Some say that the Pythagoreans tossed Hippasus overboard, drowning him, a just punishment for ruining a beautiful theory with harsh facts. Ancient sources talk about his perishing at sea for his impiety, or alternatively, say that the brotherhood banished him and constructed a tomb for him, expelling him from the world of human beings. But whatever Hippasus’s true fate was, there is little doubt that he was reviled by his brothers. The secret he revealed shook the very foundations of the Pythagorean doctrine, but by considering the irrational an anomaly, the Pythagoreans could keep the
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