On Numenius the Platonic Philosopher

Hoeschel.): "I know also of Numenius, a man who interpreted Plato far better and who believed in the Pythagorean doctrines, [and who] in many places of his writings sets forth the teachings of Moses and the prophets and interprets them not unpersuasively, as in his work called Epops original: "Ἔποψ" The Hoopoe, and in his works On Numbers and On Place." Furthermore, in book V, 57: "We have read such things in Chrysippus of Soli concerning Pythagoras, and already in some of the more recent [authors] who lived yesterday and the day before, such as in Plutarch of Chaeronea and the Pythagorean Numenius in the second [book] On the Incorruptibility of the Soul."

Although neither Origen nor others cite fragments from these books by name, there exist those which could have been taken from them. The subjects of the books are generally indicated by their titles. For Epops is the same as epoptes overseer/initiate 1), that is, a participant in the greater mysteries. Therefore, in this book, Numenius interpreted and explained the mysteries, whether Eleusinian or Orphic, for the purpose of his own philosophy 2).

He perhaps used that less common form of the name because the hoopoe was considered a divinatory bird, as attested by Plato (Phaedo p. 85 A. B.): "the nightingale, the swallow, and the hoopoe, which they say sing in lamentation out of grief; but neither do they seem to me to sing out of grief, nor do the..."

1) Hesychius: epops [hoopoe]; epoptes [overseer], ruler and a kind of bird.
2) Although Lobeck (Aglaophamus, p. 126 sqq.) argues that among philosophical writers the term 'epoptic' always signifies metaphysical doctrine and never refers—through words like 'mysteries' or 'secret things'—to the rites of Ceres and Proserpina, but always to the secrets of philosophy, I nevertheless do not doubt that Numenius truly dealt with the Eleusinian mysteries in his Epops. For his metaphysical doctrine is contained in his books On the Good, but he wrote about the secrets of philosophers in his book On the Secrets of Plato. I therefore believe that the tale recorded by Macrobius (below, p. 19), which in my judgment Lobeck (l.c., p. 143) tried in vain to dismiss, is derived from the Epops.