Lysis of Taras

Taranto

Taranto is a coastal city in Apulia, Southern Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Taranto and is an important commercial port as well as the main Italian naval base....

' onMouseout='HidePop("60907")' href="/topics/Floruit">fl.

Floruit

Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...

 c. 5th-century BC) was a Greek

Magna Graecia

Magna Græcia is the name of the coastal areas of Southern Italy on the Tarentine Gulf that were extensively colonized by Greek settlers; particularly the Achaean colonies of Tarentum, Crotone, and Sybaris, but also, more loosely, the cities of Cumae and Neapolis to the north...

 philosopher. His life is obscure. He was said to have been a friend and disciple of Pythagoras

Pythagoras

Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him...

. After the persecution of the Pythagoreans

Pythagoreanism

Pythagoreanism was the system of esoteric and metaphysical beliefs held by Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans, who were considerably influenced by mathematics. Pythagoreanism originated in the 5th century BCE and greatly influenced Platonism...

 at Croton

Crotone

Crotone is a city and comune in Calabria, southern Italy, on the Ionian Sea. Founded circa 710 BC as the Achaean colony of Croton , it was known as Cotrone from the Middle Ages until 1928, when its name was changed to the current one. In 1994 it became the capital of the newly established...

 and Metapontum

Metapontum

Metapontum, Metapontium or Metapontion , was an important city of Magna Graecia, situated on the gulf of Tarentum, between the river Bradanus and the Casuentus . It was distant about 20 km from Heraclea and 40 from Tarentum...

 he escaped and went to Thebes, where he became the teacher of Epaminondas

Epaminondas

Epaminondas , or Epameinondas, was a Theban general and statesman of the 4th century BC who transformed the Ancient Greek city-state of Thebes, leading it out of Spartan subjugation into a preeminent position in Greek politics...

, by whom he was held in the highest esteem. There are, however, serious chronological difficulties with him being both a disciple of Pythagoras and the teacher of Epaminondas.

Lysis was credited as the actual author of a work which was attributed to Pythagoras himself. Diogenes Laërtius

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is definitively known about his life...

 quotes from an undoubtedly spurious letter from Lysis to Hippasus

Hippasus

Hippasus of Metapontum in Magna Graecia, was a Pythagorean philosopher. Little is known about his life or his beliefs, but he is sometimes credited with the discovery of the existence of irrational numbers.-Life:...

 as an authority for some statements concerning Damo.