Diogenes Laertius, in his Lives of the Philosophers (3rd century AD), includes Alcmaeon among the Pythagoreans and says that he studied with Pythagoras (VIII. 83). Later authors such as Iamblichus (VP 104, 267), Philoponus (De An. p. 88), and the scholiast on Plato (Alc. 121e) also call Alcmaeon a Pythagorean. A majority of scholars up to the middle of the twentieth century followed this tradition. However, it is not true that the ancient “tradition is unanimous in presenting him as a Pythagorea