21 July: Damo, daughter of Pythagoras

In ancient Greece, today was the Feast of Damo, a female philosopher and daughter of Pythagoras. Not much is known about her life but here are 10 things I was able to glean:

1. She was born in Crotona, Italy.
2. Pythagoras was her father; her mother was Theano of Crotona, another philosopher. Damo had two sisters, Arignote and Myia, and two brothers, Telauges and Mnesarchus.
3. The entire family belonged to the Pythagorean school, which believed that our life on Earth is simply a means to purify the soul. It stressed moderation and the study of mathematics, because the order of the world was derived from numbers.
4. No writing attributed to Damo survives, but she may well have contributed to some of the work attributed to Pythagoras. We can't know for sure, because it was the custom of the Pythagorean school to attribute all their work to their master in testimony to his greatness.
5. Damo was a student, and later a teacher, at this school.
6. At some point the Pythagorean school in Crotona closed, and Damo emigrated to Athens, where she belonged to the class of people known as "Athenian Strangers".
7. In Athens, she was an associate of two more philosophers from her home town. Thymaridas, a Pythagorean known for his work on prime numbers, and Philolaus, who was one of the first to put forward the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
8. Pythagoras trusted her integrity enough that he willed his written works to her and she became the custodian of them after he died. It may be that it's only because she did such a good job of looking after them that we know anything about his work today.
9. After her father died, Damo would have been extremely poor. One thing she would never do, however, is sell her father's writings. He had forbidden that she do so, and she would have believed that his work was more precious than Gold.
10. In due course, she passed the writings on to her own daughter, Bitale. Damo married Meno the Crotonian. According to Iamblichus, Bitale's husband was Telauges, the son of Pythagoras – suggesting that Damo and Meno married their daughter off to her uncle.

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