Life: Age 34-49

When Pythagoras was about 34,

Anaximander advised him to go to Egypt. He did, a few years after his two-faced backstabber of a friend, Polycrates, took control of Pythagoras' birthplace, the city of Samos. Pythagoras took with him to Egypt a letter from Polycrates. When Pythagoras was in Egypt, he went to many temples and took part in many discussions with the priests. According to the account written by Porphyry, Pythagoras was refused admission to many temples except for the one in Diospolis, where he became a priest. When Pythagoras set up his society in Italy (more on that later), he used the same beliefs that the Egyptian priests used which were refusal to eat beans, refusal to wear animal skin, and attempting to be as pure as humanly possible. Porphyry also wrote that Pythagoras learned geometry from the priests in Egypt. That is probably not true, as he probably already learned that from Thales, Anaximander, or Pherekydes. In 525 BC, when Pythagoras was 44, the king of Persia, Cambyses II, invaded Eygpt, and Polycrates abandoned his friendship with Egypt and fought against the Egyptians. Around this time, Pythagoras was taken as a prisoner of war. He was imprisoned with a group called the Magoi, and while he was there he learned about their distinctive worship. Also, he reached "the acme of perfection in arithmetic and music and the other mathematical sciences taught by the Babylonians...", according to Iamblichus (http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Pythagoras.html).  Five years later, when he was 49, he left Babylon and learned that Polycrates had died in 522, and Cambyses had also died, either of suicide or an accident. Pythagoras returned to Samos, now under the rule of new Persian king Darius. Soon after his return to Samos, he left for Crete, where he learned about the law. There is more on Pythagoras on the next page.
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