Moderatus of Gades () was a Greek philosopher of the Neopythagorean school, who lived in the 1st century AD. He was a contemporary of Apollonius of Tyana. He wrote a great work on the doctrines of the Pythagoreans, and tried to show that the successors of Pythagoras had made no additions to the views of their founder, but had merely borrowed and altered the phraseology.
Life
Moderatus was from Gades, in Andalusia. He was probably a relative of the writer Columella (Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella), who shared the same cognomen and was also from Gades. Almost nothing is known about the life of Moderatus. The only concrete clue is provided by Plutarch, who reports that when he, Plutarch, returned to Rome after a long absence, Lucius, a disciple of Moderatus, who came from Etruria, was attending a banquet hosted by Sextius Sulla, a friend of Plutarch's. Since the banquet took place around 90 AD, it can be assumed that the teaching activity of Moderatus fell in the second half of the 1st century. Apparently Moderatus lived in Rome, at least part of the time. According to Plutarch's description, Lucius adhered to the rules of the Pythagorean way of life, so he valued the practice of a lifestyle oriented towards philosophical goals. It is unclear whether this is due to the influence of his teacher Moderatus and thus no concrete conclusions can be drawn about his adherence to this lifestyle.
Works
The writings of the Moderatus have been lost except for fragments. In his biography of Pythagoras, the Neoplatonist Porphyry quotes or paraphrases a passage from a work by Moderatus in which the doctrines of the Pythagoreans were compiled, which apparently concerned primarily the Pythagorean theory of numbers. It is uncertain whether this writing consisted of ten or eleven books. Another Moderatus fragment is preserved in Simplicius's commentary on Aristotle's Physics, which is taken from a lost treatise by Porphyry on matter. The late antique scholar Stobaeus also preserves two fragments of Moderatus' work in his Eclogae about the theory of numbers, which John M. Dillon notes bear a strong resemblance to the work of Theon of Smyrna, implying that either Theon used Moderatus work as a principal source, or that Stobaeus misattributed the source of the quote. The Byzantine author Stephanus of Byzantium mentions a writing "Pythagorean Lectures" in five books that Moderatus wrote. The Neoplatonist Iamblichus reports on a doctrine of Moderatus about the soul; It is not known which work he is referring to. The Neoplatonists Syrianus and Proclus also mention Moderatus' views. The church father Jerome calls Moderatus an excellent writer (virum eloquentissimum), whom Iamblichus imitated.
Philosophy
Moderatus wrote a work titled "Lectures on Pythagoreanism" in either ten or eleven books, which Porphyry characterized in his Life of Pythagoras. as containing all of the doctrines of the Pythagoreans:
A difficulty in determining the doctrines of Moderatus arises from the fact that Porphyry does not indicate exactly where in this account the rendering of Moderatus' statements begins and ends. Depending on how much of the text handed down by Porphyry is attributed to Moderatus, the picture that emerges from his philosophy changes. Another problem is that Porphyry may have inserted or altered individual passages of text, so that it is to be expected that in his account Moderatus' way of thinking and terminology appears more neoplatonic than it actually was. It is unclear and controversial in research whether Porphyry took his presentation from an opinion of Pythagoreans about the relationship of later philosophers to the Pythagorean teachings of a writing by Moderatus.
According to this view communicated by Porphyry, which according to some researchers corresponds to the point of view of Moderatus, the main achievements of Greek philosophy are due to Pythagoras. Subsequent philosophers such as Plato, the Platonists Speusippus and Xenocrates, and Aristotle and Aristoxenus would have done no more than assimilate the fruitful contents of the Pythagorean doctrine, making only minor changes. On the other hand, they would have distanced themselves from everything that could appear questionable and vulnerable in the Pythagorean tradition by presenting it as the specifically Pythagorean body of thought. Moderatus probably arrived at this idea of the history of philosophy by reading pseudepigraphic Pythagorean treatises in which he found Platonic and Aristotelian ideas. He mistook these writings for the authentic works of Pythagoreans who lived before Plato, and concluded that the early Pythagoreans already possessed the philosophical insights set forth in Plato's dialogues.
