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PHILOLAUS, a native of Crotona, was a distinguished disciple of the Pythagorean school. Cicero describes him as the teacher of Archytas. He is said to have been the first to put the principles and traditions of the school into writing. Plato, when he came to the court of Dionysius in Sicily, is reported to have bought his works for the sum of forty minæ. Towards the close of his life Philolaus was suspected of aiming at political usurpation. We have no facts to prove or disprove this.
Of Philolaus, as of Archytas, it has to be said that the fragmentary quotations from the writings, scattered through the works of later writers, are not sufficient to tell us more than that he occupied himself in developing the theory of numbers and the laws of geometry, as the basis for explaining man's life and position in the universe; devoting special attention to the five regular solids, each of which was supposed to correspond to one of the elemental substances of which the universe was composed.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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