Pythagoras was a person who reformed and purified Ancient Greece but in his work Pythagoras affects every aspect of our modern life. His great influence is especially surprising when one considers the fact that none of his written works have filtered down to us. Through the expanse of time the fact that no primary sources survived limits our knowledge of him to the writings of others.
Luckily enough many great minds through the ages have studied the man formed opinions of him and written at length.
Pythagoras grew up on the island of Samos in Ionia in the middle of the 6th century BC. Samos was a Greek colony at this time and ruled by the tyrant yet it flourished under the wealth and influence of the ever growing Greek Empire.
Pythagoras recognized his potential, he was happy inquisitive and popular, most boys would probably be educated by their parents. By their fathers they wouldn’t have very much that they needed to know they would tend to know what was necessary for farming and for basic activities. Like that it’s unlikely that most people would ever learn to read, but for the rich things were slightly different, they would be people who had a future as political leaders.
They would expect to be able to speak in public and to engage in social activities with other rich people. The kind of things that they would learn to do would be to read and write to speak in public to play musical instruments and probably to sing and even to compose songs on the spot.
Pythagoras took a particular interest in advanced mathematics religion and every school of philosophic thought. He took the truest parts of each of the doctrines. However diverse and combined them together. He could create the ultimate philosophy through these disciplines. He was laying the foundations of what would become known as pythagoreanism.
There are two very different things one is Pythagoras and what he taught and what he believed and what he knew and pythagoreanism which is things in the spirit of Pythagoras, which is much broader tradition Pythagoras was around in the sixth century BC.
Pythagoreanism was around for several hundred years and longer it’s a tradition of a way of thinking. Pythagoras still had a great deal of searching to do like many today Pythagoras tried a variety of religions in search of spiritual peace out of all of the many religions that he embraced Pythagoras found himself most attached to the Orphic religion.