Eurytus

Eurytus was an eminent Pythagorean philosopher from Magna Graecia who lived around 400 BC. According to Iamblichus, he was a native of Croton, or a Tarentine Pythagorean. He was a disciple of Philolaus. Diogenes Laërtius mentions him among the teachers of Plato, though this is considered doubtful. It is uncertain if Eurytus authored any works, though a fragment in Stobaeus is attributed to an Eurytus. A mediaeval commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics presented a highly questionable image of Eurytus as a mosaic-setter who used pebbles to represent numbers and shapes, such as defining a human being by 250 pebbles of various colors. This interpretation has been strongly contested by scholars like Reviel Netz, who argue that while earlier philosophers like Theophrastus and Aristotle found Eurytus's results questionable, they did not view his methods as silly. Netz suggests an alternative translation of Aristotle's work that views Eurytus as assigning specific numbers to things, similar to how numbers define geometric figures.