How did Pythagoras die?
The jury is still out on this one. Most historians believe in one of the two deaths below, but in order to understand the first one, the reader will first require some knowledge of the Pythagoreans. Pythagoras of Samos was born appx. 580 BC. Little is known about his early years, except that from around 550 BC, he spent significant time travelling around the known world. He settled down in Croton in 532 BC, where he began to teach and soon gathered a large group of students. The early followers were upper or middle class, wealthy and active in politics and business. Under Pythagoras, they formed a moral elite, striving to perfect their mental and physical form. They believed in a perfectly ordered universe, operating like clockwork. They had an incredible amount of rules, including not eating beans (beans were associated with testicles and therefore represented one’s father – go figure), not allowing swallows in the house, touching the earth during thunderstorms, smoothing one’s imprin
