This volume is the first comprehensive study of the content, form and goal of the Peripatetic historiography of science. The book first analyses similar trends in Presocratic, Sophistic and Platonic thought, and then focuses on Aristotle's student Eudemos of Rhodes. His work is the basis of the Peripatetic historiography of science which greatly contributed to the development of this genre in medieval Arabia and in Europe in the 16^th-18^th centuries.

In ancient tradition, Pythagoras (c. 570 - c. 495 BC) emerges as a wise teacher, an outstanding mathematician, an influential politician, and as a religious and ethical reformer. Arguably the most influential thinker among the Presocratics, he was thought to have possessed supernatural qualities. This combination of characteristics has led to his portrayal as a controversial and elusive figure. In contrast, his early Pythagorean followers, such as the doctors Democedes and Alcmaeon, the Olympic victors Milon and Iccus, the botanist Menestor, the natural philosopher Hippon, and the...