M.F. Burnyeat writes:

A reader who asks Riedweg, 'What, then, did Pythagoras really stand for earlier, before the Academy set to work?', gets a muddled, muddling answer. Legends are retold. Pythagoras' golden thigh is put on display once more, alongside his gift of bilocation (he was seen simultaneously in two different cities). During a visit to the temple of Hera in Argos where, ages before, the Greeks had dedicated the booty they brought home from their victory over Troy, Pythagoras recognised among the exhibits the shield he had carried when, in a previous incarnation as the warrior Euphorbus, he was killed by Menelaus. After drinking at a well in Metapontum, he correctly predicted that an earthquake would occur in three days’ time. Not that Riedweg buys into all this, but he does encourage his readers to marvel at a man around whom such legends grew.

(LRB 22 February 2007)

Cornell | paperback 216 pp. |ISBN: 9780801442407