 Although Rome’s special connection to Pythagoras thus had earlier roots, those roots alone do not explain the efflorescence of Pythagoreanism in golden age Latin literature; some stimulus probably came from the rebirth of what were seen as Pythagorean practices in the way certain people lived. The two most learned figures in Rome of the first century BCE, Nigidius Figulus and Varro, both have connections to Pythagorean ritual practices. Thus we are told that Varro (116–27 BCE) was buried according to the Pythagorean fashion in myrtle, olive and black poplar leaves (Pliny, Nat. XXXV 160). Amongst Varro’s voluminous works was the Hebdomadês (“Sevens”), a collection of 700 portraits of famous men, in the introduction to which Varro engaged in praise for the number 7, which is similar to the numerology of later Neopythagorean works such as Nicomachus’ Theology of Arithmetic; in another work Varro presents a theory of gestation, which has Pythagorean connections, in that it is based on the whole number ratios that correspond to the concordant intervals in music (Rawson 1985, 161).