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
Proofs of Fermat's theorem on sums of two squares formula_196. The area of the fundamental parallelogram (in this case a rectangle) of the lattice is formula_82. The area of the open disk, formula_198, of radius formula_199 centered around the origin is formula_200. Furthermore, formula_198 is convex and symmetrical about the origin. Therefore, by Minkowski's theorem there exists a nonzero vector formula_196 such that formula_203. Both formula_204 and formula_205 so formula_206. Hence formula_82 is the sum of the squares of the components of formula_208. Let formula_209 be prime, let formula_210 denote the natural numbers (with or without zero), and consider the finite set formula_211 of triples of numbers. Then formula_212