Pythagoras

Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher and religious teacher associated with mathematics, number theory and a distinctive community in southern Italy. His historical life is difficult to separate from later legend, but his influence on Greek thought was profound.

Pythagoras was born in Samos and died in Metapontum. The community associated with Pythagoras combined philosophical study with rules of life, religious practices and political influence in Magna Graecia; later Pythagoreans developed mathematical and musical ideas that were retrospectively attributed to their founder.

Mary Renault’s The Praise Singer evokes Pythagoras as part of the intellectual and religious ferment of the archaic Greek world through which the poet Simonides travels. His reputation for mathematics, disciplined community and teachings about the soul belongs to the same network of courts, thinkers and performers that gives Simonides access to new forms of patronage and ideas.