PYTHAGORAS. Pythagoras (c. 580c. 580 B.C.E.

)
was a Greek mathematician, philosopher, and mystic. He wrote nothing himself, so his ideas survive
through the writings of others, including Aristotle. Many people are familiar with him as the
mathematician who formulated the Pythagorean theorem in geometry that relates the lengths of the
sides in a right triangle. Others know him as a mystic and the first person known to be motivated by
moral and philosophical concerns to adopt a vegetarian diet.
The schools and societies Pythagoras founded in the southern Italian area of Magna Graecia flourished
for a while, and they developed and spread many of his concepts, which were later adopted and
expanded by others. These concepts include bodily humors (evident in modern descriptions of
melancholic and phlegmatic personalities), a tripartite soul, reincarnation, and the numerical ratios that
determine the concordant intervals of the musical scales. Permeating all of his thoughts was the idea
that all things are numbers. Numbers (individuals, groups, and series) were imbued with mystical
properties that were carefully guarded and only shared among initiates to the Pythagorean schools
founded by him or his disciples.
Pythagoras and his followers practiced one of the first recorded diets known as vegetarianism. He
advocated a diet devoid of the flesh of slaughtered animals partially because he felt food influenced
the distribution of the bodily humors and thereby the health of the individual and partially because it
would prevent the killing of a reincarnated individual and its transmigrated soul. Up until the late
nineteenth century nonmeat eaters were generally known as Pythagoreans. Pythagoras is also
alleged to have admonished his disciples to abstain from eating beans. Ancient and medieval writers
ingeniously ascribed this pronouncement to the belief that beans contained or transmitted souls. The
Greek phrase supporting this gastronomic recommendation, however, could also be construed to imply
that his followers should avoid politics. Black and white beans were used as counters in voting in
Magna Graecia.
The school Pythagoras founded there became actively involved in the populist political views that
gained ascendancy in the town of Kroton, where he lived for many years. Later an opposing
aristocratic party gained control of the city and banished him and his followers for their political views
and activism. Pythagoras died in exile. His supposed warning to abstain from beans is therefore
thought to have meant avoid politics. Alternatively he may have realized that eating undercooked
broad (fave) beans (Vica faba vulgaris), a common food of the Mediterranean region, produced a
severe hemolytic anemia (favism) in some people. Interestingly the same mutant gene that makes
people sensitive to favism also increases their resistance to the malarial parasite, possibly accounting
for the widespread presence of the mutant gene in regions with endemic malaria.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bamford, Christopher, ed. Homage to Pythagoras. Hudson, N.Y.:
Lindisfarne Press, 1994.
Gorman, Peter. Pythagoras. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1979.
Spencer, Colin. The Heretics Feast: A History of Vegetarianism.
London: Fourth Estate, 1993.
Walters, Kerry S., and Lisa Portmess, eds. Ethical Vegetarianism:
From Pythagoras to Peter Singer. Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1999.
Mikal E. Saltveit
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