Abstract

Pythagoras of Samos (floruit c.530 BCE) is one of the most famous thinkers of ancient Greece, and his influence and imprint are still felt in Eastern and Western philosophical and religious thought. Already considered the father of ‘philosophy’ a generation after Plato (Riedweg 2005: 90–97), this famous inventor or, rather, ‘importer’ into Greece of the mathematical theorem that bears his name {cf. Zhmud 1989) was much honoured in the ancient Academy, and especially in the philosophically predominant Neoplatonic circles of both late antiquity (O’Meara 1989) and the Italian Renaissance {Riedweg 2005: 129ff.).