Pythagoreanism originated in the 6th century BC, based on and around the teachings and beliefs held by Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans. Pythagoras established the first Pythagorean community in the ancient Greek colony of Kroton, in modern Calabria (Italy). Early Pythagorean communities spread throughout Magna Graecia.
In Raphael's fresco The School of Athens, Pythagoras is shown writing in a book as a young man presents him with a tablet showing a diagrammatic representation of music theory on a lyre above a drawing of the sacred tetractys.
The Plimpton 322 tablet records Pythagorean triples from Babylonian times.
Bust of Pythagoras, Musei Capitolini, Rome.
Pythagoreans celebrate sunrise, 1869 painting by Fyodor Bronnikov.
Pythagoras of Samos was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, the West in general. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend; modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle. This lifestyle entailed a number of dietary prohibitions, traditionally said to have included aspects of vegetarianism.
Bust of Pythagoras of Samos in the Capitoline Museums, Rome
Fictionalized portrait of Pythagoras from a 17th-century engraving
Bust of Pythagoras in the Vatican Museums, Vatican City, showing him as a "tired-looking older man"
Bronze bust of a philosopher wearing a tainia from Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum, possibly a fictional bust of Pythagoras
