J/,1 /y/A.1/. I TICAL SCIENCES. 



79 



science, made a Latin translation of the " Cosmography," to which he appended 

 various mathemathical works, some translated from the Greek, others of his 

 own composition, none of which have come down to us. We still possess 

 two books on Geometry by Boethius, but we have lost his > Latin translations 

 of the treatise of Nicomachus upon Arithmetic, of the " Geometry" of Euclid, 

 of a treatise upon the Squaring of the Circle, as also several original treatises 

 in which he commented with great erudition on the cosmogonic doctrines of 

 Pythagoras and Ptolemy. King Theodoric, who afterwards had him put to a 



Fig. 57. The Planetary Systems. Fac-simile of a Wood Engraving attributed to Holbein in the 

 German Translation of the " Consolation of Philosophy," by Boethius, Augsburg Edition, 

 1537, in folio. 



cruel death (525), at that time wrote to him in the following complimentary 

 terms : " By means of your Latin translations, Rome has received from you 

 all the sciences and arts which the Greeks had brought to such a high pitch 

 of perfection. Those who know both Latin and Greek will prefer your 

 translations to the original. The four portions of mathematics have been to 

 you a sort of door, as it were, giving admittance to the science of mechanics, 

 and this science you have extracted from the very entrails of nature." 



The school of Alexandria was the centre of mathematical studies, and 

 Boethius undertook to acquaint the Roman world with the principal works of 



