Greece & Rome · c. 570–495 BCE
Pythagoras
Founder of a philosophical and religious brotherhood at Croton
Taught the immortality and transmigration of the soul and a disciplined way of life; the idea that all things are number is attested for his followers. He wrote nothing, and layers of later legend make it hard to know what was his own.
Life and thought
Pythagoras was born on Samos around 570 BCE and, around 530, left for Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a community with its own rules of diet, silence and loyalty. The group gained political power in the region; around 510 violence against it drove him to Metapontum, where he died. He wrote nothing, and biographers writing centuries later turned him into a miracle-worker, so the historical man is hard to recover.
The best-attested teaching is about the soul: it is immortal and passes into other bodies, human and animal, which is why a pure way of life matters. The mathematical side is harder to pin down. The “Pythagorean” theorem was known earlier in Babylon, and the claim that all things are number is attested for his followers. Still, the circle he founded joined numerical order, music and the care of the soul, a combination Plato inherited.
Shaped
c. 470–385 BCEPhilolausPythagorean whose book first set out the school’s doctrinesc. 428–348 BCEPlatoSocrates’ student, founder of the Academy, master of the dialogueCriticised by
c. 535–475 BCEHeraclitusHeraclitus mocked Pythagoras’ “much learning”, which he said does not teach understanding.Meanwhile, in other traditions
traditionally 599–527 BCE (many scholars: c. 499–425 BCE)MahāvīraTwenty-fourth Jain tīrthaṅkara, a contemporary of the Buddhatraditionally 6th c. BCELaoziLegendary sage credited with the Daodejingfl. 6th–5th c. BCEAjita KesakambalīMaterialist teacher of the Buddha’s time, named for his hair blanket551–479 BCE (traditional)ConfuciusTeacher from Lu who sought to revive the Zhou wayOn the record
The idea that all things are number is attested for Pythagoras’ followers rather than for Pythagoras himself.
Pythagoras wrote nothing and no contemporary account survives; fuller lives date from 150 to 800 years after his death. Aristotle ascribes the view that things are numbers to the “so-called Pythagoreans” of the 5th century, and Philolaus’ genuine fragments say only that whatever is known has number.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Pythagoras” · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Philolaus”