| Arithmetica Boetij | |
| 1488 |  |
| Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius(c. 480-524) | |
|
Boetius, a Romen aristocrat who in the short span of his life became a close friend of the Ostrogothic emperor Theodoric, held a high position at the emperor’s court in Ravenna, was falsely charged with treason, and finally executed in Pavia, was the last Roman who could understand the Greek language. He has been called by Sarton “the last Roman philosopher and writer and the first of the scholastics”. Boerius wrote several basic treatises on geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music, which were based on the works of Eucleides, Nicomachus and Ptolemaios. His own works were sometimes incomplete and obscure, but it was solely through those works that Western Europe came to know the important results of Greek science. Boetius also intended to translate the entire works of Plato and Aristotele into Latin, but this ambitious plan was never realized. He did, however make several Latin translations of Aristotele’s analytic works on logic. His Latin translation of Aristotelean’s work were in particular the sole source for Aristotelean thought during the middle Ages. This work in first edition of Boerius’s Arithmetica, which served as a standard textbook in church schools throughout the middle Ages. Boerius based this book on the work of the Greek mathematician Nicomachus (fl.100-A.D.). The book therefore deals with the theory numbers distinguished from practical calculations, the theory of proportion and Pythegorean figurate numbers, such as triangular, square, pentagonal and cubic numbers and divides mathematics according to the plan of Nicomachus into four departments, that is arithmetic, music geometry and astronomy, which he called the “quadrium”, a word that was used commonly throughout the mediaeval period. |
