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
Incircle and excircles of a triangle has area formula_39. Similarly, formula_40 has area formula_41 and formula_42 has area formula_43. Since these three triangles decompose formula_35, we see that the area formula_45 is: where formula_48 is the area of formula_35 and formula_50 is its semiperimeter. For an alternative formula, consider formula_51. This is a right-angled triangle with one side equal to "r" and the other side equal to formula_52. The same is true for formula_53. The large triangle is composed of 6 such triangles and the total area is: The Gergonne triangle (of "ABC") is defined by the 3 touchpoints of the incircle on the 3 sides.