Timycha

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Timycha of Sparta, a late 4th-century BC Pythagorean, is remembered as an example of extreme virtue. The story comes from Iamblichus’s Life of Pythagoras and shows how the Pythagoreans resisted power and followed their rules even under threat.

Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, could not win over the Pythagoreans with kindness or bribes. He sent thirty soldiers under Eurymenes to ambush a group of Pythagoreans traveling from Tarentum to Metapontum. The ten Pythagoreans, unarmed and outnumbered, chose to flee. In a field of beans they faced a dilemma: the Pythagoreans would not touch beans. So they defended themselves with stones and sticks, killing some attackers, but were eventually slain rather than captured. Eurymenes and his men buried the dead and returned home, upset that they could not seize any of the Pythagoreans.

On the road they captured Myllias the Crotonian and Timycha the Lacedaemonian, who had been left behind because Timycha was six months pregnant. Dionysius offered them great honors if they would reign with him, but they refused. He then asked for one thing: why their companions chose death rather than touch beans. Myllias replied that his companions died to avoid touching beans, but he would rather tread on beans than reveal the reason. Timycha, tortured because she was a woman and pregnant, bit off her tongue and spat it at the tyrant, proving that a Pythagorean keeps sacred knowledge secret, even under torture.