# SEP and MacTutor state that almost no contemporaneous autograph of Pythagoras survives

Date: 1999

## The fact

Stanford’s [Pythagoras](/people/pythagoras) entry and St Andrews MacTutor state that later lives, not letters or a household register, are what remain. Opacity of a famous sage is the path: later states cannot audit a diary because there is none.

## Context

High confidence on the gap. This is not GDPR. It forbids a fake 570 BCE birth Fact on this page.

Pythagoras is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official encyclopedia, Loeb, or heritage pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Pythagoras (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

## Significance

Do not invent a Samian civil file. Do write the gap.

Do not invent a Samian civil file. Do write the gap.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Pythagoras: https://factrail.ai/people/pythagoras

## Drivers

- Personal-Data Protection: https://factrail.ai/drivers/personal-data-protection

## Sources

- https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Pythagoras/
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/py-no-autograph-gap