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Moderatus of Gades
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Moderatus of Gades

Moderatus is described by most sources as a neopythagorean philosopher of the first century, who was contemporary with Apollonius of Tyana. He, like Apollonius, was a writer. The following summary of Moderatus is sourced from a Stanford University article on pythagoreanism:

Moderatus of Gades (modern Cadiz in Spain), who was active in the first century AD, shows similarities to Eudorus in his treatment of Pythagorean principles. Plutarch explicitly labels him a Pythagorean and presents his follower, Lucius, as living a life in accord with the Pythagorean taboos, known as symbola or acusmata (Table Talk 727b). It is thus tempting to assume that Moderatus too lived a Pythagorean life (Dillon 1977, 345). His philosophy is only preserved in reports of other thinkers, and it is often difficult to distinguish what belongs to Moderatus from what belongs to the source.

He wrote a comprehensive eleven volume work entitled Lectures on Pythagoreanism from which Porphyry quotes in sections 48-53 of his Life of Pythagoras. In this passage, Moderatus argues that the Pythagoreans used numbers as a way to provide clear teaching about bodiless forms and first principles, which cannot be expressed in words. In another excerpt, he describes a Pythagorean system of principles, which appears to be developed from the first two deductions of the second half of Plato's Parmenides. In this system there are three ones: the first one which is above being, a second one which is identified with the forms and which is accompanied by intelligible matter (i.e. the indefinite dyad) and a third one which is identified with soul. The first two ones show connections to Eudorus' account of Pythagorean first principles; the whole system anticipates central ideas of the most important Neoplatonist, Plotinus (Dillon 1977, 346-351; Kahn 2001, 105-110).

Moderatus was a militant Neopythagorean, who explicitly charges that Plato, Aristotle and members of the early academy claimed as their own the most fruitful aspects of Pythagorean philosophy with only small changes, leaving for the Pythagoreans only those doctrines that were superficial, trivial and such as to bring discredit on the school (Porphyry, VP 53). These trivial doctrines have been thought to be the various taboos preserved in the symbola, but, since his follower Lucius is explicitly said to follow the symbola, it seems unlikely that Moderatus was critical of them. The charge of plagiarism might suggest that Moderatus was familiar with the pseudo-Pythagorean treatises, which appear to have been forged in part to show that Pythagoras had anticipated the main ideas of Plato and Aristotle (see Kahn 2001, 105).

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