I agree with André's comment about the "incorrectness" of the reference to a Greek axiom of commensurability.
In
we can find some refernce to a "commensurability assumption" [page 50] and to an "axiom of commensurability" [page 51].
I strongly support the first locution; the problem of incommensurability was prior to (and the main source of) Euclid's axiomatization; thus, can be historically mesleading to speak of "axiom".
Of course, it was an (implicit) assumption common to all "archaic" Greek math: given two magnitudes, e.g. to segments of lenght $a$ and $b$, according to the assumption it is always possible to find a segment of "unit lenght" $u$ such that it measure both, i.e. such that [using modern algebraic formulae which are totally foreign to Greek math] :
$a = n \times u$ and $b = m \times u$, for $n,m \in \mathbb N$.
From the above instance of the assumption, it follows that :
$a/b = (n \times u) / (m \times u) = n/m$.
The assumption amounts to saying that the ratio between two magnitudes is always a ratio between numbers (i.e. in modern terms : a rational number; but note that for Greek math the only numbers are the natural ones and they are distinguished from magnitudes : a segment, a square, ... which are "measured" by numbers).
The well-known discovery of the existence of irrational magnitudes, through the proof that the case where $a$ is the side of the square and $b$ its diagonal is not expressible as a ratio between (natural) numbers, leads Greek math to the withdrawal of the "commensurability assumption" and to the axiomatization of geometry.
Regarding the evolution of Greek mathematics, you can see :
and :
See Knorr, page 131 :
Within such a tradition [the pythagorean one] the commensurability of all geometric magnitudes must at first have been an implicit axiom. As we have seen, this axiom met its direct refutation in the discovery of the incommensurability of the side and diameter of the square, a discovery made and disseminated sometime within the last third of the fifth century B.C.
Added
For Pythagoas and Pythagoreanism I'm referring to SEP's entries :
In the modern world Pythagoras is most of all famous as a mathematician, because of the theorem named after him, and secondarily as a cosmologist, because of the striking view of a universe ascribed to him in the later tradition, in which the heavenly bodies produce “the music of the spheres” by their movements. It should be clear from the discussion above that, while the early evidence shows that Pythagoras was indeed one of the most famous early Greek thinkers, there is no indication in that evidence that his fame was primarily based on mathematics or cosmology.
The interpretative issues are complex.
My "feeling" is that is a little bit "un-historical" to speak of axioms regarding Pythagoas' math because the idea of math as a science based on axioms and proofs of theorems dates from Aristotle and Euclid.
The extant remains of P's math are very few and second (or third) hand :
First, Pythagoras himself wrote nothing, so our knowledge of Pythagoras' views is entirely derived from the reports of others. Second, there was no extensive or authoritative contemporary account of Pythagoras. No one did for Pythagoras what Plato and Xenophon did for Socrates. Third, only fragments of the first detailed accounts of Pythagoras, written about 150 years after his death, have survived. Fourth, it is clear that these accounts disagreed with one another on significant points.
My point of view is that math for P was more like zoology or elementary chemistry : it was the study of the properties of shapes and numbers (of course, with a "perception" of the peculiarity of those kind of "objects" compared with animals or stones).
We must "read" P's math as a "science" (in a time when science and philosophy were not differentiated) and its "basic discovery" was the possibility of accounting for (describing, explaining, ...) natural facts in terms of numbers.
The paradigmatic example of this discovery is the possibility of "translating" musical notes into mathematical relations.
If we see this discovery as a (primitive) scientific law, we can understand the source of the postulate regarding commensurability : assuming that the only numbers "available" in ancient Greek math was the natural ones, the above postulate is implicit in the search (and discovery) of mathematical relations describing natural facts.
This is quite far from an axiom used in a mathematical proof.
Some further quotes form SEP's entry :
There is, moreover, no talk of mathematical proof or a deductive system in the passage from Aristoxenus [...]. Pythagoras is known for the honor he gives to number and for removing it from the practical realm of trade and instead pointing to correspondences between the behavior of number and the behavior of things. Such correspondences were highlighted in Aristotle's book on the Pythagoreans, e.g., the female is likened to the number two and the male to the number three and their sum, five, is likened to marriage.
Proclus does not ascribe a proof of the theorem to Pythagoras but rather goes on to contrast Pythagoras as one of those “knowing the truth of the theorem” with Euclid who not only gave the proof found in Elements I.47 but also a more general proof in VI.31. Although a number of modern scholars have speculated on what sort of proof Pythagoras might have used (e.g., Heath 1956, 352 ff.), it is important to note that there is not a jot of evidence for a proof by Pythagoras; what we know of the history of Greek geometry makes such a proof by Pythagoras improbable, since the first work on the elements of geometry, upon which a rigorous proof would be based, is not attested until Hippocrates of Chios, who was active after Pythagoras in the latter part of the fifth century (Proclus, A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements, 66). All that this tradition ascribes to Pythagoras, then, is discovery of the truth contained in the theorem. The truth may not have been in general form but rather focused on the simplest such triangle (with sides 3, 4 and 5), pointing out that such a triangle and all others like it will have a right angle.