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.).

SOURCE PROBLEMS: THE ‘PYTHAGOREAN QUESTION’

The factual and textual ground on which this spectacular and monumental edifice built by tradition stands is, by contrast, extremely insecure for the modern scholar. First, there are no fragments of Pythagoras' writings. Very much like Socrates, Buddha and Jesus, the Samian sage was – principally, if not exclusively – a master of orality who left no written texts behind him: neither poems nor treatises in prose (see Riedweg [1997] for the possibility that Pythagoras committed something to writing). Secondly, even if he had written something, the mystery-inspired secrecy practised in the circle of followers gravitating around him (Brisson 1987; Bremmer 1995: 63–70; Petit 1997; contra Zhmud 1997: 85–91) had as a consequence that, apparently, no writings were in public circulation outside the sect-like early Pythagorean communities before Philolaus of Croton (c.470-after 399 bce).