The Hindu-Arabic Numerals c9.57

c9.57

⁵ 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 numériques* etc., reprint, p. 4.]