Pythagoras triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal [to the sum of] the squares of the two other sides"—that is, formula_1. According to a popular legend, after he discovered this theorem, Pythagoras sacrificed an ox, or possibly even a whole "hecatomb", to the gods. Cicero rejected this story as spurious because of the much more widely held belief that Pythagoras forbade blood sacrifices. Porphyry attempted to explain the story by asserting that the ox was actually made of dough. The Pythagorean theorem was known and used by the Babylonians and Indians centuries before Pythagoras, but it is possible that he
Pythagorean prime Pythagorean prime A Pythagorean prime is a prime number of the form 4"n" + 1. Pythagorean primes are exactly the odd prime numbers that are the sum of two squares; this characterization is Fermat's theorem on sums of two squares. Equivalently, by the Pythagorean theorem, they are the odd prime numbers "p" for which is the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle with integer legs, and they are also the prime numbers "p" for which "p" itself is the hypotenuse of a Pythagorean triangle. For instance, the number 5 is a Pythagorean prime; is the hypotenuse of a