Neopythagoreanism

In the 2nd century, Numenius of Apamea sought to fuse additional elements of Platonism into Neopythagoreanism, prefiguring the rise of Neoplatonism.

Neopythagoreanism was an attempt to re-introduce a mystical religious element into Hellenistic philosophy in place of what had come to be regarded as an arid formalism.

They went back to the later period of Plato's thought, the period when Plato endeavoured to combine his doctrine of Ideas with Pythagorean number theory, and identified the good with the monad (which would give rise to the Neoplatonic concept of "the One"), the source of the duality of the infinite and the measured with the resultant scale of realities from the one down to the objects of the material world.

In this system can be distinguished not only the asceticism of Pythagoras and the later mysticism of Plato, but also the influence of Orphism and of Oriental philosophy.

The Porta Maggiore Basilica, where Neopythagoreans held their meetings in the 1st century, is believed to have been constructed by the Statilia gens.