Pythagoras
In the Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages, Pythagoras was revered as the founder of mathematics and music, two of the Seven Liberal Arts. He appears in numerous medieval depictions, in illuminated manuscripts and in the relief sculptures on the portal of the Cathedral of Chartres. The Timaeus was the only dialogue of Plato to survive in Latin translation in western Europe, which led William of Conches (c. 1080–1160) to declare that Plato was Pythagorean. A large-scale translation movement emerged during the Abbasid Caliphate, translating many Greek texts into Arabic. Works ascribed to Pythagoras included the "Golden Verses" and snippets of his scientific and mathematical theories. By translating and disseminating Pythagorean texts, Islamic scholars ensured their survival and wider accessibility. This preserved knowledge that might have otherwise been lost through the decline of the Roman Empire and the neglect of classical learning in Europe. In the 1430s, the Camaldolese friar Ambrose Traversari translated Diogenes Laërtius's Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers from Greek into Latin and, in the 1460s, the philosopher Marsilio Ficino translated Porphyry and Iamblichus's Lives of Pythagoras into Latin as well, thereby allowing them to be read and studied by western scholars. In 1494, the Greek Neopythagorean scholar Constantine Lascaris published The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, translated into Latin, with a printed edition of his Grammatica, thereby bringing them to a widespread audience. In 1499, he published the first Renaissance biography of Pythagoras in his work Vitae illustrium philosophorum siculorum et calabrorum, issued in Messina.
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