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Life
Number is the language of the cosmos. He built a life around that belief.
Four roots: earth, water, air, fire. Two forces: love draws together, strife tears apart. He jumped into a volcano to prove he was a god.
Connection
Pythagoras transmigration inherited Empedocles — Empedocles' claim to have been a boy, a girl, a bush, a bird and a fish belongs to the Pythagorean doctrine of the soul's transmigration, which had spread through the Greek cities of Sicily and southern Italy.
Ideas
Words
“Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and daemons.”
“There is geometry in the humming of the strings. There is music in the spacing of the spheres.”
“There is only mixing and exchange of what is mixed. 'Nature' is only a name given to these things by men.”
“Fire and water and earth and the endless height of air; and cursed Strife apart from these, balanced in every way, and Love among them, equal in length and breadth.”
Key Moments
c. 570 BCE
Born on Samos
c. 570 BCE
Born in Samos
c. 535 BCE
Travels to Egypt and Babylon
c. 532 BCE
Leaving Samos
c. 494 BCE
Born in Acragas, Sicily
c. 494 BCE
Born in Acragas
c. 460 BCE
The Four Roots
c. 460 BCE
Refuses the kingship of Acragas
Works
The Life & Doctrines
The Golden Verses
On Nature & Purifications