The Pythagorean Movement

The Pythagoreans were a loose group of philosophers in southern Italy. They had strong credentials for belief in reincarnation, soul manipulation and vegetarianism. Later doxographers basically consider the Akusmatikoi and the mathematical to be the same movement. The only way to make sense of the evidence really is the theoretical split we mentioned earlier. No one is sure what these early Pythagorean philosophers might have taught in all the details. But they probably disagreed on pretty much everything.