By some accounts there were at least 28 women teachers and students in the school, which is said to have eventually numbered some 300 adherents. Concerned with the quasi-religious, quasi-political study of mathematics and philosophy, the academy's religious ideas tended to be mystical, while its approach to natural philosophy was entirely rational.
Theano
Peter Gorman, writing in Pythagoras: A Life, cited Porphyry's account of Pythagoras's arrival in Croton. According to Porphyry, Pythagoras was at that time "tall," with "great charm and elegance in his voice." The mathematician reportedly spoke to the council of elders at Croton "with many fine words" and later addressed the school children and, finally, the women. Porphyry added: "One of the women is especially famous, Theano by name."
According to Gorman, Theano was the daughter of the Orphic disciple Brontinus. The Orphics were members of a religious group that centered its beliefs around the death and resurrection symbolism in the Egyptian deity Osiris. The Orphics further believed in reincarnation and an afterlife spent with the gods. Like the Orphics, the Pythagoreans owed many of their beliefs to Egyptian mythologies, so it is not surprising that Brontinus eventually became a disciple of Pythagoras.
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