Storie di isole, lacrime e sirene

The early Pythagoreans committed some of their early teachings to orality, in the form of cryptic symbols. Following the hypothesis that some symbols could be an early form of exegesis of poetry, this paper examines some of those difficult witnesses of ancient Pythagoreanism, trying to explain them by their relationship with myths and poems focussed on the space of the sea, and Homer’s Odyssey in particular, showing that, far from being the realm of chaos and unlimitedness, the sea of the myth was generally understood by the Pythagoreans as a boundary land lying between this world and the afterlife, which is placed in the sky. This seems to lead to a better understanding of the symbols examined and brings further evidence of the importance of myth and poetry in early Pythagorean philosophy