Theologumena arithmeticae (ca 330 – 350 CE?)
Ascribed to I K, but with uncertainty. The treatise is a collection of
passages from a lost work of the same title by N G, and from the
extant On the Decade and the Numbers within It by A ( L? ). It might be a
portion or summary of the work Iamblikhos planned for the seventh book in his series of
Pythagorean treatises (Iamblikhos, In Nic. p. 125.15–25 Pistelli), though the assumption is
disputed since newly recovered excerpts from Iamblikhos’ On Pythagoreanism VII witness to a
more elaborated stage of Neo-Platonic metaphysics missing from the anonymous Theol.
arithm.
The author/compiler connects mathematics to physics, theology and ethics. The basic
principle is the monad which can generate other numbers without underlying change
(1.6–8). It also contains potentially all properties that show up in numbers, explaining its
power to unite. Therefore the monad can be considered god and, as an organizing prin-
ciple, the Demiurge (4.1–12). Numbers and gods are linked because the former also have
generative force. Reflecting on theories in P’s Republic and Timaeus, the author presents
the Ideas as numbers or characteristics of numbers with the intention to reduce the Ideas,
the archetypes of the physical world, to numbers or relations between numbers. Thus he
makes mathematics the highest science serving as a basis for other kinds of sciences and
knowledge and from which all sorts of knowledge can be derived. Mathematical and ethical
principles parallel each other: virtue is connected to knowledge – the highest of which is
mathematics – and thus it can be examined mathematically; for example, the analysis of
justice (36.20–40.19) recalls Pythagorean presumptions.
Ed.: V. de Falco, [Iamblichi] Theologumena arithmeticae (1922; rev. ed. by U. Klein 1975).
O’Meara (1989).
Peter Lautner
Theomene ̄s (300 BCE – 75 CE)
P 37.38 records his explanation of the origin of amber: poplar sap drips into the pool
called Electrum in the Hesperide ̄s along the Libyan coast.
(*)
PTK
Theomne ̄stos (Med.) (400 BCE – 400 CE)
The “Laurentian” list of medical writers (MS Laur. Lat. 73.1, f.143V = fr.13 Tecusan)
includes this name, common before 300 CE (LGPN) and rare thereafter (LGPN 3A.204). The
list includes no veterinarians, so this man must be distinct from the homonymous
veterinarian.
(*)
PTK
Theomne ̄stos (of Nikopolis?) (313 – 650 CE)
Author of a text on horse care and veterinary medicine, one of the principal sources of the
Hippiatrika. An allusion to an imperial marriage in Milan, apparently that of Licinius in 313
THEOLOGUMENA ARITHMETICAE