Quick Answer
There are no fragments of Pythagoras, because he wrote nothing. The book sold under that title is usually Florence Firth's 1904 Theosophical compilation, containing an anonymous late poem, a set of cryptic maxims, and some short pieces by other hands. This article says what each item is, when it was written, and what to buy instead.
Key Takeaways
- Nothing in the volume is by Pythagoras. Not one line, and no ancient source claims otherwise.
- The Golden Verses are anonymous and late, about seventy-one hexameter lines, and they are genuinely worth reading on their own terms.
- Philolaus and Archytas are the real early material, from the fifth and fourth centuries BC, and they are usually left out of these compilations.
- The letters attributed to Theano and other women are Hellenistic compositions and are interesting evidence about something other than what they claim.
- Buy the Guthrie and Fideler sourcebook instead. Four ancient lives, over twenty-five writings, and the genuine fragments, in one volume.
🕑 14 min read
What the Book Actually Is
Search for the fragments of Pythagoras and you will be offered an inexpensive paperback, often from a reprint imprint, sometimes with no editor named on the cover.
In most cases it is The Golden Verses of Pythagoras and Other Pythagorean Fragments, compiled by Florence M. Firth and published in 1904 by the Theosophical Publishing Society, with an introduction by Annie Besant. The text is out of copyright, which is why it circulates so widely and so cheaply.
That provenance is worth knowing before you open it. The volume was assembled inside the Theosophical movement at the height of its influence, for readers who understood Pythagoras as an initiate in a perennial wisdom tradition. It is a real historical document. It is not a critical edition, it does not date its contents, and it does not tell you that its centrepiece was written many centuries after the man it names.
On the question of what can be known about Pythagoras himself, and why the sources are so difficult, our article on Pythagoras the philosopher covers the ground properly. This piece is about the texts.
The basic fact: the ancient tradition is largely agreed that Pythagoras wrote nothing. He taught orally, inside a community with rules about secrecy, and what survives is what other people said he said, beginning with writers who were not born until after he died. Every title with his name on it is therefore describing a subject rather than an author.
The Golden Verses
The centrepiece of every such volume, and the piece most worth your time.
The Golden Verses are an anonymous Greek poem of about seventy-one lines in hexameter, setting out a way of life. They are late, and estimates of the date vary across several centuries; nobody defends attribution to Pythagoras himself. They circulated widely in antiquity as a compact summary of Pythagorean discipline and were the subject of an extended commentary by the fifth-century Neoplatonist Hierocles, which is often printed alongside them.
The content is a graded moral programme. Honour the gods, then the heroes, then your parents. Choose your friends carefully and do not abandon them over small faults. Control appetite, sleep, anger and desire. Do nothing shameful in company or alone. Take responsibility for your own condition rather than blaming circumstance.
The most durable passage is the evening review. Before sleep, go back over the day three times and ask what you did, what you failed to do, and where you fell short, and do this every night. The practice reappears across the Western tradition, in Stoic writing, in Christian examination of conscience, in Ignatian spirituality, and it is taught in modern esoteric schools in a form directly descended from this text.
Judge the Golden Verses on their own terms and they hold up well. A short, memorisable, practical discipline requiring no doctrine and no institution, ending in a promise that the person who lives this way will become something other than mortal. It has been useful to people for a very long time, and it is a better book than its attribution.
The Symbols
The other standard contents are the symbols, also called akousmata, meaning things heard: short cryptic instructions preserved by later writers.
Do not stir the fire with a knife. Do not step over a yoke. Do not eat from a whole loaf. Do not sit on a bushel measure. Help a man to load a burden and not to unload it. Abstain from beans.
Ancient commentators read these allegorically. Do not stir the fire with a knife becomes do not provoke an angry man with sharp words. Do not step over a yoke becomes do not transgress justice. The allegorical readings are ingenious and they are also later, produced by writers who had inherited the sayings and needed them to mean something respectable.
The alternative view is that they were what they appear to be: dietary and behavioural taboos of the kind religious communities generate, marking members off from outsiders, with the allegories added afterwards. The bean prohibition in particular has attracted a great deal of speculation and no settled explanation.
Either way, they are evidence about a community with rules rather than a school with doctrines, which is the picture the earliest testimony supports.
Why Nothing Was Written Down
The absence of writing was not an accident of survival. It was policy, and the policy explains the shape of everything that came afterwards.
The community at Croton was organised, with admission requirements, a period of silence imposed on new members, shared property in some accounts, and rules about what could be said outside. Teaching passed by memorised oral formula, which is what the akousmata are. Attribution of any discovery went to the founder rather than to the individual who made it, which is why later Pythagoreans said the man himself said it as a way of closing an argument.
Two consequences follow directly. First, a tradition that credits everything to its founder generates a founder who appears to have discovered everything, and the pile grows for centuries after he is dead. Second, when the community was scattered, the oral chain broke, and what remained was fragments in other people's books plus a name available for anyone to write under.
There is a story, reported in several versions, that a member named Hippasus was drowned at sea for revealing a mathematical secret, usually given as the existence of incommensurable magnitudes. The story is late and probably not true. It is worth knowing anyway, because a community that told that story about itself was communicating something accurate about how it regarded disclosure.
The Genuinely Early Material
Here is what the cheap compilations almost always omit, and it is the part with real historical value.
Philolaus of Croton, active in the later fifth century BC, is the earliest Pythagorean whose actual words survive. The fragments give a cosmology in which the world is constructed from limiters and unlimiteds held together by harmony, and in which number is what makes things knowable. Philolaus also placed a central fire at the centre of the cosmos with the earth in orbit around it, which is not heliocentrism and is the first known displacement of the earth from the middle.
Archytas of Tarentum, in the fourth century BC, was a mathematician, a political leader who was elected general repeatedly, and a friend of Plato. His fragments deal with mathematics, acoustics and the ratios underlying musical intervals, and his work on the harmonic mean is genuine early Greek mathematics.
Carl Huffman has produced the standard critical editions of both, with the Greek, translation and extended commentary, and they are where a serious reader should go. They are not by Pythagoras. They are the closest thing to primary Pythagorean philosophy that exists.
The Hellenistic Forgeries
Between the fourth century BC and the early centuries AD, a substantial body of writing was composed and attributed to Pythagoras and to named members of his circle.
Holger Thesleff collected this material in 1965 as The Pythagorean Texts of the Hellenistic Period, and that volume is still the standard reference for the corpus. It runs to hundreds of pages.
The word forgery is accurate and slightly misleading. Attributing your own work to a revered founder was a recognised practice in the ancient world, sometimes intended to deceive and often understood as writing within a tradition and under its authority. The same phenomenon produced a great deal of the Hermetic corpus, which our Hermetica comparison takes up.
What matters practically is that a reader holding a text attributed to Pythagoras is holding evidence about the period that produced it, which is usually four or five centuries after his death, and not evidence about him.
The Letters Attributed to Women
The most interesting part of the pseudepigrapha, and the least known.
Within the corpus are letters and treatises attributed to women of the Pythagorean community: Theano, said to be Pythagoras's wife, and figures named Perictione, Phintys, Myia and others. They address subjects the rest of ancient philosophy largely ignores.
Some are strikingly domestic. There is advice on choosing a wet nurse, on how a household should be run, on the treatment of slaves, on how a wife should respond to a husband's infidelity. Others are more abstract: Perictione on wisdom, Theano on number and on the immortality of the soul.
The scholarly consensus is that these are Hellenistic compositions rather than the authentic writings of women who lived in the sixth or fifth century BC. Whether they were written by women is a separate and genuinely open question, and one that recent work by Sarah Pomeroy, Dorota Dutsch and others has taken seriously rather than dismissing.
What they document is real regardless of who held the pen. Here is a body of philosophical writing addressed to women, about the conduct of a life most philosophy of the period did not consider a philosophical subject, circulating under Pythagorean authority. Whoever composed them chose that authority because the Pythagorean community was remembered as one that had included women. That memory is itself a historical fact worth having, and it is why these letters exist under these names rather than others.
The Four Ancient Lives
The other body of material in the better compilations is the biographies, and they need dating as much as the fragments do.
Diogenes Laertius, writing in the third century AD, gives Pythagoras a chapter in his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Diogenes is a compiler rather than a historian, he quotes conflicting sources without adjudicating, and that habit is his great virtue: he preserves early testimony that would otherwise be lost, including the hostile remarks from Heraclitus and Xenophanes.
Porphyry, the Neoplatonist who edited Plotinus, wrote a Life of Pythagoras in the third century AD. It survives incomplete and it is more sober than what came after.
Iamblichus, in the early fourth century, produced On the Pythagorean Life, and it is the longest and least restrained. Here Pythagoras is a divine being, credited with prophecy, with being in two cities on the same day, with taming a bear by speaking to it, and with a golden thigh.
The anonymous life preserved by Photius, the ninth-century Byzantine patriarch, is a summary of an earlier text.
All four were written between seven hundred and fourteen hundred years after Pythagoras died. Two of them were composed by Neoplatonists engaged in constructing a pagan philosophical sanctity to set against the Christian saints then being celebrated, which shapes what they include.
This is the whole problem in miniature. The fullest and most attractive account of Pythagoras is also the latest and least reliable, and the earliest testimony is a few hostile sentences from men who found him irritating. The temptation is to prefer the rich version to the thin one, and every popular treatment of Pythagoras gives in to it, which is why the figure most readers know is essentially Iamblichus's.
Practice: check the gap on every ancient life you read
Whenever you meet a biography of an ancient religious or philosophical figure, find two dates before anything else: when the subject lived, and when the biography was written. Then subtract. For Iamblichus on Pythagoras the answer is around nine hundred years. Once you have that number in front of you, the miracles stop being evidence about the subject and become evidence about the biographer's century, which is a smaller claim and a true one.
About the Theorem
The one thing everyone knows about Pythagoras is the thing least likely to be his.
The relationship between the sides of a right triangle was known and used in Babylonian mathematics roughly a thousand years before he was born, and it appears in Indian and Chinese mathematical traditions independently. The attribution to Pythagoras is late, appearing in sources writing centuries after his death, and no early testimony credits him with it.
The earliest testimony we have is a different picture entirely. Heraclitus, close to him in time, dismisses Pythagoras as a man of much learning and artful knavery who assembled a wisdom of his own. Xenophanes tells a story in which Pythagoras stops a man beating a puppy, saying he recognises the voice of a dead friend in it.
Those are the earliest things anyone said about him, and they describe a religious teacher of transmigration who irritated his contemporaries, not a geometer.
Which Edition to Buy
The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie with additional translations by Thomas Taylor, introduced and edited by David Fideler, is the volume to own. It contains the four ancient biographies, including Porphyry's and Iamblichus's lives and the account in Diogenes Laertius, more than twenty-five Pythagorean and Neopythagorean writings, the Golden Verses, and the fragments of Philolaus and Archytas. Fideler's editorial apparatus tells you what each piece is.
Carl Huffman's editions of Philolaus and Archytas for the genuine early philosophy, with full commentary.
Kirk, Raven and Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, for Pythagoreanism placed among its contemporaries with the source problems handled honestly.
Firth's 1904 compilation if you want the Theosophical reception of Pythagoras as a historical artefact, which is a legitimate interest.
Before buying any volume in this category: look for the editor's name, the date of the translation, and whether the contents are dated individually. A book that prints ancient-sounding text without telling you which century it comes from is not lying to you and it is leaving you to assume. In this particular field the assumption a reader naturally makes is wrong by about eight hundred years.
Who Should Read It
Read the Golden Verses. They are short, they are good, and the evening review is worth having whatever you make of the rest.
Read the symbols for the strangeness, and to see what a religious community's rules look like before commentators tidy them into ethics.
Read Philolaus if you want actual early Pythagorean philosophy, which almost nobody who buys these books ever encounters.
Do not read any of it expecting Pythagoras. He is not there and never was.
Our position: a title that promises something impossible, attached to a Victorian compilation that contains one genuinely valuable short poem and a set of interesting oddities. Buy Guthrie and Fideler instead, read the Golden Verses properly, go to Huffman for the real early material, and treat the Firth volume as what it is, which is a document about 1904 rather than about the sixth century BC.
For neighbouring material, see the fragments of Heraclitus, whose corpus really is his, and Parmenides, where a genuine early text survives in a similarly damaged state.
Know what is in the volume before you open it.
Affiliate disclosure: Thalira earns a small commission on purchases made through the link above, at no additional cost to you. We recommend books we have read and think are worth your time, and we say plainly when we think parts of them are weak.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Pythagoras write anything?
No text by him survives and the ancient tradition generally holds that he wrote nothing, teaching orally inside a community bound to secrecy. Every volume sold as his fragments therefore contains work by other people, most of it centuries later. That is not a scandal, and knowing it changes what you are reading.
What is in a book called The Fragments of Pythagoras?
Usually the Golden Verses, a set of cryptic maxims called the symbols or akousmata, and assorted short pieces. The most commonly reprinted volume is Florence Firth's compilation of 1904, published by the Theosophical Publishing Society with an introduction by Annie Besant.
What are the Golden Verses?
An anonymous Greek poem of about seventy-one hexameter lines setting out a moral and contemplative discipline, including the evening review of the day's actions. It is late, it is not by Pythagoras, and it was influential for centuries as a summary of the Pythagorean way of life.
What are the Pythagorean symbols?
Short cryptic instructions preserved by later writers, such as do not stir the fire with a knife, do not step over a yoke, and abstain from beans. Ancient commentators read them allegorically as coded ethical teaching. Whether the community understood them that way or as literal taboos is disputed.
Are any Pythagorean texts genuinely early?
Yes. The fragments of Philolaus of Croton and Archytas of Tarentum are genuine early Pythagorean philosophy, from the fifth and fourth centuries BC. They are not by Pythagoras and they are the closest thing to a primary source the tradition has. Carl Huffman has produced the standard editions of both.
What is the Pythagorean pseudepigrapha?
A large body of Hellenistic writings attributed to Pythagoras and members of his circle, composed long after their deaths. Holger Thesleff collected them in 1965 as The Pythagorean Texts of the Hellenistic Period, and that volume remains the standard reference for the corpus.
Who were Theano, Perictione and Phintys?
Names attached to letters and treatises in the Pythagorean pseudepigrapha, presented as women of the Pythagorean community. The surviving texts under those names are Hellenistic compositions rather than authentic writings, and they are valuable evidence for how philosophical advice to women was framed in that period.
Which edition should I buy?
The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie and edited by David Fideler, is far better value. It contains the four ancient lives of Pythagoras, more than twenty-five Pythagorean and Neopythagorean writings, and the fragments of Philolaus and Archytas in one volume.
Is the Firth edition worth reading?
As a historical document of how Theosophy read Pythagoras around 1900, yes. As a source on Pythagoreanism, it is thin, unannotated by modern standards, and gives no indication of the date or authorship of the pieces it prints. Buy it knowing what it is.
Did Pythagoras discover the Pythagorean theorem?
The relationship was known in Babylonian mathematics roughly a thousand years earlier. The attribution to Pythagoras appears only in late sources, centuries after his death, and no early testimony credits him with it. The name records a tradition rather than a discovery.
What do the earliest sources say about him?
The near-contemporary testimony is unflattering and religious rather than mathematical. Heraclitus dismisses him as a practitioner of much learning and artful knavery, and Xenophanes tells a story of him recognising a dead friend's soul in a beaten puppy, which reports a teaching of transmigration.
Where should I start instead?
With a modern account of who Pythagoras was and what can be known about him, then Huffman on Philolaus and Archytas for the real early material, then the Guthrie sourcebook for the later tradition in bulk. Starting with an unannotated Victorian compilation is the reliable way to acquire confident misinformation.
Do the evening review for a week
Whatever its date and whoever wrote it, the practice at the centre of the Golden Verses costs nothing and has been carried forward by four separate traditions on its merits. Before sleep, go back over the day and ask three questions: what did I do, what did I leave undone, and where did I fall short. Do it for seven nights. The instruction survived twenty centuries and several changes of religion because it works, which is a better recommendation than an attribution.
Sources & References
- Firth, F. M., ed. (1904). The Golden Verses of Pythagoras and Other Pythagorean Fragments, intro. Annie Besant. Theosophical Publishing Society.
- Guthrie, K. S., trans., and Fideler, D., ed. (1987). The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library. Phanes Press.
- Huffman, C. A. (1993). Philolaus of Croton, and (2005) Archytas of Tarentum. Cambridge University Press.
- Thesleff, H. (1965). The Pythagorean Texts of the Hellenistic Period. Åbo Akademi.
- Burkert, W. (1972). Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism. Harvard University Press.
- Kirk, G. S., Raven, J. E. and Schofield, M. (1983). The Presocratic Philosophers. Cambridge University Press.
- Pomeroy, S. B. Pythagorean Women: Their History and Writings. Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Hierocles. Commentary on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, fifth century AD.