t is sometimes given as 525.

[281] There was a medieval tradition that he was executed because of a work
on the Trinity.

[282] Hence the _Divus_ in his name.

[283] Thus Dante, speaking of his burial place in the monastery of St.
Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, at Pavia, says:

"The saintly soul, that shows
The world's deceitfulness, to all who hear him,
Is, with the sight of all the good that is,
Blest there. The limbs, whence it was driven, lie
Down in Cieldauro; and from martyrdom
And exile came it here."--_Paradiso_, Canto X.

[284] Not, however, in the mercantile schools. The arithmetic of Boethius
would have been about the last book to be thought of in such institutions.
While referred to by Baeda (672-735) and Hrabanus Maurus (c. 776-856), it
was only after Gerbert's time that the _Boetii de institutione arithmetica
libri duo_ was really a common work.

[285] Also spelled Cassiodorius.

[286] As a matter of fact, Boethius could not have translated any work by
Pythagoras on music, because there was no such work, but he did make the
theories of the Pythagoreans known. Neither did he translate Nicomachus,
although he embodied many of the ideas of the Greek writer in his own
arithmetic. Gibbon follows Cassiodorus in these statements in his _Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire_, chap. xxxix. Martin pointed out with
positiveness the similarity of the first book of Boethius to the first five
books of Nicomachus. [_Les signes numeraux_ etc., reprint, p. 4.]

[287] The general idea goes back to Pythagoras, however.

[288] J. C. Scaliger in his _Poetice_ also said of him: "Boethii Severini
ingenium, eruditio, ars, sapientia facile provocat omnes auctores, sive
illi Graeci sint, sive Latini" [Heilbronner, _Hist. math. univ._, p. 387].
Libri, speaking of the time of Boethius, remarks: "Nous voyons du temps de
Theodoric, les lettres reprendre une nouvelle vie en Italie, les ecoles
florissantes et les savans honores. Et certes les ouvrages de Boece, de
Cassiodore, de Symmaque, surpassent de beaucoup toutes les productions du
siecle precedent." [_Histoire des mathematiques_, Vol. I, p. 78.]

[289] Carra de Vaux, _Avicenne_, Paris, 1900; Woepcke, _Sur
l'introduction_, etc.; Gerhardt, _Entstehung_ etc., p. 20. Avicenna is a
corruption from Ibn S[=i]n[=a], as pointed out by Wuestenfeld, _Geschichte
der arabischen Aerzte und Naturforscher_, Goettingen, 1840. His full name is
Ab[=u] `Al[=i] al-[H.]osein ibn S[=i