Intellectual Culture And Literary Practices 333
studied musical tones and their relationships.76 Although Boethius may have
translated introductory texts on all four disciplines of the quadrivium, his trea-
tises on geometry and astronomy have not survived.77
The thought of Plato and Aristotle occupied an important place in the
Neoplatonic system, and explicating their often contradictory views was a
major task for philosophers.78 Students learned from commentaries on earlier
works: thus Porphyry wrote his Isagoge, or introduction, as a beginner’s guide
to Aristotle’s Categories. Boethius’ approach was similar: he invested most of
his intellectual energy into traditional work with texts. Initially, he intended to
translate and comment on all the works of Plato and Aristotle in order “to show
that their opinions are not contrary in just about everything, but are in agree-
ment in many matters of the greatest importance in philosophy”.79 This ambi-
tious programme was never completed, but Boethius translated almost the
entire corpus of Aristotle’s logical works and wrote commentaries on the main
Aristotelian logical texts. He also wrote a series of logical treatises of his own.80
As a commentator, Boethius worked within the established tradition: rather
than voicing their own ideas, commentators were expected to explicate the
text and report various views on the work in question. What made a differ-
ence was their choices of issues to focus on and authorities to follow. Boethius
focused on logic and made Porphyry his main source. That led him, among
other things, to adopting Porphyry’s approach to logic and metaphysics, the
essentially Aristotelian way of thinking in which metaphysical questions were
linked to issues of language and cognition. Boethius’ translations and com-
mentaries provided the scholars of the Latin West with the vocabulary and
conceptual framework, which they used to discuss not only logic but other
areas of philosophy as well.81
76 Chadwick, Boethius, pp. 71–101.
77 Cassiodorus’ list of authors translated by Boethius included Euclid (on geometry) and
Ptolemy (on astronomy): Variae 1.45.4. See also Chadwick, Boethius, pp. 103–7. For the
geometrical treatises that circulated in the Middle Ages under the name of Boethius see
Folkerts, “Importance of the Pseudo-Boethian Geometria”.
78 Cf. Wildberg, “Philosophy in the Age of Justinian”.
79 Boethius, 2nd commentary on Aristotle’s On Interpretation 2.3, p. 80: “contempserim
Aristotelis Platonisque sententias, in unam quodammodo revocare concordiam eosque
non ut plerique dissentire in omnibus, sed in plerisque et his in philosophia maximis
consentire demonstrem.” Boethius’ statement is translated in full in Moorhead, “Boethius’
Life”, pp. 25–6.
80 Marenbon, Boethius, p. 18.
81 Marenbon, “Introduction”, pp. 3–4; essays on logic in Marenbon, Cambridge Companion to
Boethius; Kaylor, Companion to Boethius.