Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, Charles Seife, 2000 ISBN 0-670-88457-X, Call number QA141.S45

Page 10 This calendar was the ancestor of our own calendar; the Egyptian system was adopted by Greece and then by Rome, where it was modified by adding leap years, and then became the standard calendar of the Western world.

Page 38-39 The secret he (Hippasus) revealed shook the very foundations of the Pythagorean doctrine, but by considering the irrational an anomaly, the Pythagoreans could keep the irrationals from contaminating their view of the universe. .... The irrationals did not kill Pythagoras. Beans did.

... Neverthless, they all imply that the master (Pythagoras) died in a bizarre way. Some say Pythagoras starved himself, but the most common versions all say that beans were his undoing. .. (while fleeing for his life).. He declared that he would rather be killed than cross the field of beans. His pursuers were more than happy to oblige. They cut his throat.

...

So it was not ignorance that led the Greeks to reject zero, nor was it the restrictive Greek number-shape system. It was philosophy. Zero conflicted with the fundamental philosophical beliefs of the West, for contained within zero are two ideas that were poisonous to Western doctrine. Indeed, the concepts would eventuall destroy Aristotelian philosophy after its long reign. These dangerous ideas are the void and the infinite.