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egalitarianism of the Pythagoreans, for there is no evidence that their egalitarianism applied to society in general outside the Pythagorean brotherhood. No one knows what reasons Pythagoras might have had for wishing to restore the status quo in Sybaris, or whether his reforms in Croton were motivated by personal demagoguery, a desire to strengthen the aristocratic class structure, or a wish to transform the communities to conform to higher moral standards. All the early biographers—and fervent revolutionaries of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe—were sure it was the last.
    Independent evidence speaks to Pythagoras’s impact on the economics of Croton. 6 Numismatists credit him and his first followers with the introduction of a coinage with an incuse (hammered-in) design, the earliest coinage used in Croton and the area she ruled. These coins were both beautiful and difficult to create, and those familiar with the history of minting recognize the oddity and significance of their sudden appearance in this time and place, with apparently no gradual evolutionary process leading up to or explaining their emergence. The history of coinage does not normally work this way. Not that these were the first coins. There were earlier coins—for example, in Lydia, the region east of Miletus, before 700 B.C . But an innovation like the coins in Croton would seem to indicate a polymath—a “genius of the order of Leonardo da Vinci,” in the words of the historian C. T. Seltman. 7 Given the area where the coins were used and the timing of their appearance, the inventor by default must have been Pythagoras, son of a prominent merchant with experience in a world-wide market, familiar (if his father was a gem engraver) with beautiful small design, and skilled with numbers. Aristoxenus, who had friends among the Pythagoreans of the fourth century B.C ., wrote that Pythagoras introduced certain types of weights and measures but “diverted” the study of numbers from mere mercantile practice, implying that Pythagoras also understood the useof numbers in connection with such practice. It is difficult to believe that he had nothing to do with the invention and introduction of the remarkable Crotonian coinage.
    Though Pythagoras undoubtedly made serious enemies, for many years that seemed not to hamper him or his supporters very much. Pythagorean leadership extended the area Croton dominated much further both while Pythagoras lived there and in the fifty years after his death or exile—as far as Caulonia in the south (almost to the doorstep of the old enemy, Locri) and to the sanctuary of Apollo Aleo at Ciro Marina in the north (well on the way to Sybaris). The acquisition of Ciro Marina was something to be celebrated, since already at this early date it was famous for its fine wine. To the west, Croton’s influence extended almost to the Tyrrhenian Sea, to Terina. That was the best Croton would ever do. She was no Rome.
    P ORPHYRY, MORE THAN Iamblichus or Diogenes Laertius, stressed the silence of the Pythagoreans and recognized not only its value but also how disastrous it would prove for the Pythagorean tradition. It is frustrating to find that, though Porphyry mentioned Pythagoras winning over the Crotonian rulers and described the invitations to address the youth and women—and though it was Porphyry who identified Dicaearchus as the source of this information—he made no claim to be able to report with any certainty the details of what Pythagoras told his audiences. He attributed this lack of information to Pythagorean silence. Because all three biographers tended to err on the side of believing their sources too readily rather than too little, Porphyry’s reluctance makes what he said on the matter of Pythagorean silence particularly credible. According to him, Pythagoras and those who followed him during his lifetime did not reveal their ideas, principles, or teachings, or the details of their discipline to others. They