“The most sacred society (thiasos) of the Pythagoreans:” philosophers forming associations

Abstract

Abstract Scholarly use of the label “school” to describe groups of philosophers has sometimes led to a neglect of the ways in which such gatherings of philosophers could function as unofficial associations of recognizable types (e. g. “societies,” θίασοι). Concerns to distance supposedly “secular” philosophers from any “religious” connection have fed into this image of the philosophical “school,” diverting attention away from other important dimensions of associative life among philosophers and other literate professionals (e. g. physicians), including involvement in honours for the gods and in commensal activities. Epigraphic evidence helps to elucidate the broader associative context. The fact that some philosophers formed associations has implications for adjacent fields, such as Christian origins, where there is a tendency to ask whether groups of Jesus followers were socially analogous to a Judean synagogue, an association, or a philosophical school, as though these were distinct options rather than overlapping social phenomena. Such associations of relatively literate people were among the few in antiquity that can also be described using the scholarly category of “reading communities.”