Free Pythagorus by Kitty Ferguson Page A

teaching, argued points and worked out problems with him, played with the pebbles, and experimented with the kanon and with hanging disks. Was the young physician ‘Alcmaeon’ really one of them? Was there actually a ‘Brontinus’ who was husband and/or father of Theano? Were ‘Leo’ and ‘Bathyllus’ real people? And what of the ‘Pythagorean women’, about whom nothing is known but their names on these lists? Frustratingly, there is no specific surviving information about how the new coinage affected the economy or, except the story of Milo’s defeat of Sibaris, about Pythagorean leadership in Croton and the surrounding territory, what offices the Pythagoreans held, or exactly in what capacity they wielded their power – only that they did wield it and that the results were by most accounts beneficial to the region. What is clear is that in about 500 B.C., three decades after Pythagoras arrived in Croton, hostility among the populace and perhaps a coup within the ranks of his followers brought it all to an end. The information is confused and contradictory, with common themes being others’ suspicion that Pythagoras and his followers were either becoming too powerful politically or aspiring to too much power – and, oddly, an unusual respect for beans.
    According to Diogenes Laertius, Pythagoras was visiting with friends in Milo’s home when someone deliberately set fire to the house. The arsonists were either Crotonians who feared that Pythagoras might ‘aspire to the tyranny’ or envious, disgruntled people who thought they should have been included in this gathering but had not been deemed ‘worthy of admission’. Pythagoras escaped but was captured and killed when he avoided crossing a bean field and took a longer way around. He must have decided, Diogenes Laertius said, that death was preferable to trampling on beans or speaking with his pursuers. About forty of his companions died as well.
    Diogenes Laertius was interested in conflicting accounts, so he also reported a story he got from Hermippus, portraying Pythagoras and his ‘usual companions’ in a militaristic light. They had joined the Agrigentine army to fight the army of Syracuse. The Syracusans put them to flight and captured and killed Pythagoras as he was making a detour around a bean field. Being less squeamish about trampling on beans did not help his companions. About thirty-five were caught and burned at the stake in Tarentum, accused of trying to set up a rival government in opposition to the prevailing magistrates.
    Diogenes Laertius showed he had a rather macabre sense of humour by casting part of this story into verse in another of his ‘jesting epigrams’.
    Alas! alas! why did Pythagoras hold
    Beans in such wondrous honour? Why, besides,
    Did he thus die among his choice companions?
    Here was a field of beans; and so the sage,
    Died in the common road of Agrigentum,
    Rather than trample down his favourite beans.
    Two other endings to the story came through Diogenes Laertius from the trustworthy Dicaearchus and Heracleides Ponticus; in these, Pythagoras escaped his pursuers but died soon thereafter in Metapontum of self-imposed starvation. [7]
    Porphyry gave a more detailed description of what supposedly happened, based on Aristoxenus, naming names and filling in the gaps in the other stories, and Iamblichus had some of the same specifics. According to this fuller account, the huge success of Pythagoras and his associates, and particularly their role in the administration and reform of the cities, aroused envy, most notably and ominously from one Cylon. He was a wealthy community leader of impeccable breeding, but also of a ‘severe, violent and tyrannical disposition’, and he controlled a large group of loyal supporters. He had a high opinion of himself, ‘esteemed himself worthy of whatever was best’, and assumed he would be welcomed to the