 The most influential texts for the conception of Pythagoras in the Latin Middle Ages and early Renaissance were Boethius’ (480–524 CE) De Institutione Arithmetica and De Institutione Musica, which are virtually translations of the Neopythagorean Nicomachus’ (second century CE) Introduction to Arithmetic and Introduction to Music (this larger work is now lost, but a smaller Handbook of Harmonics survives). Boethius followed Nicomachus’ classification of four mathematical sciences depending on the nature of their objects (arithmetic deals with multitude in itself, music with relative multitude, geometry with unmoving magnitudes and astronomy with magnitude in motion). Boethius introduced the term quadrivium, “fourfold road” to understanding, to refer to these four sciences. In music theory, Boethius presents the Pythagoreans as taking a middle position, which gives a role in harmonics to both reason and perception. His presentation of the Pythagorean position was central to music theory for over a thousand years (Hicks 2014, 424). Boethius recounts the apocryphal story of Pythagoras’ discovery in a blacksmith’s shop of the ratios that govern the concordant intervals (Mus. I 10). 