"The sixth century [BC] was the time, and Greece the place, for human beings to reject once and for all the pernicious number mysticism of the East. Instead, Pythagoras and his followers eagerly accepted it as the celestial revelation of a higher mathematical harmony. Adding vast masses of sheer numerological nonsense of their own to an already enormous bulk, they transmitted this ancient superstition to the golden age of Greek thought, which passed it on to the first century A.D. to the decadent arithmologist Nicomachus. He, enriching his already opulent legacy with a wealth of original rubbish, left it to be sifted by the Roman Boethius, the dim mathematical light of the Middle Ages, thereby darkening the mind of Christian Europe with the venerated nonsense, and encouraging the gemaria of the Talmudists to flourish like a weed."