# Philolaus — The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers character guide

> Philolaus in The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0078-philolaus

## Snapshot

A Crotonian Pythagorean who wrote down what the master only whispered, and was killed by his own city for a tyrant's ambition he may never have had.

## Who they are

Philolaus of Crotona, pupil of Pythagoras, is the man through whom the school's secret doctrines reached the outside world — Plato himself is said to have acquired his book, and from it to have drawn the Timaeus. He taught that the earth moves in a circle and that harmony and necessity generate everything, making him one of the earliest to put the heavens in motion rather than fix them in place. Yet Crotona executed him on suspicion of plotting tyranny, a death his own epigram treats as proof that innocence is no defense against a suspicious city.

## In the story

### [Philolaus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/chapters/philolaus)

A Pythagorean from Crotona, pupil of Pythagoras, first to write a treatise on natural philosophy; died under suspicion of tyranny.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/philolaus
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