Pythagorica medica. Scienza e sapienza nella tradizione pre-ippocratica.

The Pythagorean interest in medicine finds its natural collocation among the μαθήματα of the school, holding a privileged role. This wisdom heritage becomes a model for the σοφοί and survives throughout the centuries. Finding out its traces means reconstructing a web of cultural exchanges, particularly lively in the Greek West between the VI and IV century B.C. That’s why this research aims at pointing out some lines of persistency in the wisdom tradition, especially with regard to the field of medicine, through the guiding principles traced by the Pythagorean thought. The enquiry starts from the wisdom and temple medicine in order to highlight its continuity with the Hippocratic tradition. The research path focuses on four archetypal topics which justify the priest skill in medical field and testify the overlap of wisdom and art of healing in ancient times. Birth, Death, Purification and Oath are four anthropological themes: studying them allows to show both the widespread and pervasive nature of the ancient medicine and the role played by the ancient Pythagoreanism. The widespread nature of the documents, especially at the most ancient stage of the history of medicine, imposes to take into account wide historical cultural contexts and face extremely heterogeneous textual typologies which should be integrated with iconographic and archaeological data. That’s why the topic of the research needs to be analised through a multidisciplinary approach.