Archytas of Tarentum was active in the first half of the fourth century BCE as a mathematician and a philosopher in the Pythagorean tradition. He is famous for having sent a ship in 361 BCE to rescue Plato from Dionysius II, tyrant of Syracuse. Archytas is unique among ancient philosophers for his success in the political sphere—he was elected general seven consecutive times in a democratically governed Tarentum (at the time one of the most important Greek city-states in southern Italy).

More texts have been preserved in Archytas's name than in that of any other Pythagorean, but the majority of these texts are spurious. The pseudo-Pythagorean treatises of the first century BCE and later were often written in his name, considering him the latest of the three great early Pythagoreans (following Pythagoras himself and...