What did Melville mean by the "Pythagorean Maxim" in "Moby Dick"? From Herman Melville's _Moby Dick_. > For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. I understand the Pythagorean theorem (a^2 + b^2 = c^2) but I'm not sure what he means in applying it to head winds and winds from astern.

By “the Pythagorean maxim” Melville means the forbidding of eating beans, which was believed in antiquity to have been one of the rules of the Pythagorean cult.

> Plato then asserts that we should bring our bodies into such a disposition before we go to sleep as to leave nothing which may occasion error or perturbation in our dreams. For this reason, perhaps, **Pythagoras laid it down as a rule, that his disciples should not eat beans** , because this food is very flatulent, and contrary to that tranquillity of mind which a truth-seeking spirit should possess.
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> Marcus Tullius Cicero (44 BCE). _On Divination_ 1.30. Translated by C. D. Yonge (1853).

The passage from _Moby-Dick_ is thus a fart joke: if you “violate the Pythagorean maxim” (eat beans) then you will find that “winds from astern” (farts) become prevalent.