An Old Math Cult Leader
Pythagoras (circa 570 BC – circa 495 BC) is famous for his mathematical theorems. To the ancient Greeks, however, he was better known along the lines of “that murderous philosopher who founded a religious cult“. Indeed, “weird” barely scratches the surface when it comes to Pythagoras. To contemporaries, he was a mystic, as well as a murderer who believed in reincarnation and claimed the abilities to divine the future and talk to animals. Pythagoras was a vegetarian, but there was one plant he would not touch: beans. He equated beans consumption to cannibalism, and thought that to eat them was akin to devouring one’s parents. A tall and handsome fellow with plenty of charisma, he left his birthplace of Samos at age eighteen, to travel and expand his education.
Pythagoras eventually established a religious sect whose adherents viewed him as a god. Their faith revolved around numbers. Pythagoras preached that math was holy, and that numbers were sacred. In his old age, Pythagoras set up shop in Croton, whose people were forced to deal with the weird philosopher and his followers. The Pythagoreans crossed the line when they tried to force ordinary citizens to follow Pythagoras’ beliefs. Specifically, they tried to ban beans and meat. Croton’s citizens got violent, went after the Pythagoreans, killed many of them, and forced the rest to flee. The survivors tried to regroup and carry on elsewhere. However, they never achieved as much prominence or power as they had secured in Croton, and the cult soon faded away. As to Pythagoras, he fled for his life with angry pursuers hot on his heels, and his flight took him to a field of beans.rational numbers that can be expressed as fractions. Then Hippasus demonstrated the existence of irrational numbers.
