obedience to Pythagoras’s voice from behind a curtain, a pupil could be initiated into the inner circle, to

whose members were con ded the main doctrines of the school. Although women were forbidden by
law to attend public meetings, they were admitted to the master’s lectures. One source indicates that
there were at least 28 women in the select category of mathematici. When Pythagoras was close to 60
years old, he married one of his pupils, Theano. She was a remarkably able mathematician who not only
inspired him during the latter years of his life but continued to promulgate his system of thought after his
death. (Some contradictory sources say that Theano was Pythagoras’s daughter; yet others, that she was
only a highly gifted pupil, never his wife.) Pythagoras followed the custom of Eastern teachers by passing
along his views by word of mouth. He seems not to have committed any of his teachings to writing. And
furthermore, the members of his community were bound not to disclose to outsiders anything taught by
the master or discovered by others in the brotherhood as a result of the master’s teaching. Legend has it
that one talkative disciple was drowned in a shipwreck as the gods’ punishment for his public boast that
he had added the dodecahedron to the set of regular solids Pythagoras had enumerated. The symbol on
which the members of the Pythagorean community swore their oaths was the “tetractys,” or holy
fourfoldness, which was supposed to stand for the four elements: re, water, air, and earth. The tetractys
was represented geometrically by an equilateral triangle made up of 10 dots, and arithmetically by the
number 1 C 2 C 3 C 4 D 10. bur83155 ch03 83-140.tex 91 11/11/2009 11:32 Con rming Pages 92 Chapter
3 The Beginnings of Greek Mathematics According to the Greek writer and satirist Lucian (120–180),
Pythagoras asked someone to count; when he had reached 4, Pythagoras interrupted, “Do you see?
What you take to be 4 is 10, a perfect triangle and our oath.” Like other mystery cults of that time, the
Pythagoreans had their strange initiations, rites, and prohibitions. They refused, for example, to eat
beans, drink wine, pick up anything that had fallen, or stir a re with an iron. They insisted, in addition to
these curious taboos, on a life of virtue, especially of friendship. From Pythagoreanism comes the story
of Damon and Pythias. (Pythias, condemned to death for plotting against the king, was given leave to
arrange his affairs after Damon pledged his own life if his friend did not return.) The ve-pointed star, or
pentagram, was used as a sign whereby members of the brotherhood could recognize one another. It is
told that a Pythagorean fell ill while traveling and failed to survive, despite the nursing of a kind-hearted
innkeeper. Before dying, he drew the pentagram star on a board and begged his host to hang it outside.
Some time later another Pythagorean, passing by, noticed the symbol and after hearing the innkeeper’s
tale, rewarded him handsomely. The Pythagoreans fancied that the soul could leave one’s body, either
temporarily or permanently, and that it could inhabit the body of another person or animal. As a result
of this doctrine of transmigration of souls, they would eat no meat or sh lest the animal slaughtered be
the abode of a friend. The Pythagoreans would not kill anything except as a gift to the gods, and they
would not even wear garments of wool, since wool is an animal product. A story is told in which
Pythagoras, coming across a small dog being thrashed, said, “Stop the beating, for in this dog lives the
soul of my friend; I recognize him by his voice.” Accounts of Pythagoras’s death do not agree. What is
clear is that political ideas were gradually added to the other doctrines, and for a time, the autocratic
Pythagoreans succeeded in dominating the local government in Crotona and the other Greek cities in
southern Italy. About 500 B.C., there was a violent popular revolt in which the meetinghouse of the
Pythagoreans was surrounded and set a re. Only a few of those present survived. In several accounts,
Pythagoras himself is said to have perished in the inferno. Those with a sense of drama would have us
believe that Pythagoras’s disciples made a bridge over the re with their bodies, so that the master might
escape the frenzied mob. It is said in these versions that he ed to nearby Metapontum but in the ensuing
ight, having reached a eld of sacred beans, chose to die at the hands of his enemies rather than trample
down the plants. With the death of Pythagoras, many members of the school emigrated to the Greek
mainland; some stayed behind for a time but by the middle of the fourth century B.C. all had left Italy.
Although the political in uence of the Pythagoreans was destroyed, they continued to exist for several
centuries longer as a philosophical and mathematical bur83155 ch03 83-140.tex 92 11/11/2009 11:32
Con rming Pages Pythagorean Mathematics 93 order. To the end, the dwindling band of exiles remained
a secret society, leaving no written record, and with notable self-denial, ascribing all their discoveries to
the master. What set the Pythagoreans apart from the other sects was the philosophy that “knowledge
is the greatest puri cation,” and to them knowledge meant mathematics. Never before or since has
mathematics had such an essential part in life and religion as it did with the Pythagoreans. At the heart
of their scheme of things was the belief that some sort of an operative reality existed behind the
phenomena of nature, and that through the volition of this supreme architect, the universe was created
—that beneath the apparent multiplicity and confusion of the world around us there was a fundamental
simplicity and stability that reason might discover. They further theorized that everything, physical and
spiritual, had been assigned its allotted number and form, the general thesis being “Everything is
number.” (By “number” was meant a positive integer.) All this culminated in the notion that without the
help of mathematics, a rational understanding of the ruling principles at work in the universe would be
impossible. Aristotle wrote in the Metaphysics