Pyrrho. Of Elis. About 300 B.C. Gave up painting to become a philosopher, and was the founder of the Sceptics.
Pyrrhus. King of Epirus, 295-272 B.C. The greatest general of his time, won several victories over the Romans.
Pythagoras. Born at Samos, settled at Croton in Italy. 580-510 B.C. The early Ionic philosophers, as Thales and Heraclitus, had found the origin of all things in some one principle, as water, or fire. Pythagoras found it in number and proportion; hence the name Order (κόσμος), which he first gave to the universe; hence also the mystic importance attached to certain numbers, e.g. the Decad, called Tetractys (which we have translated 'quaternion') as made by the addition of the first four integers (1+2+3+4=10), and the Pentagram, or figure resulting from the production of all the sides of a regular pentagon till they intersect. Pythagoras had travelled in Egypt, and perhaps brought thence his most famous doctrines of the immortality of the soul and transmigration; he is said to have retained the memory of his own previous existences, especially as Euphorbus the Trojan, whose shield he recognized; human knowledge, for him as for Plato, would be accounted for as recollection from earlier lives. He instituted a brotherhood of his disciples, with elaborate training and different degrees; and the Pythagorean 'Ipse dixit,' implying that what the master had said was not open to argument, marks the strict subordination; a novice had to observe silence for five years. Pythagoras left no writings, and this, combined with the mystic character of his speculations on number and his specially authoritative position, gave occasion to innumerable legends, misrepresentations, and extensions. The Pythagorean prohibition of beans as food has never been explained; see Mayor's note on Juv. xv. 174. The usual account is that he thought the souls of his parents might be in them. The story of his appearing at the Olympic games with a golden thigh is one of the later legends illustrative of his supposed assumption of superhuman qualities, which made him the model of impostors or half-impostors like Apollonius of Tyana, Alexander of Abonutichus, or Paracelsus.
Pytheas. An Athenian orator, of disreputable character; an enemy of Demosthenes.
Python. An eloquent Byzantine orator in the pay of Philip of Macedon.
Rhadamanthus. Son of Zeus and Europa, and brother of Minos. After his death, a judge in Hades.
Rhea, or Cybele. Daughter of Uranus and Ge, wife of Cronus, and mother of Zeus, Hera, Posidon, Pluto, Hestia, and Demeter. Her worship, celebrated by the Corybantes and the Galli, was of a wild and enthusiastic character. She is commonly represented as being drawn by lions. See also under Attis.
Sabazius. A Phrygian deity, of doubtful origin, commonly described as a son of Rhea.
Salamis. An island off the west coast of Attica, the scene of a great naval victory of the Athenians over the Persians in 480 B.C. It is to this victory that the oracle refers, quoted in the Zeus Tragoedus.