Persian Realm

one of my favourites

pythagoras, as a character in the lore of philosophy and as a man of spirit and mind. he directly or indirectly sired much that was beautiful in plato, in music, in mathemtics, in dante, in bach, in newton, you name it.

the icon of greek genius, while rumoured not to have been greek, but hailing from the east. 

the enigmatic and elusive nature of this persona is enhanced by the fact that he is not normally included among the canon of seven sages, although he competes with thales for the contest of 'first inventor' of wisdom.

he is known for his pythagorean theorem, which is recorded in euclid, elements, book one, proposition 47. in the wording of the proposition and proofs in that passage the verbs for describing the squares and triangles are derived from the stem for 'drawing' (graphein), -- representing the greek tendency for proving and arguing through graphic means (sound familiar?)

pythagoras and his theorem inspired many myths and anecdotes, as well as some poetry. here is an exceprt of the hellenistic librarian and poet callimachus, iambus one, lines 52ff, about the handing over of a victory chalice from one sage to another and finally to the winner, thales (so see, even if pythagoras was out of the canon, his he actually did sneak in the back door into the canon by allusion to his genius and ascetic ways):

…The victory fell to Thales / who was of able mind in other things, / and who was said to have measured out the little stars / of the Wagon, by which the Phoenicians sail. / And the Arcadian by happy chance found the old man / in the shrine of Apollo at Didyma / scratching the ground with a staff, and drawing the figure [graphonta to skhema] / that the Phrygian Euphorbus discovered [exheure] / who first of men drew [protos egrapse] unequal triangles and the circle, / and who taught men to abstain from living creatures.

in the test of time,  people remember pythagoras more than thales.