De arithmetica

In De institutione arithmeticae artis libri duo, Boetius (this, rather than the generally 'Boethius', is how the manuscripts spell his name) shows himself a skillful and stylistically accomplished renderer of the Introduction to Arithmetic by the Neopythagorean Nicomachus of Gerasa. As Boetius explains in the preface of his work, his adaptation follows 'the itinerary, not the footprints', of the Greek original, condensing where possible, and amplifying on the abstruse. For the present edition, about forty manuscripts from the ninth and tenth centuries were examined, and twenty of these were exhaustively collated. The apparatus fontium reflects the indebtedness of Boetian number theory to the Neopythagorean tradition, mainly Nicomachus, Theo of Smyrna and Iamblichus of Chalcis. A detailed analytical index of mathematical concepts, definitions and technical terms completes the volume.

Boethius — De institutione arithmetica ( CPL 879 ) — ed. H. Oosthout, J. Schilling