The quest for truth is a passionate adventure, while philosophy is a total commitment. Such are the values that marked the exceptional destiny of Pythagoras, whose genius was equalled only by the mystery that still surrounds him. This is an atypical book that completely renews the approach to an enigma dating back twenty-five centuries. Thoroughly documented but resolutely freed from the conventions and stereotypes of a certain critical tradition coming from Aristotle, it aims to unveil new perspectives on the 'Pythagorean question', which should -at last- enable everyone to penetrate the intimacy of the Master of Samos' thought, with a chance to rediscover the path to a lost wisdom.

In a culture where the supernatural possessed an immediacy now strange to us, magic was of great importance both in the literary mythic tradition and in ritual practice. In this book, Daniel Ogden presents 300 texts in new translations, along with brief but explicit commentaries. Authors include the well known (Sophocles, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Pliny) and the less familiar, and extend across the whole of Graeco-Roman antiquity.

This is a comprehensive, authoritative and innovative account of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism, one of the most enigmatic and influential philosophies in the West. In twenty-one chapters covering a timespan from the sixth century BC to the seventeenth century AD, leading scholars construct a number of different images of Pythagoras and his community, assessing current scholarship and offering new answers to central problems. Chapters are devoted to the early Pythagoreans, and the full breadth of Pythagorean thought is explored including politics, religion, music theory, science, mathematics and magic. Separate chapters consider Pythagoreanism in Plato, Aristotle, the Peripatetics and the later Academic tradition, while others describe Pythagoreanism in the historical tradition, in Rome and in the pseudo-Pythagorean writings. The three great lives of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry and Iamblichus are also discussed in detail, as is the significance of Pythagoras for the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

The Vertical Plane: The Mystery of the Dodleston Messages: A unique supernatural detective story.