Croton

Certain · Calabria, Italy

A Greek city of southern Italy famous for its athletes (Milo above all) and its physicians before Pythagoras arrived from Samos and made it the seat of his order: several hundred disciples holding goods in common, bound by silence, hearing that all things are number. The order’s political power ended in fire and massacre, but its doctrine — transmigration, purification, the kinship of all life — flowed through Empedocles into Plato and never left.