Pythagoras

Pythagoras (c. 570 BCE–c. 495 BCE) was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. Born on the island of Samos, he traveled widely across the Mediterranean—likely visiting Egypt and Babylon—before emigrating to Croton in southern Italy around 530 BCE to escape political tyranny. In Croton, he established an exclusive, highly secretive ethico-political academy where initiates lived a communal, strictly vegetarian lifestyle governed by rigorous ritual purity and a shared devotion to cosmic order. Pythagoras did not leave any surviving writings, and his teachings are inextricably fused with those of his successors. His philosophical framework pioneered a mathematical ontology, asserting that numbers are the foundational elements of all physical reality and that the universe operates in accordance with geometric proportions and a divine cosmic harmony (musica universalis).

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