Pythagoras
c. 570 BCE–c. 495 BCE · Samos
Ionian mathematician, mystic, and founder of the Pythagorean brotherhood at Croton; his teachings combined arithmetic, geometry, harmonics, transmigration of souls, and dietary askesis. Influenced Plato and Western mysticism.
“The Pythagoreans held that "all things are number" (or "number is the substance of all things").”
Did you know?
Pythagoras and Confucius were contemporaries
Pythagoras in the Greek world and Confucius in China were alive at the same time for roughly half a century — with no record that either ever knew the other existed. Two of history's most influential teachers, on opposite ends of Eurasia, belonged to the very same generation.
How we know
Pythagoras c. 570–495 BCE; Confucius 551–479 BCE. Their lives overlap 551–495 BCE = 56 years.
Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→
Samos
What they did here
Born on the Aegean island of Samos under the tyranny of Polycrates; received early Ionian philosophical training.
About Samos
A powerful Ionian island once ruled by the tyrant Polycrates—birthplace of Pythagoras, home of the Eleatic monist Melissus, and the island whose son Aristarchus first dared to set the Sun, not the Earth, at the center of the cosmos.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Pythagoras’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Graeco-Roman world
- Thales· 624 BCE–546 BCE
- Anaximander· 610 BCE–546 BCE
- Anaximenes· 586 BCE–526 BCE
- Hipponax· 575 BCE–535 BCE
- Xenophanes· 570 BCE–478 BCE
- Heraclitus· 540 BCE–480 BCE
- Epicharmus· 540 BCE–450 BCE
- Aeschylus· 525 BCE–456 BCE
- Themistocles· 524 BCE–459 BCE
- Bacchylides· 518 BCE–451 BCE
- Pindar· 518 BCE–438 BCE
- Parmenides· 515 BCE–445 BCE
- Diogenes of Apollonia· 500 BCE–428 BCE
- Anaxagoras· 500 BCE–428 BCE
- Sophocles· 496 BCE–406 BCE
- Empedocles· 495 BCE–435 BCE
Luminaries & Explorers world
Egyptian world
Hindu world
Mesopotamian world
Scientists
Jewish world
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.