The Six Lawgivers

want to come back and learn about its roots. The legends are curious and fun, but don’t take them too seriously!

You may be surprised to see that the Golden Chain begins with six lawgivers (Grk., νομοθέται, nomothetai), but in the ancient world it was common for religious leaders and philosophers to found and to reform social institutions based on divine law, which is also Plethon’s intention with his Book of Laws. 6 What better authority on how to live and organize society than those who are inspired by the gods?

The first of the six lawgivers, and the most ancient sage in Plethon’s lineage whose name is known, is Zoroaster. Plethon observes, however, that because this ancient theology is timeless, it predates even Zoroaster, arising in the depths of the past, and has been known in other times and places.7

Zoroaster was the ancient religious reformer of the Medes and Persians, who, according to Plethon, lived five thousand years before either the Trojan War or the Return of the Heracleidae (descendants of Heracles).8 According to his chronology, the Return was in 1103 BCE, and the end of the Trojan War was traditionally dated to 1184 BCE, which puts Zoroaster in the seventh millennium BCE.9 Based on linguistic and other evidence, many modern scholars date him to the second millennium BCE, but others as late as the seventh or sixth centuries BCE.10 Even in the ancient world there were widely divergent opinions on when he lived. Indeed, long ago Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE)

6. Plethon, Laws, preface. 7. Plethon, Laws III.43.7. 8. Plethon, Laws III.43.7. 9. This chronology is presented in Plethon’s “A Method of Fixing the Sun, Moon, Conjunctions, Full

Moons and Period of the Planets with Tables Established by Himself” in Tihon and Mercier, George

Gemistus Plethon: Manuel d’astronomie. See also Tihon, “Astronomy of George Gemistos Plethon,” 113;

Hladký, Philosophy of Gemistos Plethon, 249, n. 42. 10. Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed. (2012), s.v. “Zoroaster.”

thought there might be two Zoroasters!11 Plethon, however, thought he was the most ancient sage whose name is known.12

“Zoroaster” (Ζωροάστρης, Zôroastrês) is the Greek name for the ancient Iranian religious reformer Zarathustra, who founded the Zoroastrian religion, which is still practiced in India, Iran, and other places. He is also an important figure in several other religions, including Manichaeism and the Bahá’î faith. He developed an ethical system called Mazdayana, which is Avestan (early Iranian) for “love of wisdom (mazda).” According to Pliny, the Greeks studied Zoroastrian philosophy, and when Pythagoras later coined the word philosophia (φιλοσοφία) from philo-, love, and sophia, wisdom, he was imitating the Zoroastrian term.13 Plethon saw Zoroaster as the founder of the line of Magi (Μάγοι, Magoi), the Persian priest-philosophers to whom the Platonists traced their philosophy.14

The second lawgiver listed by Plethon is Eumolpos, whom he credits with founding the Eleusinian Mysteries, and who thereby convinced people of the immortality of the soul.15 His name means “good singer,” and he is a legendary bard and priest of Demeter and Dionysos.16 The families of priests who oversaw and managed the Mysteries, the Eumolpides and Kêrykes, were descended from Eumolpos and his youngest son Kêryx (whose name means “herald”).

The third lawgiver is Minos, the first king of Crete and the son of Zeus and Europa. 17 (You might recall the myth that tells how Zeus, in the form of a beautiful white bull, spirited Europa away to Crete.) He is supposed to have lived three generations before the Trojan War (traditionally 1194–1184 BCE). Every ninth year he retired to a cave, where he communed with his father Zeus, receiving divine inspiration in legislation.18 He was so respected for his governance by the Olympian gods that after his

11. Pliny, Natural History 8:30.2. 12. Plethon, Laws III.43.7. 13. Pliny, Natural History 8:30.2. 14. Plethon, Commentary 1. 15. Plethon, Laws I.2.2. 16. Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed. (2012), s.v. “Eumolpus.” 17. Plethon, Laws I.2.2. 18. Plato, Laws 624b.

death he was made one of the three underworld judges of the dead (with his brother Rhadamanthys and half-brother Aeacus).19 He was known as a wise and generous ruler, and the constitution he wrote for Crete was the basis of Lycurgus’s constitution for Sparta.

In fact Lycurgus is the fourth lawgiver listed by Plethon.20 His dates are also uncertain, but he might have lived around 820 BCE. He traveled to Crete, where he studied the laws of King Minos. Returning to Greece, he consulted the Delphic Oracle, and on the basis of what he had learned and the Oracle, he reformed the government of Sparta. To ensure his reforms would endure, he told the Spartans he was going to Delphi to offer thanks to Apollo, and he made them swear not to change anything until he returned. But he never returned from Delphi, and so the Spartans never abandoned his laws.

The fifth lawgiver was Iphitos, King of Elis, who restored the Olympic Games after the Dorian “invasion,” namely the return of the Heracleidae (the descendants of Heracles).21 He did this on the advice of the Delphic Oracle. He had asked how the Greeks could avoid civil war and pestilence, and the Oracle ordered that he celebrate the Olympic Games in honor of Zeus and that there be a truce during the time of the games. This “Olympic Truce” was established by Iphitos, Lycurgus, and Cleosthenes of Pisa in the ninth century BCE.

Numa Pompilius (753–673 BCE), the second king of Rome, is the sixth lawgiver in Plethon’s list.22 He is supposed to have studied with Pythagoras, the first to claim the title “philosopher,” but their dates make this unlikely; more realistically, he might have studied with the Pythagoreans in Italy.

Numa was credited with various magical acts to protect Rome, to obtain prophecies, and for other purposes.23 He is supposed to have had nightly discussions with the gods, especially a nymph named Egeria and Jupiter Elicius, an aspect of the god associated

19. Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed. (2012), s.v. “Minos.” 20. Plethon, Laws I.2.2. 21. Plethon, Laws I.2.2. 22. Plethon, Laws I.2.2. 23. Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed. (2012), s.v. “Pompilius, Numa.”