustius’ book for laypersons.
SARTRIX 