Pythagoras of Samos
The monument stands at the end of the harbour promenade in Pythagorio, beside an enormous triangle. One glance is enough to bring back the familiar school formula a² + b² = c². Pythagoras of Samos – one of those figures from antiquity whose name almost everyone knows. But do we really know his story?
The more we try to separate fact from the stories that grew around him later, the more fascinating he becomes. A philosopher, teacher, founder of an extraordinary community, a man who believed in the transmigration of souls and to whom one of the most famous mathematical theorems in history was attributed. And it all began here – on Samos.
👦 Pythagoras – a Boy from Samos
Pythagoras was born around 570 BC on Samos, an island lying just a few kilometres off the coast of Asia Minor. It was here that he spent his childhood and youth. We do not, however, know the exact date or place of his birth. Most information about the early years of his life comes from sources written much later, making it difficult today to separate fact from the stories that accumulated around him over the centuries.
According to tradition, his father was Mnesarchus. Even in antiquity, however, different versions circulated concerning the origins of Pythagoras’s family. His connection with Samos itself is much more certain – the earliest sources describe him as a Samian, and modern scholarship generally accepts that he grew up on the island.
It was a very different Samos from the one we know today. Pythagoras grew up in the 6th century BC, when the eastern Greek world was experiencing a period of remarkable development. Across the strait lay the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, including Miletus – one of the most important centres of emerging Greek philosophy. Samos therefore stood at a crossroads where ideas, goods and influences from different cultures met.
📜 How Do We Actually Know the Story of Pythagoras?
Pythagoras left no writings of his own, and the accounts of his immediate pupils have not survived either. Reconstructing his life is therefore rather like piecing together a story from fragments scattered throughout the works of later authors.
One of the most important of these is Iamblichus, a Greek philosopher who lived around the turn of the 3rd and 4th centuries AD – roughly 800 years after Pythagoras. He wrote Life of Pythagoras, in which he collected earlier traditions concerning the philosopher, his travels, his methods of teaching and the Pythagorean community. In doing so, he drew on older sources, some of which have not survived to the present day.
We will therefore return to Iamblichus many times. It is important to remember, however, that he was writing many centuries after the events he described, and his work combines historical information with tradition, anecdotes and stories that we are unable to verify today.
🌍 Where Did Pythagoras Travel?
Pythagoras did not spend his entire life on his native Samos. Ancient authors attributed numerous journeys to him, with Egypt occupying the most important place in these accounts. Such a destination should not surprise us. In the 6th century BC, Egypt possessed a written tradition far older than that of the Greeks and an enormous body of practical knowledge, including medicine, mathematics and astronomy. The Greeks maintained both commercial and intellectual contacts with Egypt, and Egyptian knowledge attracted considerable interest in the Greek world.
Pythagoras’s stay in Egypt does not appear only in late legends. Isocrates, who lived in the 4th century BC, already wrote that Pythagoras travelled to Egypt, where he became interested in its religion and rituals. Later biographers expanded the story, describing his contacts with priests and his studies in Egyptian temples.
The most detailed version was given by Iamblichus, who lived around 800 years after Pythagoras. According to him, the Samian spent as many as 22 years in Egypt. During this time, he was said to have visited temples, studied the knowledge of the priests, learned geometry and astronomy, and taken part in Egyptian religious rites. We cannot confirm the figure of 22 years today, but it is worth mentioning precisely because it was recorded by one of Pythagoras’s ancient biographers.
According to the same tradition, his stay in Egypt ended dramatically. In 525 BC, the country was conquered by the Persian king Cambyses II. Iamblichus claims that Pythagoras was then taken prisoner and transported to Babylon. There he supposedly encountered Magi and priests and studied their knowledge. Iamblichus states that he spent another 12 years in Babylonia before regaining his freedom and returning to Samos.
If we accept Iamblichus’s chronology, we are left with an extraordinary story: 22 years in Egypt and 12 years in Babylonia. That would mean more than three decades spent away from his native island. We cannot, however, treat these figures as dates recorded in documents from Pythagoras’s lifetime. Iamblichus wrote many centuries later, and his biography combines historical information with tradition and legend.
Later accounts also send Pythagoras to Phoenicia, where he was said to have stayed in Sidon and met local priests. In other stories, the list of his journeys becomes even longer. The further we move from Egypt and Babylonia, however, and the more detailed these stories become, the more cautiously they need to be treated.
That does not mean that the image of Pythagoras as a traveller is itself implausible. Samos lay close to the coast of Asia Minor and belonged to a world of intensive maritime contacts. Samian ships travelled far beyond the Aegean Sea, and the island also maintained links with Egypt. For a young Samian travelling in search of knowledge, Egypt was therefore not somewhere beyond the boundaries of the world he knew.
🏛️ Return to Samos and the “School” of Pythagoras
After many years away from his native island, Pythagoras is said to have returned to Samos. And already we encounter a problem that will appear more than once in his story – the ancient sources do not allow us to arrange his life into one consistent chronology. If we accept Iamblichus’s account of 22 years in Egypt followed by another 12 in Babylonia, Pythagoras would have been around 56 years old when he returned. Yet a much earlier tradition preserved by Aristoxenus says that he left Samos and moved to Italy at around the age of forty. Both versions cannot be true at the same time.
We therefore do not know how long his travels really lasted or how old he was when he returned to Samos. According to later biographers, however, once back on the island he tried to pass on the knowledge he had acquired to the Samians – and apparently did not receive quite the level of interest he had expected.
Iamblichus tells us that Pythagoras wanted to encourage the islanders to study mathematics, but the Samians were not particularly eager to devote their time to his lessons. The philosopher therefore supposedly found a young man, also named Pythagoras, who was poor but interested in exercises and learning. The teacher offered him an unusual arrangement – he would pay the pupil for every lesson he mastered. After some time, when the young Pythagoras had genuinely come to enjoy learning, the situation was reversed: the pupil was now said to be willing to pay the teacher in order to continue his studies. It is a colourful story from a late source, but it gives us a good idea of how ancient tradition imagined the beginnings of Pythagoras’s teaching on Samos.
His time on the island is also associated with the mysterious Semicircle of Pythagoras. Iamblichus claims that Pythagoras established a place in the city known as the Semicircle of Pythagoras. It was not a “school” in the modern sense of the word. It was supposedly a place where Pythagoras met people and taught. According to Iamblichus, even many centuries later the Samians continued to gather there to discuss public affairs.
Where was the Semicircle? We do not know. No archaeological site in present-day Pythagorio has been reliably identified with it. So there is no point looking on the map for another monument called the “School of Pythagoras”. We know the Semicircle primarily from later literary tradition.
Iamblichus also mentions another place associated with Pythagoras’s time on Samos – a cave outside the city where the philosopher was said to have spent time studying and conducting research. Can it be identified with today’s Cave of Pythagoras on the slopes of Mount Kerkis? We will come back to that.
The most important “school of Pythagoras”, however, was established not on Samos, but in Croton in southern Italy. His stay on his native island was only one stage between his travels and the creation of the community through which Pythagorean ideas would survive for centuries.
🕳 Cave of Pythagoras
In western Samos, high on the slopes of Mount Kerkis, lies one of the best-known places associated with Pythagoras. According to local tradition, the philosopher took refuge here from the tyrant Polycrates, whose rule conflicted with his views. The difficult-to-reach cave hidden in the mountains was said to have become his refuge and a place for contemplation and study.
Interestingly, the story of Pythagoras using a cave on Samos does have roots in ancient sources. In Life of Pythagoras, Iamblichus wrote that the philosopher had established a cave outside the city where he spent days and nights conducting his studies and meeting with a small group of pupils. Iamblichus did not, however, give its location or say in this passage that Pythagoras was hiding there from Polycrates. We therefore cannot be certain that he was describing the cave on Mount Kerkis.
Today’s Cave of Pythagoras lies high above the area around Marathokampos. Official information from Samos actually describes two caves close to each other here. The first is associated with the small church of Panagia Sarantaskaliotissa, while the second, around 70 metres further away and slightly higher up, is known as the Cave of Pythagoras.
Did Pythagoras really hide there? We cannot confirm it. What we do know is that the tradition of Pythagoras using a cave on Samos is much older than modern tourism, and his conflict with the rule of Polycrates also appears in ancient accounts. Today’s Cave of Pythagoras therefore brings together a real place, an ancient account and a local tradition that we can no longer combine into one story with complete certainty.
👑 Pythagoras and Polycrates
When Pythagoras returned to Samos, the island was ruled by Polycrates, one of the most powerful and famous Greek tyrants of the 6th century BC. It was during his reign that Samos experienced a period of extraordinary power. Polycrates commanded a strong fleet, pursued an expansionist policy and undertook major building projects. Several monuments that remain among the island’s most important sights today are associated with his reign, including the monumental expansion of the Heraion and the Tunnel of Eupalinos.
For Pythagoras, however, returning to his native island did not mean returning to a place where he wished to remain. Aristoxenus, who lived in the 4th century BC and is one of the more important early sources on Pythagoreanism, reported that Pythagoras left Samos at around the age of forty because the tyranny of Polycrates had become unbearable to him. Around 530 BC, he moved to Croton in southern Italy.
Why did the rule of Polycrates trouble him so much? Here the sources give us no simple answer. We know of no specific quarrel between Pythagoras and Polycrates, nor of any event that can be identified as the direct cause of the philosopher’s departure. We do, however, know what Greek tyranny meant: power was concentrated in the hands of one man who did not owe his position to the traditional political order. Polycrates himself seized power on Samos by force and maintained it through his supporters and military strength. Ancient accounts also remembered Samians who opposed him.
We should be careful, however, not to turn Pythagoras into a democrat fighting a dictator in the modern sense of those words. His later community in Italy was highly exclusive, and the Pythagoreans themselves exercised considerable influence over the political life of the cities of southern Italy. Scholars even identify two ancient traditions: one presenting Pythagoras as an opponent of tyranny, and another associating him with an elitist model of government.
This is where the story of Polycrates connects with the tradition surrounding the Cave of Pythagoras. According to the tradition associated with today’s Cave of Pythagoras, it was from Polycrates that the philosopher sought refuge high on the slopes of Mount Kerkis. We cannot confirm that this happened in this particular cave, but the story of his opposition to the rule of Polycrates is not merely a modern tourist legend – the account of his departure from Samos because of tyranny comes from the much earlier tradition preserved by Aristoxenus.
Eventually, Pythagoras left the island and travelled to Croton, a Greek city in southern Italy. And it was there that the stage of his life began that would ensure that the name of this Samian survived for more than two and a half thousand years.
👥 A School That Was Not a School
Around 530 BC, Pythagoras gathered a group of followers around him in Croton. Calling it the “school of Pythagoras”, however, can be misleading. It was not a school like the later philosophical schools of Athens. It was more like a closed community whose members not only acquired knowledge but subjected their entire lives to a particular set of rules. Pythagoreanism combined philosophy, religion, science, ethics and a prescribed way of life.
Not everyone was admitted to the community. Iamblichus describes how Pythagoras carefully observed a candidate before accepting him. He was interested in how the person treated his parents and relatives, whom he befriended, how he spent his time, and how he spoke, laughed and remained silent. He supposedly even paid attention to behaviour, gestures and the way a person moved. In this way, he sought to assess a person’s character before deciding whether they were suited to life within the community.
According to Iamblichus, a long period of testing followed. For three years, the candidate remained outside the community proper and was observed. Among other things, his perseverance and self-control were tested, as well as his ability to give up the pursuit of honours and fame. If he passed this stage, an even more difficult test awaited him – five years of silence. Above all, the pupil was expected to learn to listen and to control his own tongue. We know the detailed system of three and five years from the later account of Iamblichus, but the famous silence of the Pythagoreans is attested much earlier – Isocrates mentioned it as early as the 4th century BC.
During the first stage of their studies, pupils were supposedly not even allowed to see Pythagoras. They listened to his teachings from behind a curtain, without direct access to the master. Only those who successfully completed the period of testing could enter his closest circle. Later tradition also distinguished between different groups of Pythagoreans, including those who concentrated on the master’s sayings and rules and those admitted to deeper studies. We should not assume, however, that this elaborate system existed in exactly this form during Pythagoras’s own lifetime – we know it primarily from later descriptions of the community.
The life of a Pythagorean did not end when the “lesson” was over. Members of the inner circle were said to share their property and live according to common rules. They followed specific principles concerning food, behaviour, relationships with other people, memory exercises and daily self-discipline. Some teachings were kept within the community. This helped create the later image of the Pythagoreans as a group surrounded by secrecy.
Women also belonged to the Pythagorean circle. The sources name many of them, the most famous being Theano. Later tradition described her as either Pythagoras’s wife or his pupil, but the exact nature of her relationship with the philosopher is uncertain. The very presence of women in the Pythagorean tradition is nevertheless significant, particularly against the background of women’s limited participation in the public life of most Greek poleis.
🔥 What Happened to Those Rejected by Pythagoras?
Not every candidate passed the selection process. The most famous story concerns Cylon of Croton, a wealthy and influential man from a prominent family. According to Iamblichus, he wanted to become a pupil of Pythagoras, but the philosopher decided that his character did not meet the requirements of the community and refused to admit him. Cylon supposedly regarded the decision as a humiliation and became a bitter enemy of the Pythagoreans.
The conflict did not end with a personal grudge. Opposition to the political influence of the Pythagoreans was growing in Croton. According to one later account, opponents of the community attacked the house of Milo, the famous wrestler and Pythagorean, while a meeting was taking place there. The building was set on fire, and many of those gathered inside were said to have died. The sources differ, however, both in the details of the attack and in their answer to one very important question: was Pythagoras inside at the time?
The story of Cylon is therefore more than an account of a rejected candidate taking revenge for his humiliation. Pythagoras’s community gained considerable influence in Croton, including political influence, and with that influence came opponents. Attacks on the Pythagoreans eventually led to the break-up of their community in Croton and other cities of southern Italy.
🎵 A World Built from Numbers
For Pythagoras and his followers, numbers were not used merely for counting. Over time, they became a way of describing the order of the world. The Pythagoreans saw numbers in geometric shapes, in the movement of heavenly bodies and, above all, in something we might not immediately associate with mathematics – music.
Pythagorean tradition linked the basic musical consonances with remarkably simple numerical ratios. The octave corresponded to a ratio of 2:1, the fifth to 3:2 and the fourth to 4:3. This can easily be imagined using two strings. If one is twice the length of the other, with the other conditions kept the same, their notes are an octave apart. Music therefore revealed something extraordinary: what the human ear perceives as harmonious could be expressed through numbers.
One of the most famous stories about Pythagoras is connected with the discovery of this relationship. According to later tradition, the philosopher was walking past a blacksmith’s workshop one day when he noticed the sounds produced by striking hammers. Some sounded harmonious together, while others did not. Pythagoras supposedly went inside, compared the weights of the hammers and discovered that the pleasing combinations of sounds corresponded to simple ratios between their masses.
It is a wonderful story. The problem is that the hammer experiment does not work in the way described. The pitch produced by a hammer does not simply depend on its weight in the proportions given in the story. The tale of Pythagoras walking past the blacksmith’s workshop is therefore regarded today as a later legend rather than an account of an actual discovery.
The relationship between music and numbers itself, however, was very real. What is more, it became one of the most important achievements of the early Pythagorean tradition. We simply cannot say whether Pythagoras himself discovered it. The earliest secure evidence for the mathematical description of harmony comes from later Pythagoreans. Hippasus, active in the first half of the 5th century BC, was associated with an experiment that could genuinely have demonstrated such relationships, while Philolaus, in the second half of the 5th century BC, explicitly described musical intervals using numerical ratios. Pythagoras may therefore have known this principle and attached particular significance to it, but we have no basis for confidently attributing its discovery to him.
🔺 Tetractys – Ten Hidden in Four Numbers
The first four numbers held particular significance for the Pythagoreans:
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10
Together they formed the tetractys, represented as a triangle made up of ten points:
•
• •
• • •
• • • •
For the Pythagoreans, this was no ordinary mathematical diagram. The number 10 was considered perfect, and the tetractys became a symbol of harmony and order. Interestingly, the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 contain the ratios of the most important musical consonances: 2:1, 3:2 and 4:3. Numbers, geometry and music therefore came together in a single symbol.
The tetractys was so important in Pythagorean tradition that the Pythagoreans swore oaths by it, invoking the one who had passed the tetractys on to them – Pythagoras. One of the surviving akousmata, short sayings attributed to the earliest Pythagorean tradition, even connects the tetractys with the harmony in which the Sirens sing.
From this way of thinking emerged a fascinating idea: if simple numerical ratios govern the harmony of sounds, could a similar mathematical order also govern the entire cosmos? In later Pythagorean tradition, this developed into the famous concept of the harmony of the spheres – the idea that the movement of heavenly bodies creates a cosmic harmony. We should be careful, however, not to attribute the fully developed theory to Pythagoras himself; its precise form is known mainly from later sources and later Pythagoreans.
And perhaps this is where we can best understand why Pythagoras became far more than the man behind a theorem taught at school. For the Pythagoreans, number was the key to discovering order in the world – from the sound of a string to the structure of the cosmos.
♻️ Did Pythagoras Believe That a Human Could Be Reborn as an Animal?
Yes – and this is one aspect of Pythagoras’s teaching for which we have surprisingly early evidence. Pythagoras is said to have believed that the human soul does not die with the body. After death, it can pass into another body, and its new incarnation does not have to be human. A soul could also be reborn in an animal.
The most extraordinary story comes from Xenophanes, a poet and philosopher who lived during the time of Pythagoras. This is very important because, for once, we are not relying on Iamblichus writing many centuries later. Xenophanes told of Pythagoras once seeing a man beating a dog. He supposedly stopped him and told him not to beat the animal because, in its cries, he recognised the voice of a dead friend.
It sounds like an anecdote invented to ridicule the philosopher – and that was probably its intention. Yet it is extremely valuable. It shows that even during Pythagoras’s lifetime, or shortly afterwards, he was associated with the belief that the same soul could pass from one living creature to another.
Later authors developed this image further. According to tradition, Pythagoras claimed to remember his own previous incarnations. One of them was said to have been Euphorbus, a Trojan warrior known from the Iliad. It was even said that in the Temple of Hera he recognised the shield that Euphorbus had used during the Trojan War. Heraclides of Pontus, a 4th-century BC author, was among those who passed down the story of Pythagoras’s successive incarnations.
Belief in the transmigration of souls must also have influenced the Pythagoreans’ attitude towards animals. If a human soul could find itself in the body of another creature, killing that creature was no longer a matter of indifference. Was this why Pythagoras did not eat meat? We will come back to that – because the ancient sources have another surprise in store for us.
The Pythagorean idea of the transmigration of souls did not simply mean that “after death a person becomes an animal”. It was something much broader. The soul was believed to exist independently of any one body and to pass through successive incarnations. Human beings, animals, death and rebirth were all parts of the same cycle. The way a person lived was believed to influence the soul’s future fate.
This is one of the best-attested ideas associated with the historical Pythagoras. It is also one of the most surprising if we know him only from the classroom blackboard. The man whose name we now associate primarily with a right-angled triangle was probably known to his contemporaries much more as a teacher concerned with the fate of the soul than as a mathematician.
🥗 Was Pythagoras a Vegetarian?
If we invited Pythagoras to dinner, planning the menu would not be easy. We do not even know whether we should serve him meat – or whether it would be safe to put beans on the table.
Pythagoras is often presented as one of the most famous vegetarians of antiquity. The idea fits well with his belief in the transmigration of souls. If a human soul could enter the body of an animal after death, killing animals and eating their flesh became not merely a culinary issue, but a religious one as well.
Later authors did indeed attribute a very modest diet to Pythagoras. He was said to eat mainly bread, honey, vegetables and other plant-based foods, while food was intended to support health and clarity of mind rather than pleasure or overindulgence.
The problem is that the ancient sources disagree. Aristoxenus, one of the earlier sources on the Pythagoreans, claimed that Pythagoras ate meat – and was particularly fond of the meat of young goats and piglets. Other authors, however, portrayed him as a man who avoided killing animals and eating food derived from living creatures. We therefore cannot say with certainty that the historical Pythagoras was a vegetarian in the modern sense of the word.
And what about beans? This is one of the great culinary mysteries of the Pythagoreans. In later tradition, the prohibition against eating them became one of the most characteristic rules attributed to the community. Ancient writers tried to explain it in many different ways – beans were associated with the world of the dead, the transmigration of souls and even the human body. Yet Aristoxenus reported exactly the opposite: Pythagoras was supposedly particularly fond of beans.
So what did Pythagoras really eat? We will probably never know. What we can say is that food formed part of a much broader philosophy of life for the Pythagoreans – it was governed by principles of moderation, self-control and care for the soul.
📐 Did Pythagoras Discover the Pythagorean Theorem?
This is perhaps the greatest paradox in the story of Pythagoras. Almost everyone today knows his name because of the Pythagorean theorem. Yet we cannot be certain that Pythagoras discovered it, much less that he was the first person to prove it. The earliest sources concerning the philosopher do not tell us that he was the author of the famous theorem. Neither Plato nor Aristotle nor their pupils mention such an achievement.
The relationship itself is familiar from school: in a right-angled triangle, the sum of the areas of the squares constructed on the two shorter sides is equal to the area of the square constructed on the hypotenuse.
And this is where the problem with the name “Pythagorean theorem” begins. People knew this relationship long before Pythagoras was born. One of the most fascinating pieces of evidence is a Babylonian clay tablet known as Plimpton 322, dating from the Old Babylonian period, roughly the 19th–17th centuries BC. It contains sets of numbers corresponding to what we now call Pythagorean triples – numbers such as 3, 4 and 5 that satisfy the relationship described by the theorem. The Babylonians were even able to generate such sets. And they were doing so more than a thousand years before Pythagoras.
This does not automatically mean, however, that the Babylonians knew the “Pythagorean theorem” in exactly the same sense in which we learn it today. Being able to calculate appropriate lengths and find sets of numbers is one thing; formulating a general mathematical theorem and providing a proof is another. We have no evidence that the Babylonians created such a geometric proof.
Could Pythagoras have been the first to prove a relationship that was already known? This is often used to explain his connection with the theorem, but once again there is a problem: no proof written by Pythagoras survives, nor is there any early source stating that he produced one. Modern scholars emphasise that there is no basis for attributing the first rigorous proof to him.
🐂 Pythagoras Discovers the Theorem and... Sacrifices an Ox
It is only much later that we encounter a story directly linking Pythagoras with the famous theorem. Proclus, who lived in the 5th century AD – almost a thousand years after Pythagoras – wrote that according to scholars of earlier history, the theorem was attributed to Pythagoras. It was even said that when he made the discovery, he was so delighted that he sacrificed an ox. Other late versions expanded the story into a sacrifice of many oxen.
The story is all the more interesting because it does not fit particularly well with the later image of Pythagoras as someone who avoided killing animals. That alone, however, is not enough to dismiss it – as we already know, the accounts concerning Pythagoras’s actual diet are far from consistent.
Another detail is more important. Proclus does not say that Pythagoras created a proof of the theorem. He attributes to him the discovery, or recognition, of the relationship it describes. That is an important distinction. Pythagoras may have known the relationship between the sides of a right-angled triangle, perhaps encountering similar knowledge originating in the East and attaching particular importance to it. We are simply unable to determine whether this was actually the case.
So the answer to the question “Did Pythagoras discover the Pythagorean theorem?” is: we do not know. What we do know is that the mathematical relationship was known long before his birth, that we have no evidence that Pythagoras was the first to formulate or prove it, and that the theorem was not directly attributed to him until a much later tradition.
And that makes the enormous triangle beside the statue of Pythagoras in Pythagorio rather ironic. It represents the thing with which Pythagoras is most closely associated today – even though it is not something we can confidently say he discovered.
🥊 Pythagoras Won the Olympic Games?!
Yes – Pythagoras of Samos really did win the boxing competition at the ancient Olympic Games. Except... it was not our Pythagoras.
And this is where it is easy to fall into a trap. In antiquity, the name Pythagoras did not belong exclusively to the famous philosopher. The sources also mention a Pythagoras of Samos who was a boxer and won at the 48th Olympic Games, held in 588 BC.
An interesting story is associated with his appearance at Olympia. Pythagoras supposedly arrived to compete in the boys’ boxing event. The judges, however, decided that he was too mature to compete in that category. Rather than going home, he entered the adult men’s competition instead – and won.
Could this have been the young philosopher? The dates essentially solve the mystery. The philosopher Pythagoras was born around 570 BC, while his namesake’s Olympic victory took place in 588 BC – eighteen years before the philosopher was born. The Olympian and the philosopher were therefore two different people.
Interestingly, the confusion is not merely a modern internet error. Even Diogenes Laertius, when writing about Pythagoras, had to distinguish between different people who bore the same name. He mentioned a Pythagoras associated with athletics as a different person from the famous philosopher.
So the statement “Pythagoras of Samos was an Olympic boxing champion” is true. It becomes false only when we add “the philosopher associated with the famous theorem”.
🔥 How Did the Story of Pythagoras End?
The final years of Pythagoras’s life are as uncertain as many events from his youth. We know that the Pythagorean community gained considerable influence in the cities of southern Italy, including political influence. Over time, this began to provoke growing opposition. The conflict mentioned earlier in connection with Cylon of Croton therefore went far beyond the wounded pride of a man whom Pythagoras had refused to admit to his community.
Ancient authors passed down several different versions of what happened. According to one, opponents of the Pythagoreans attacked them during a meeting at Milo’s house in Croton and set the building on fire. Many members of the community were said to have died. But rather than repeat the entire story of the fire, the more important question is one on which the sources give completely different answers: what happened to Pythagoras?
According to one tradition, Pythagoras was not in Milo’s house at all. According to another, he was among those attacked but managed to escape. Porphyry even recounts a story in which the pupils supposedly formed a passage through the flames with their own bodies, allowing their master to escape from the burning building. Pythagoras survived, but after witnessing the deaths of his pupils, he supposedly lost the will to continue living. This, however, is one of the later and clearly dramatised versions of his fate.
Another account says that after the events in Croton, Pythagoras went to Metapontum – present-day Metaponto. It was there, around 490 BC, that he is said to have died. Even the manner of his death remains a mystery. According to one version, he died of old age; according to another, he starved himself after fleeing, while still other traditions connected his death directly with the persecution of the Pythagoreans.
There is also an exceptionally colourful story involving... a field of beans. While fleeing his attackers, Pythagoras supposedly reached a field planted with broad beans. Because the rules attributed to him forbade him from entering among the plants, he stopped and was killed by his pursuers. It is a wonderful legend, especially after our earlier section on his diet, but it is difficult to regard it as a reliable account of the philosopher’s death. Particularly since, as we already know, even the question of the Pythagorean prohibition against eating beans is far from clear.
We therefore do not know the exact date, place or circumstances of Pythagoras’s death. It is generally assumed that he died around 490 BC, probably in Metapontum. His community, however, did not disappear with him. The Pythagoreans continued their activities, and ideas attributed to Pythagoras were developed by subsequent generations.
And perhaps that is precisely why it is so difficult today to answer the question of who Pythagoras really was. Over the following centuries, the story of the man from Samos became intertwined with the teachings of his pupils, later Pythagoreanism and the legends told about the master. Eventually, the boundaries between them became almost impossible to distinguish.
🏛️ Back to the Monument
Let us return to the waterfront in Pythagorio, where our story began. Pythagoras stands facing the sea, with an enormous right-angled triangle rising beside him. The monument was created in 1988 by the Greek sculptor Nikos Ikaris. Its location is no coincidence – it stands in a place that today bears the name of the most famous inhabitant of ancient Samos.
Once you know the story of Pythagoras, however, you may see this monument a little differently. The triangle recalls the theorem that made his name famous, even though we cannot prove that he was the one who discovered it. The sea before him evokes the journeys that, according to ancient accounts, took him to Egypt and Babylonia. The mountains of Samos hide a cave where, according to local tradition, he sought refuge from Polycrates. And somewhere from this island he set out for southern Italy, where he founded the community through which his ideas survived for centuries.
So who was he really? A philosopher? A teacher? The leader of an extraordinary community? A man convinced that the soul could pass from one body to another? Or perhaps also a student of numbers and mathematical relationships, as later tradition remembered him? After more than 2,500 years, it is difficult to separate the man from the legend that grew around him.
One thing we can be sure of – Pythagoras came from Samos. And perhaps that is why it is worth stopping at his monument for a little longer. Not only to take a photograph beside the famous triangle, but to look at him as a man whose story began right here, on this island.
Because Pythagoras is much more than a² + b² = c².