Pythagoras and the Quadrivium from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages

The present paper has two main goals. The first is to illustrate the two most influential portraits of Pythagoras as philosopher, described in such a way because of his research in the four mathematical disciplines. These portraits are by Nicomachus and Boethius, and special attention is paid to how, for Boethius, Pythagoras “invented” music. The second aim is to consider how the idea of Pythagoras as father of the quadrivium was transmitted from Antiquity to the Middle Ages up to the thirteenth century, when the impact of the Aristotelian natural philosophy fostered an interpretation of Pythagoras’ theory of numbers as one which was autonomous from the quadrivial frame. This paper deals only with references concerning Pythagoras, not “the Pythagoreans”; nonetheless, it does not enter into the complex question of whether the historical Pythagoras was really a mathematician.