Chapter 10 begins with a critique of the best existing attempt (by Obeyesekere) to explain the origins of what I call ethicised indiscriminate reincarnation (EIR) in India and in Greece. But in my view any successful explanation cannot exclude monetisation, which also contributes to the importance of cyclicality in reincarnation, and to the advent of the widespread and persistent idea of individually accumulated karma. This requires reflection on the different roles of kinship in Greece and India.

Chapter 1 gives a convenient summary of the whole book

Chapter 4 concerns the construction of the inner self in the Rigveda and in Homer. The comprehensive, bounded inner self with which we are familiar, but which is in fact given to us not by nature but as a construction found in some societies but not in others, is found neither in Homer nor in the Rigveda. Its absence can be correlated with polytheist reciprocity, whereas its subsequent development (i.e. of atman and psuche) can be correlated with various kinds of monism, of which there are a very few slight occurrences in the latest section of the Rigveda. The explanation I will give of these developments requires a preliminary description here of the phenomena of cosmisation (cosmic projection) and interiorisation (introjection).

Chapter 14 describes the opposition within early Greek metaphysics between the ontological privileging of (communal) circulation and of (individually owned) abstract value. Our three key processes of abstraction, monetisation and ritual are assessed as factors in the production of Parmenidean ‘reason’, a combination facilitated by the similarities between money and ritual, both of which contribute to the Greek doctrine of reincarnation, which was taught in mystic initiation and involved a cosmic projection (cosmisation) of monetised circulation.

Aristoxenus’ five books on the Pythagoreans clearly were an important source for the later Pythagorean tradition. However, if instead of treating Aristoxenus’ Pythagorean works as a group we are careful to focus just on the Pythagorean Precepts the situation is more complicated and interesting. Clearly the Precepts had a significant influence on Stobaeus and Iamblichus. The seven excerpts from the Precepts are an important part of the Pythagorean texts in Stobaeus’ overall collection of texts for the edification of his son.

Iamblichus and Stobaeus are thus the only two sources in the ancient tradition that preserved fragments from the Pythagorean Precepts. In the collection below, frs. 1–7 derive from Stobaeus and frs. 8–11 from Iamblichus. We have seen that there are five cases in which excerpts in Stobaeus, identified as coming from the Pythagorean Precepts, correspond closely with passages in Iamblichus’ On the Pythagorean Way of Life, often agreeing word for word.

In the body of the commentary the goal has been to set out clearly the evidence for the Pythagorean Precepts. This required that I present all fragments of the Precepts in their original contexts even in the cases where there is significant overlap in content between what is preserved in Iamblichus and what is preserved in Stobaeus (e.g., the overlap between fragments 1 and 2 from Stobaeus and fragment 8 from Iamblichus).

The title Πυθαγορικαὶ ἀποφάσεις is commonly translated Pythagorean Sayings (Dillon and Hershbell 1991: 7) or Pythagorean Maxims (Kahn 2001: 70; Barker OCD), although a number of scholars have preferred not to translate it (Wehrli 1967, Burkert 1972, Minar 1942: 99). The word ἀπόφασις has two quite distinct meanings (LSJ s.v.), one derived from ἀπόφημι (in its meaning “to deny”) and the other from ἀποφαίνω (“show forth,” “declare”).

The history of scholarship on Aristoxenus’ Pythagorean Precepts is mainly one of neglect. There has never been a comprehensive book-length treatment of them published in any language. Less than thirty pages of published scholarship in total were devoted to analyzing them in the twentieth century. This is in some ways surprising. Aristoxenus has always been a controversial character, but he was regarded as one of the most important sources for Pythagoreanism by Rohde (1871–2 = 1901) and Zeller (1919) in the later nineteenth century.

Five different titles for works on the Pythagoreans by Aristoxenus have been preserved in the ancient tradition: The Life of Pythagoras, On Pythagoras and His Associates, On the Pythagorean Way of Life, Pythagorean Precepts and The Life of Archytas. Certainly our evidence for these titles is very meager and it is possible that some of these are different names for the same book or that Aristoxenus wrote other books on the Pythagoreans whose titles have not been preserved.

It has long been recognized that sections of the fragments identified as from Aristoxenus’ Pythagorean Precepts by Stobaeus are preserved, sometimes word for word and sometimes with minor changes, in Iamblichus’ On the Pythagorean Way of Life. Iamblichus gives no indication that he is drawing on the Precepts in these cases, but Iamblichus’ general procedure in all of his works is not to identify explicitly the sources on which he is drawing. A clear example is the first sentence of fragment 2, which is derived from Stobaeus and which is repeated word for word but without attribution in section 175 of Iamblichus’ On the Pythagorean Way of Life.

Although the Suda tells us that Aristoxenus composed an astounding 453 works (fr. 1 Wehrli), only two treatises have come down to us in the manuscript tradition and both are works on musical theory, i.e. some pages from the second book of Rhythmics and the Elementa Harmonica, which appears to combine two or more different works by Aristoxenus (Barker 2007: 113–35). No list of Aristoxenus’ writings survives from antiquity.

They said also that all learning both of sciences and of arts that was willing was both correct and also attained its end, but when unwilling was both inferior and did not attain its end.