Pythagoras lived in Croton for thirty years. Within twenty years this extraordinary man had acquired such power that those who called him a demi-god were not looked upon as exaggerating. This power seemed to have something miraculous about it, no like influence had ever been exercised by a philosopher. It extended not merely to the school of Croton and its ramifications in other towns on the coast of Italy, but even to the politics of all these small states. Pythagoras was a reformer in the whole acceptation of the term. Croton, a colony of Achaïa, had an aristocratic constitution. The _Council of the Thousand_, drawn from the noblest families, carried on the legislative and kept watch over the executive power. Popular assemblies existed, though their power was restricted. Pythagoras, who wished the State to be all order and harmony, was no more enamoured of oligarchical compression than of the chaos of demagogy. Accepting the Doric constitution as it was, he simply tried to introduce a fresh mechanism into it. The idea was a bold one, for it consisted in the creation, over and above the political power, of a scientific one with a deliberative and consultative voice in questions of vital interest, and becoming the key-stone, the supreme regulator of the State. Above the Council of the Thousand, he organized the _Council of the Three Hundred_, chosen by the former, but recruited from among the initiates alone. The number was sufficient for the task. Porphyrus relates that two thousand of the citizens of Croton gave up their wonted mode of living and united in order to live together with their wives and children after placing their possessions in one common stock. It was thus the wish of Pythagoras that at the head of the State there should be a scientific government, not so mysterious though quite as important as the Egyptian priesthood. What he realized for a short time remained the dream of all such initiates as dealt with politics, viz. the introduction of the principle of initiation and examination into the government of the State, and the reconciliation in this superior synthesis of the elective or democratic principle with a government constituted of a select number of intelligent and virtuous citizens. The result was that the Council of the Three Hundred formed a kind of political, scientific and religious order, of which Pythagoras himself was the recognized head. The members were bound to him by a solemn and an awful oath of absolute secrecy, as was the case in the Mysteries. These societies or ἑταιρεῖαι spread from Croton, the seat of the original society, throughout almost the whole of the towns in Greater Greece, where they exercised a powerful political influence. The Pythagorean order also tended to become the head of the State throughout the whole of Southern Italy. Its ramifications extended to Tarentum, Heracleium, Metapontum, Rhegium, Himera, Catana, Agrigentum, Sybaris and, according to Aristoxenes, even among the Etruscans.