Pythagoreans celebrate the sunrise by Fyodor Bronnikov, 1869

Pythagoreans celebrate the sunrise by Fyodor Bronnikov, 1869.
The political and religious teachings of Pythagoras of Samos were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, Western philosophy. Around 530 BCE, he travelled to Croton, in what is now southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle. The teaching most securely identified with Pythagoras is metempsychosis, or the "transmigration of souls", which holds that every soul is immortal and, upon death, enters into a new body. He may have also devised the doctrine of musica universalis, which holds that the planets move according to mathematical equations and thus resonate to produce an inaudible symphony of music. Pythagoras's followers eventually came into conflict with supporters of democracy and Pythagorean meeting houses were burned. Pythagoras may have been killed during this persecution, although some scholars believe he escaped to Metapontum where he died. His teachings underwent a major revival in the first century BCE among Middle Platonists, coinciding with the rise of Neopythagoreanism.


Image: Pythagoreans celebrate the sunrise by Fyodor Bronnikov, 1869, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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