Pythagoras, the cult of Apollo, and the birth of philosophy

The cult of Apollo became increasingly prominent in Greek civilization between the eighth and fifth centuries B.C.E., while the perceived nature and attributes of that god were both changing and gaining hegemony. In the sixth century B.C.E., Pythagoras of Samos, who coined the very word "philosophy," having studied under Thales, the Orphic Pherekydes, the Egyptian priesthood, and possibly in Babylon, added into this fluid picture his own special concept of Apollo. This he promoted at Croton in Magna Graecia, where he founded the long-influential sect of Pythagoreans. The newly-defined Apollo was an abstract, unifying, mathematical and rational force or principle, qualitatively different from and superior to all other gods, and potentially available for natural and benevolent communication with human individuals in need of salvation through the new practice of philosophy, conceived as including mathematics, music and asceticism. Western philosophy, science and ethics have since largely developed from this particular conjunction of Ionian rationalism and religious innovation.