Eurytus (Pythagorean)

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Eurytus (Greek: Εὔρυτος), an eminent Pythagorean philosopher, lived c. 400 BC, whom Iamblichus in one passage[1] describes as a native of Croton, while in another,[2] he enumerates him among the Tarentine Pythagoreans. He was a disciple of Philolaus, and Diogenes Laërtius[3]mentions him among the teachers of Plato, though this statement is very doubtful. It is uncertain whether Eurytus was the author of any work, unless we suppose that the fragment in Stobaeus,[4] which is there ascribed to one Eurytus, belongs to this Eurytus.

Aristotle, (Metaphysics 1092b) mentions Eurytus, speaking about points as limits of spatial magnitude: "It was in this sense that Eurytus determined the number of anything; for he computed the number of a man or that of a horse or of any living thing by outlining its shape with pebbles, as one would number the sides of a triangle or a square,"[5]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Iamblichus, de Vit. Pyth. 28
  2. ^ Iamblichus, de Vit. Pyth. 36
  3. ^ Diogenes Laërtius iii. 6, viii. 46
  4. ^ Stobaeus, Phys. Ecl. i.
  5. ^ Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1092b. translated by Richard Hope, p. 314, Columbia University Press, 2008.

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).

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