An excerpt from Private Diary of Milo of Croton

One day in 495 BC

I first met Pythagoras shortly after his arrival from Samos. He sported a long and rather well kept beard, was almost entirely bold and wore a simple and spotlessly clean white robe. His head was covered with an oversized light brown bandana, made from what appeared to be a light silk cloth. The bandana looked rather big for his head. It was much later that I learned this was a style Pythagoras picked up from Egypt where he spent most of this early adulthood. He didn’t talk much during our first encounter, and its fair to say we didn’t form a great rapport.

Island of Samos, where Pythagoras grew up, had a reputation of a thriving city state around the time. It was particularly well known for its wine which was shipped to city-states all over Aegean Sea and Magna Graecia. It has also some very known pioneers of engineering and architecture. Many stories were told about their famous Tunnel of Eupalinos (1), a kilometre long aqueduct flowing through Mount Kastro.

It has been a few months since I heard of Pythagoras again. One of his friends Lorenzo, pulled me aside one morning and asked if I would like be interested in joining a secret society which promises immortality.

He explained that the human soul is weighed down by practical concerns, and unless it is purified it will never escape the body. It will simply continue being reincarnated, transforming into either human or animal, over and over again. Pythagorean Society followed a strict soul-building programme of purification where I would eventually ascend to immortal status and live forever.

There was something mystic about how Lorenzo spoke that morning; he chose his words carefully, spoke calmly, almost whispering. Despite feeling his level of excitement, it was clear he did not want others to overhear him. He concluded by inviting me to see Pythagoras himself, who my surprise was the leader of the secret society.

It has not been long since I heard of this grouping again. For a number of weeks there was an odd buzz about this society. Very little was said or known about it. It was almost like a giant cloud of secrecy caused this invisible excitement. Something was brewing but no one knew what it was

I decided to take up Lorenzo’s invitation and meet Pythagoras. Many of its members met by the Shipbuilders Square next to the port and this is where I met Pythagoras.

What was meant to be a brief encounter, turned out to last entire two days. Pythagoras did most of the talking. He reiterated what Lorenzo said earlier but with a lot more details. He was clearly obsessed about understanding nature and highest laws of the universe. He talked about purity of soul and how that can be achieved through endless enquiry. He felt convinced that knowing eternal concepts and laws is important for you and guarantees immortality. (2) (3)

On the second day, he let me in on a little secret. Pythagoras was convinced that it was indeed numbers that can explain everything around us. He took his lyre out and started playing a few sounds. He demonstrated that musical intervals between the notes on the instrument may be expressed mathematically. (4)

He then dropped three pebbles onto the ground and showed that the lengths of sides of a right angle are proportional to each other, also following a precise formula. (5)

No matter where the pebbles dropped, the rule stuck out as long as it was a right angle triangle. As night was falling, he pointed to the sky. The movement of stars and the planets can also be explained by studying geometry. He knew that much was to be still discovered, he was convinced that he unlocked the secret of how the world works: through numbers. “If you want to live forever, join us and study mathematics”, was the last thing I remember from that conversation with Pythagoras. As I walked out Lorenzo gave me a few parting words of advice. He told me that that day life in the society broadly composed of observing a strict and, what I later discovered to be a rather peculiar and strict code of discipline (e.g. to abstain from eating beans) and living the culture of rigorous philosophical enquiry. That enquiry would be focused around, as Pythagoras hinted around three key pillars: mathematics, astronomy and music. Those three help us understand everything around us. He also handed to me a large rock with a tetraktys carved out.

Footnotes:

1. The Eupalinian aqueduct is described by Herodotus in Histories 3.60, without whom it might not have been discovered: “I have dwelt longer upon the history of the Samians than I should otherwise have done, because they are responsible for three of the greatest building and engineering feats in the Greek world: the first is a tunnel nearly a mile long, eight feet wide and eight feet high, driven clean through the base of a hill nine hundred feet in height. The whole length of it carries a second cutting thirty feet deep and three broad, along which water from an abundant source is led through pipes into the town. This was the work of a Megarian named Eupalinus, son of Naustrophus.”

2. In Timaues, Plato was inspired by Pythagoras held that philosophical study of the immortal universe gave a person a sort of immortality: “he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge and of trust wisdom… must have thoughts immortal and divine, ie he attain truth, and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing in immortality he must altogether be immortal”.

3. Bertrand Russell, almost two and half thousands years later, wrote in the final chapter of ‘The Problems of Philosophy’ that one should study philosophy ‘above all because, through through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good’. According to Anthony Gothlieb, what unites these accounts is the idea that by contemplating something one can acquire some of its desirable characteristics, presumingly by becoming impressed by it and trying to emulate it.

4. Pythagorean tuning is a system of musical tuning in which the frequency ratios of all intervals are based on the ratio 3:2. This ratio, also known as the “pure” perfect fifth, is chosen because it is one of the most consonant and easiest to tune by ear.

5. Pythagorean theorem, the well-known geometric theorem that the sum of the squares on the legs of a right triangle is equal to the square on the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle)—or, in familiar algebraic notation, a2 + b2 = c2.