The Influential Cult of Pythagoras
His face says math… and cult leader
Many of you know Pythagoras from such classics like the Pythagorean theorem, helping out in realizing the earth is round, and the theory of proportions but… did you also know he led a cult? Today we’re looking at Pythagoras of Samos, who lived between 570 BC and 495 BC, he was a man of myth, mystery, and, of course, math.
Some say his greatest accomplishment was figuring out A squared plus B squared equals C squared but that’s like saying Nabisco’s greatest accomplishment is “creating” Oreos. They both weren’t the first ones to come up with their respective ideas.
There’s evidence of the rules within the Pythagorean Theorem existing a thousand years before Pythagoras, and Nabisco wasn’t the first to figure out that sandwiching cream between two chocolate biscuits is delicious. Shoutout to Hydrox.
The Myths of Pythagoras
So what can we definitively attribute to Pythagoras? Well, that’s tough since none of his writings survived all these years. Everything we know comes from others after his death and honestly, it gets kind of unbelievable. And trust me, when I say kind of unbelievable, I mean completely unbelievable.
For example, during his life, many believed he was the son of the god Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, knowledge, and archery. So we’re starting real high up on the unbelievability meter.
Yea it says volts but that’s “Volts of Bullshit”
Many of Pythagoras’ followers also believed Pythagoras had a golden thigh, and somehow came into possession of a magic arrow that allowed him to fly great distances in a short amount of time even allowing him to be in two places at once.
Other tales told of Pythagoras being able to persuade a bull to not eat some beans, we’ll get into why in a little bit. He also allegedly convinced a bear that it couldn’t harm another living thing ever again, the bear kept its word which immediately tells us the story is fake because you can’t trust bears. They are nature's most untrustworthy beast.
Look at that backstabbing son of a bitch
Another story has Aristotle claiming a deadly snake once bit “Doctor Pythagoras Dolittle” which led to Pythagoras responding by biting the snake and killing it.
Leading me to my question of who gave Pythagoras snake-biting lessons? In fact, we have very few clues on where he studied anything but Pythagoras was said to have studied in Egypt, or Persia, or under the Phoenicians, or in India.
Some accounts say he studied under the Celts, and at least one account, and this is my favorite, says Pythagoras was too good for all of these and instead elected to be self-taught, learning everything by interpreting his own dreams. Taking the ‘follow your dreams’ idiom a little too literally.
The Beliefs of Pythagoras
Despite where he learned, Pythagoras was reportedly a highly intelligent charismatic man and was the first to describe himself as a lover of wisdom. One of his main convictions was believing in the transmigration of souls, a form of reincarnation. He believed a soul was immortal and would simply enter a new body upon death including the bodies of animals and in some accounts, even vegetables.
A story I kept running into in my research was a story wherein Pythagoras intervened in the beating of an animal because the cries of the said animal were reminiscent of a departed friend, leading him to believe his friend had reincarnated as this animal. I didn’t really need to add that to this but I thought it was a nice detail.
Because of his unwillingness to hurt living beings, Pythagoras is sometimes credited with influencing the type of diet that would today be known as vegetarian. But there are also accounts of Pythagoras enjoying the meat of an animal sacrifice every so often, so maybe like some vegetarians I know, it was a part-time thing.
“Of course I’m vegetarian but I sacrificed the cow so time to meat it up!”
Now, around 530B.C Pythagoras left his home either by choice or by exile, who really knows? But upon arriving in southern Italy he established a school that became a commune evolving into a full-blown case of the Cults. Those who lived within the commune became known as Pythagoreans.
Here Pythagoras taught numerology which was the basis of all his beliefs. Pythagoras believed God was a mathematician and that all things were made up of numbers.
The Pythagoreans believed odd numbers were masculine and even numbers were feminine with the number five representing marriage because why not? The number four represented justice, obviously the number seven represented opportunity, and ten was and still is the perfect number, so perfect in fact that Pythagoreans would have to pray to the number daily.
The Commune of Pythagoras
With the numbers growing and the commune in full swing, it was during this time that Pythagoras was credited with the alleged discoveries of the Pythagorean theorem, Pythagorean tuning, the theory of proportions, and figuring out the earth was round among other things.
We say “alleged” since anyone who lived in the commune was forced to take a vow of silence at multiple points for as long as five years in some instances and, of course, all teachings were done in secrecy and were not allowed to be shared with those not part of the commune. So we’re not really sure who actually made these discoveries or if they were just credited to Pythagoras centuries later.
“Pythagoras discovered all of this and you can’t prove otherwise!” - Cult Member probably
Apart from the vow of silence, many new members were not allowed to meet with Pythagoras for the first five years of their membership. They also had to follow strict rules such as wearing white all the time, limiting groups to less than ten, practicing celibacy in the summer, not being allowed to travel on public roads, and for some reason not being allowed to touch white roosters.
But the most important rule of all? You couldn’t touch beans. No harm was to come to beans or the nearby fava bean fields. Why? Well obviously it’s because fava beans contain reincarnated human souls, that was one of the cornerstones of Pythagoras’ beliefs.
Any who broke these rules were expelled from the commune with tombstones being erected to signify their deaths.
In an extreme case one follower discovered irrational numbers by finding the square root of two, seeing as the Pythagoreans believed all numbers were rational, they promptly drowned him in the sea at Pythagoras’ request. Clearly, Pythagoras handled rule-breaking in a typical rational manner.
“None of these people actually died, they just crossed a public road to catch a white rooster.”
The Conflict at Croton
Despite these rules, the Pythagoreans' numbers grew in size causing friction with neighboring cities, specifically the closest city of Croton. Pythagoras, being the intelligent charismatic leader he was, actually served as an advisor to the elites in Croton giving him ample opportunity to spread his message and convert citizens to his way of life.
Unfortunately for Croton they had a much bigger problem as a conflict with another neighboring city, Sybaris, was coming to a head. See, around 510BC the government of Sybaris was overthrown and replaced with a tyrant, as history tends to do every so often. Their new leader Telys, exiled around five hundred citizens possibly in hopes they would die living out in the wilderness on their own.
Now I’m not saying Telys was a short-sighted tyrant but he did forget there was another city called Croton right next door. Those five hundred citizens didn’t forget though.
After the five hundred found refuge in Croton, Telys demanded his citizens back presumably to exile them again but this time permanently with a sword. Using his political influence, Pythagoras convinced the Crotons not to return the citizens.
Learning of Croton’s choice, Telys acted in an atypical tyrannical fashion and was surprisingly just cool about it. He retired back to his home, allowing everyone to live happily ever after.
Just kidding! He sent an army of 300 thousand men to Croton.
“Hey guys, Telys just wants to talk real quick.”
According to records Croton only had an army a third the size but they had a secret weapon. That’s right, the ride-or-die cult of Pythagoras.
The combined forces of the Pythagoreans and Croton’s army won the battle against Sybaris and subjugated its citizens. Further proving the saying, “it’s not the size that counts, it’s how big that fava bean-loving cult supporting you is that really counts.” - That’s how that saying goes right?
After this victory, the citizens of Cotrone proposed a democratic constitution with the Pythagoreans which was against Pythagoras’ teachings and ultimately rejected.
This did not go over well.
The Death of Pythagoras
Many citizens found this to be the last straw and decided to attack the commune setting the main building ablaze. The outcome of the fire is shrouded in mystery and theory. Here are a few:
Most accounts say Pythagoras died that day but unsurprisingly the death of Pythagoras and how he died is often disputed. Some say he died in the fire either being unaware the building was being engulfed in flames or just not quick enough to escape.
Others say his students, seeing no way for Pythagoras to escape, laid themselves down onto the fire making a path for him and allowing him to walk over their bodies to escape the building and city never to be heard from again.
“You want me to lay down?! Doesn’t he have a magic arrow?!”
At this point, someone should have asked the whereabouts of that magic arrow.
Other accounts state he escaped the fire but upon realizing how many of his students died, he took his own life. Yet another account states he escaped but was chased to a fava bean field where he refused to disturb the field allowing himself to be captured and killed instead.
It’s not really known what, who, when, or how Pythagoras was killed or died. In fact, the story of the fire may have been mixed up with later attacks on the Pythagoreans over the next few centuries and not have even happened.
For all we know, Pythagoras could have been reincarnated as a fava bean and is currently being enjoyed with some liver and a nice chianti.
Despite the probable death of Pythagoras, his cult survived for at least another three centuries and pieces of his teachings still survive in some form today. And don’t get me started on Neopythagoreanism, that’s another story for another time.
“NEO-pythagoreanism? Is that like a matrix thing?”
Many of the discoveries that were made by Pythagoreans were credited directly to Pythagoras but we will never really know for sure who discovered them. It’s much more likely throughout the centuries his students made discoveries and, with Pythagoras being the mythical figure he had become, they credited him.
Pythagoras was an influential and controversial figure who may not have done everything he is credited for but his teachings influenced many others including Plato and Aristotle. We don’t know everything about his life and will likely never know what transpired but what we do know for a fact is if you’re trying to find the hypotenuse of a triangle, A squared plus B squared will always equal C for Cults… I mean C squared.
