On the Principles of Arithmetic and On the Principles of Music

TO HIS LORD, THE PATRICIAN SYMMACHUS, BOETHIUS.

In the giving and receiving of gifts, the obligations between those who hold each other in high regard are most rightly valued if it is perfectly clear that the giver could find nothing more generous 5 to offer, and the receiver nothing more delightful to embrace with goodwill. Reflecting on these things myself, I have brought to you not the heavy, idle weight of riches—which serves as nothing so much as an instrument for wickedness when the thirst for possession is inflamed, and is of no value to merit once a victorious mind has trampled it underfoot—but rather 10 those things which I have gathered together, taken from the opulence of Greek literature into the storehouse of Roman speech. Boethius is explaining his life's work: translating the essential knowledge of the Greeks (the "liberal arts") into Latin so that it would not be lost to the Roman world after the fall of the Western Empire. For in this way, the purpose of my own work will be established, if what I have drawn from the doctrines of wisdom is approved by the judgment of the wisest of men. You see, therefore, that the result of so much labor looks only to 15 your scrutiny, and it must not reach the ears of the public unless it relies on the testimony of a learned opinion. In this, nothing should seem strange, since a work that follows the discoveries of wisdom depends not on the author’s judgment but on another’s; for matters of reason are weighed by their own instruments when they are compelled to undergo the judgment of a man of prudence. But for this small gift, I do not establish the same 20 protections that stand over other arts, nor indeed

1 Here begins the letter of Boethius to Symmachus the patrician, his father-in-law, a man of distinguished rank original: v. c. for vir clarissimus. To his lord the patrician Symmachus, Boethius. Manilius Severinus Boethius's full name was Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius. flourished in the times of Theodoric, king of the Italians, and translated this little book from Greek into Latin and adorned it with the flowers of Roman eloquence. Here begins the book of Boethius on Arithmetic. This identifies the source manuscript a. || "his" original: suo omitted in manuscripts d, l. || "to his father" original: patri, likely a scribe's error for patricio in d, l, r. || "To his Lord... Boethius" omitted in f, s. 2 "most rightly" original: ita recte in the margin of r, and above the line in s. 5 "offer" original: offerret in c, d, f, r. 8 after "instrument": "and" original: et in a, and in c by correction in d; "is" original: est in f, s. 12 "to me of the work" original: operis mihi in a, c, d, f, l, s. 14 "awaits" original: exspectet in b || "looks to" original: spectet with a previous erasure in a. 17 "which" original: quod omitted in f. 21 "establish protections" original: constituo munimenta in a, b.