XI

SCIENTIFIC CULTURE

Also it was Pythagoras who carried geometry to perfection, after Moeris had first found out the principles of the elements of that science, as Aristiclides tells us in the second book of History of Alexander; and the part of the science to which Pythagoras applied himself above all others, was arithmetic. He also discovered the numerical relation of sounds on a single string; he also studied medicine. Apollodorus the logician recounts of him that he sacrificed a hecatomb, when he had discovered that the square of the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle was equal to the squares of the sides containing the right angle. There is an epigram which is couched in the following terms:

"When the great Samian sage his noble problem found,
A hundred oxen with their life-blood dyed the ground."