THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

Plutarch, writing around 118 C.E., objects to Stoic monism, and demonstrates
the stance of a host of Platonist philosophers with rather Gnostic leanings:
We must neither place the origins of the universe in inanimate bodies, as
Democritus and Epicurus do, nor yet postulate one reason and one providence,
dominating and ruling everything, as the creator of characterless matter, as the
Stoics do; for it is impossible, where God is responsible for everything, for
anything evil to come into being, or for anything good to come where God is
responsible for nothing.(De Iside 368B) 70
One feature that is prominent on the Skeptical side of the divide is an implicit
focus upon the individual, male or female. Pyrrhonian Skepticism exhibited a close
link with the Sophistic enlightenment, and with the thought of Protagoras in
particular. 71
To return for a moment to our earlier discussion about the emancipation
of women in Hellenistic times, we can assume that the various modes of Skeptical
thought in Alexandria would have supported women rather than excluding their
participation, involved, as they were, in the repudiation of traditional values: the
connection with the earlier Sophistic Aufklärung has already been noted, and it was
the Sophists who first raised the issue of women’s rights. 72
The rejection by Epicurus
of Stoic doctrines also included the admission of women into the sect as equals. So,
too, the female philosopher Hipparchis lived according to Cynic principles. The
Stoics, for their part, did not posit equality between the sexes and refused to accept
women as rational beings. In opposition to the Skeptics who were undermining the
values of the Classical period, the Stoics, following their founder Zeno (335-263
B.C.E.), were intent upon reinforcing those values, and in particular, in reasserting the
traditional role of motherhood and marriage for women. 73
Stoicism, on the whole,
was a philosophy of social conservatism.
The radical subjectivism of the Sophists proclaimed the relativity of truth, 74
and under the auspices of Pericles in Athens, created a distinct internationalism of
outlook as purveyed by the travelling sophistes. This feature was to become the
hallmark of the later Hellenistic age as it broke out across the Orient under Alexander;
indeed, the young Skeptic Pyrrho travelled with Alexander on his campaigns in the
east. The demurral by Protagoras concerning the existence of the gods finds its more
70
Griffiths, De Iside et Osiride, 188-89.
71
Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, 79.
72
G.B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981),
159: “It is not surprising that the new thinking of the Sophistic movement should lead to the
posing of questions concerning the rights and position of women in Greek societies,”. We
would also note in passing that the first implicit condemnation of slavery in Greek texts
(found nowhere in Plato and Aristotle) appears to be that of Alcidamas, a disciple of the
Sophist Gorgias.
73
Regarding their concern about falling birth-rates in Greek cities, see Pomeroy, Goddesses,
Whores, Wives, and Slaves, 132.
74
See Protagoras’ famous dictum: “Man is the measure of all things: of things that are, that
they are; of things that are not, that they are not” (trans. Wheelwright, The Presocratics,
239).