# Modern encyclopedia entries print a secretive school as the received organisation

Date: 1999

## The fact

SEP and Britannica print a brotherhood that hid doctrines. Secrecy of a political-religious club is an opacity-of-office path of medium/low confidence.

## Context

Not a finding of embezzlement. A received secret society as later told.

[Pythagoras](/people/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

Printed secrecy is not a 6th-century minute-book.

Printed secrecy is not a 6th-century minute-book.

## 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

- Institutional Corruption: https://factrail.ai/drivers/institutional-corruption

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pythagoras
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/py-secret-school-opacity