 He wrote a comprehensive eleven volume work entitled Lectures on Pythagoreanism from which Porphyry quotes in sections 48–53 of his Life of Pythagoras. In this passage, Moderatus argues that the Pythagoreans used numbers as a way to provide clear teaching about bodiless forms and first principles, which cannot be expressed in words. In another excerpt, he describes a Pythagorean system of principles, which appears to be developed from the first two deductions of the second half of Plato’s Parmenides. In this system there are three ones: the first one which is above being, a second one which is identified with the forms and which is accompanied by intelligible matter (i.e. the indefinite dyad) and a third one which is identified with soul. The first two ones show connections to Eudorus’ account of Pythagorean first principles; the whole system anticipates central ideas of the most important Neoplatonist, Plotinus (Dillon 1977, 346–351; Kahn 2001, 105–110).