Myia

Myia was a daughter of the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras and is referred to in ancient sources as Pythagoreerin. Thus, she lived in the late 6th and maybe in the early 5th century BC

The Neoplatonist Porphyry Myia mentioned as the daughter of Pythagoras and his wife Theano. Porphyry informs Myia have written Pythagorean writings. These works are lost. Get only a certain spurious letter she allegedly taught at a woman named Phyllis. This advice for dealing with a toddler and for the proper selection of a nurse to be issued ( in the Hellenistic and Roman imperial literature popular topic ). In research, the views on the dating of the letter differ widely; the assumptions vary between the time of 200 BC and the late 2nd century AD

Porphyry writes, the daughter of Pythagoras had played a leading role in Crotona in Calabria, where her father lived only among the girls and later among women. For this message, which tells also of the late antique Neoplatonist Iamblichus of Chalcis, to Porphyry refers to the historical work of Timaeus of Tauromenion that is not obtained.

Iamblichus also reports the daughter of Pythagoras married a " Menon of Croton ." Probably lies in the textual tradition a typo before, because meaning is obviously the famous Pythagoreans and wrestler Milo of Croton, who caused a stir with his Olympic victories. In another place called Iamblichus namely a Pythagoreerin called Myia which he referred to but not there as the daughter of Pythagoras, as a woman Milons.

Lucian of Samosata testified that Myias name in the 2nd century was a term. He mentions it briefly and remarks that he would have much to tell about them if their story would not have been generally known.

The church writer Clement of Alexandria calls Myia among the philosophers in a chapter of his Stromateis in which he wants to show that women can go to the same perfection ( teleiótēs ) as men. In the Suda, a Byzantine lexicon, Myia is called Samierin. This specification is related to the fact that the home of Pythagoras was the Greek island of Samos; he had emigrated to southern Italy.

Editions and translations

• Alfons Städele: The Letters of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. Grove, Meisenheim am Glan 1980, ISBN 3-445-02128-7, pp. 162-165 (critical edition and translation of the spurious letter ), pp. 267-287 (introduction and commentary ).
• Kai Brodersen (ed.): Theano: Letters of an ancient philosopher. Reclam, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-15-018787-6 ( non-critical edition of the letter [p 110-113 ] and the source texts to Myia with translation ).