Ocellus Lucanus

Who is Ocellus Lucanus?

Ocellus Lucanus, a Pythagorean philosopher, born in Lucania in the 5th century BC, was perhaps a pupil of Pythagoras himself.

Stobaeus has preserved a fragment of his 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 generally known as On the Nature of the Universe.

Excerpts from this are given in Stobaeus, but in Doric. It is certainly not authentic, and cannot be dated earlier than the 1st century BC. It maintains the doctrine that the universe is uncreated and eternal; that to its three great divisions correspond the three kinds of beings—gods, men and daemons; and, finally, that the human race with all its institutions 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, and by F. W. A. Mullach in Fragmenta philosophorum graecorum, i.; see also Eduard Zeller, History of Greek Philosophy, i., and J de Heyden-Zielewicz in Breslauer philologische Abhandlungen, viii. 3. There is an English translation by Thomas Taylor, the Platonist.