Pythagoreanism to have survived as part of, or deeply influenced, the Bacchic cults and Orphism. Pythagoras was already in ancient times well known for the mathematical achievement of the Pythagorean theorem. Although the Babylonians had used this formula for centuries, Pythagoras had discovered that "in a right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the squares of the other two sides". In ancient times Pythagoras was also noted for his discovery that music had mathematical foundations. Antique sources that credit Pythagoras as the philosopher who first discovered music intervals also credit him as the inventor of the monochord, a
Hypotenuse is the square root of 25, that is, 5. The word "hypotenuse" is derived from Greek (sc. or ), meaning "[side] subtending the right angle" (Apollodorus), The Greek term was loaned into Late Latin, as "hypotēnūsa". Adoption as a learned Latinism used in modern languages dates to the 16th century. The spelling in "-e", as "hypotenuse", is French in origin (Estienne de La Roche 1520). The length of the hypotenuse is calculated using the square root function implied by the Pythagorean theorem. Using the common notation that the length of the two legs of the triangle (the sides perpendicular to