Pythagoras Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

Did Pythagoras Study Philosophy in Egypt?

Pythagoras of Samos (lived c. 570 – 495 BCE) is undoubtedly among the most famous of all ancient Greek philosophers. Unfortunately, extremely little can be said about him historically with any degree of certainty. As far as we know, Pythagoras never wrote anything himself and the only contemporary references to him come from the meagre fragments that have survived from the originally much more voluminous writings of his contemporaries. These sources are enough to establish that he was almost certainly a real person, but his life is almost completely obscure.

The later sources about Pythagoras that provide most of our information about him are filled with all kinds of unreliable legends. As I discuss in this article from March 2018, although most people today believe that Pythagoras was a mathematician, the earliest sources about his life actually portray him as more of a mystic sage. It’s only in later sources that he starts to be portrayed as having done anything involving math. The theorem that now bears his name isn’t even attributed to him in any written source until many centuries after his death.

In this article, I want to talk about one of the most famous stories about Pythagoras’s life: the story that he travelled to Egypt, learned about religion and philosophy from the Egyptian priests, and then introduced Egyptian religious ideas to the Greeks. This is a story that is attested in some ancient sources and that has become very prominent in popular discourse about Pythagoras—but is it historically correct?

Who Are the Illuminati Really?

When I was little, I would sometimes watch History Channel documentaries with my parents. These documentaries were often full of bizarre conspiracy theories about the Freemasons and the Illuminati. The History Channel claimed that these organizations were secretly controlling the world to bring about a totalitarian one-world government that they called “the New World Order.”

I think that most people who have a serious interest in history realize that you can’t trust anything you hear on the History Channel. I personally think that a more accurate name for it would be “the Conspiracy Channel,” since they talk a lot more about conspiracy theories than about actual history. Nonetheless, I think it is worthwhile to examine some of the ideas that are promoted on this channel and determine how much truth behind them there really is.

Believe it or not, the Illuminati was once a real organization and its history is surprisingly well-documented. In this article, I want to examine who the Illuminati were, what their goals were, what evidence there is for their alleged continued existence, and why so many people are afraid of them.

How Did Greek Philosophers Support Themselves?

A lot of people have wondered how on Earth Greek philosophers made their living. It is hard for a person to earn a livable wage as a professional “philosopher” in the modern age and it would have been even more difficult in classical Greece, since there were no universities as we would think of them at that time that could hire philosophers.

As it turns out, though, most ancient Greek philosophers did not make their money from philosophy. Many of them were from wealthy families and therefore didn’t need to work. Many of them also had wealthy patrons who paid for their expenses. Other philosophers found other ways to survive, which included working day jobs, starting cults, and even literally living off the streets through begging.

Debunking the Misconception of the Flat Earth

Hardly anyone nowadays believes the earth is flat. Many people, however, wrongly believe that people during the Middle Ages thought the world was flat. In reality, however, the sphericity of the earth was common knowledge throughout the entire Middle Ages. The idea that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth was flat is a canard invented in the Early Modern Period by authors who wanted to portray the Middle Ages as a time of backwardness and superstitious regression.

Three Bizarre Stories from Ancient Greece

Like many people, I am deeply fascinated by the obscure, the bizarre, and the perplexing. Thankfully, I happen to study the classics, which is a subject that is full of obscure, bizarre, and perplexing stories. There are so many such stories, in fact, that I cannot even count the number of them that I have read. Nonetheless, I thought I would share a few of my favorites here. Here are three stories I picked out as being among the most bizarre stories told by classical writers: a story of a dying man who allegedly stayed alive for three days by sniffing a loaf of bread, stories of a man with a golden thigh who could make rivers greet him by name, and a historical event in which an oligarchy was overthrown by conspirators disguised as prostitutes.

Did Pythagoras Discover the Pythagorean Theorem?

The Greek philosopher Pythagoras of Samos (lived c. 570 – c. 495 BC) is most famous today for having allegedly discovered the Pythagorean theorem, but, historically speaking, he did not really discover this theorem and it is even questionable whether he ever engaged in any kind of mathematics at all. The historical Pythagoras of Samos seems to have been a sort of mystic sage and spiritual guru, who lived a far more bizarre and fascinating life than you ever would have guessed from what you learned in mathematics class.

Continue reading “Did Pythagoras Discover the Pythagorean Theorem?”

No, Atlas Did Not Hold the Earth on His Shoulders

The image of the Titan Atlas holding the Earth on his shoulders is an iconic one that has inspired countless writers, thinkers, and artists. It is also a modern notion with no basis whatsoever in any ancient Greek texts. In actual ancient Greek mythology, Atlas does not, in fact, hold the Earth on his shoulders, but rather the sky. The misconception that the ancient Greeks imagined Atlas as holding the Earth on his shoulders arose as a result of the misinterpretation of classical representations of Atlas. In this article, I intend to set the record straight by examining how the ancient Greeks really envisioned Atlas and explaining how the misconception about him holding up the Earth arose.