Information from the Christian era is abundant but highly suspect. Pythagoras himself, though a fully historical figure, underwent a kind of canonization. His life was quickly obscured by legend, and piety attributed all the school's teaching to him personally. Moreover, the dispersion of the school inevitably led to divergences of doctrine in the various groups. Aristotle makes it clear that by the late fifth century some Pythagoreans were teaching one thing and some another. A further reason for division was that the universal genius of Pythagoras, for whom religion and science were two aspects of the same integrated worldview, was beyond the scope of lesser men. Some naturally inclined more to the religious and superstitious; others, to the intellectual and scientific side, as is confirmed by later references to the division between
acusmatici and
mathematici.
As early evidence there are several references to Pythagoras in works of his contemporaries or near contemporaries (for instance, Xenophanes satirized his belief in the transmigration of souls), a valuable reference in Plato to the relationship between astronomy and harmonics in the Pythagorean system, a quantity of information from Aristotle (who at least would not confuse the Pythagoreans with Plato, as later writers excusably did), and some quotations from pupils of Aristotle who were personally acquainted with the last generation of the school.
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