The Problem With Early Pythagoreanism

Most of our evidence comes from late antique Doxographic Materials. Much of this is based on earlier materials, sometimes directly quoted. It's very difficult to see the pre-platonic Pythagoreans through the platonic and Platonist fog. But we do have one definite and one likely candidate for a source of genuine early Pythagoreanism. We're going to look at Phil de Laueis briefly as a kind of case study. And then the problem of neo-Pythagoreanism has the greatest influence on Western esotericism.