Ocellus Lucanus was allegedly a Pythagorean philosopher, born in

Lucania Lucania was a historical region of Southern Italy. It was the land of the Lucani, an Oscan people. It extended from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Gulf of Taranto. It bordered with Samnium and Campania in the north, Apulia in the east, and Bruttiu ...

in the 6th century BC.

Aristoxenus Aristoxenus of Tarentum ( el, Ἀριστόξενος ὁ Ταραντῖνος; born 375, fl. 335 BC) was a Greek Peripatetic philosopher, and a pupil of Aristotle. Most of his writings, which dealt with philosophy, ethics and music, have been ...

cites him along with another Lucanian by the name of Ocillo, in a work preserved by Iamblichus that lists 218 supposed Pythagoreans, which nonetheless contained some inventions, wrong attributions to non-Pythagoreans, and some names derived from earlier pseudopythagoric traditions.

Pseudo-Ocellus Lucanus

pseudepigraphic Pseudepigrapha (also anglicized as "pseudepigraph" or "pseudepigraphs") are falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past.Bauckham, Richard; "Pseu ...

work, "''On the Nature of the Universe''", was attributed to him, and the citation of its author nowadays appears as Pseudo-Ocellus Lucanus. In two apocryphal letters that Archytas allegedly sent to Plato, he mentioned that he had talked with the descendants of Ocellus and sent four Ocellus' books to him. Both letters appear to have been forged to authenticate the false treatise, which can be dated to around the 1st century BC.

Stobaeus Joannes Stobaeus (; grc-gre, Ἰωάννης ὁ Στοβαῖος; fl. 5th-century AD), from Stobi in Macedonia, was the compiler of a valuable series of extracts from Greek authors. The work was originally divided into two volumes containin ...

(''Ecl. Phys.'' i. 13) has preserved a fragment of the supposed ''Περὶ νόμου'' in the Doric dialect, but the only one of his alleged works which is extant is a short treatise in four chapters in the

Ionic dialect Ionic Greek ( grc, Ἑλληνικὴ Ἰωνική, Hellēnikē Iōnikē) was a subdialect of the Attic–Ionic or Eastern dialect group of Ancient Greek. History The Ionic dialect appears to have originally spread from the Greek mainland acr ...

generally known as ''On the Nature of the Universe''. Excerpts from this are given in

(i. 20), but in Doric. It maintains the doctrine that the universe is uncreated and eternal: "Every nature that has a progression possesses three boundaries and two intervals. The three boundaries are generation, height of being, and end of being; the intervals are progression from generation to height of being, and from height of being to the end of being. But the universe shows no indications of such boundaries and intervals, for we do not perceive it rising into existence, or becoming; nor growing better and greater; nor become less and worse. Rather, it always continues to persist in the same manner, and is perpetually equal and similar to itself."''On the Universe by Ocellus Lucanus...'', trans. Thomas Taylor, p3 of text Pseudo-Ocellus also asserts that the three great divisions of the universe correspond the three kinds of beings—gods, men and daemons; and, finally, that the human race with all its institutions (the family, marriage and the like) must be eternal. It advocates an ascetic mode of life, with a view to the perfect reproduction of the race and its training in all that is noble and beautiful. Editions of the ''Περὶ τῆς τοῦ παντὸς φύσεως'', by A. F. Rudolph (1801, with commentary), and by F. W. A. Mullach in ''Fragmenta philosophorum graecorum'', i. (1860); see also

Eduard Zeller Eduard Gottlob Zeller (; 22 January 1814, Kleinbottwar19 March 1908, Stuttgart) was a German philosopher and Protestant theologian of the Tübingen School of theology. He was well known for his writings on Ancient Greek philosophy, especiall ...

, ''History of Greek Philosophy'', i. (Eng. trans.), and J de Heyden-Zielewicz in ''Breslauer philologische Abhandlungen'', viii. 3 (1901); and R. Harder, ''Ocellus Lucanus'' Thomas Taylor, the Platonist.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lucanus 5th-century BC births Year of death unknown 5th-century BC philosophers Pythagoreans of Magna Graecia Ancient Greek physicists Doric Greek writers Ionic Greek writers Lucanian Greeks