_[239] (the Greek _o_), being
sometimes written o or [Greek: ph] to distinguish it from the letter _o_.
It also went by the name _null_[240] (in the Latin books {62} _nihil_[241]
or _nulla_,[242] and in the French _rien_[243]), and very commonly by the
name _cipher_.[244] Wallis[245] gives one of the earliest extended
discussions of the various forms of the word, giving certain other
variations worthy of note, as _ziphra_, _zifera_, _siphra_, _ciphra_,
_tsiphra_, _tziphra,_ and the Greek [Greek: tziphra].[246]

* * * * *

{63}

CHAPTER V

THE QUESTION OF THE INTRODUCTION OF THE NUMERALS INTO EUROPE BY BOETHIUS

Just as we were quite uncertain as to the origin of the numeral forms, so
too are we uncertain as to the time and place of their introduction into
Europe. There are two general theories as to this introduction. The first
is that they were carried by the Moors to Spain in the eighth or ninth
century, and thence were transmitted to Christian Europe, a theory which
will be considered later. The second, advanced by Woepcke,[247] is that
they were not brought to Spain by the Moors, but that they were already in
Spain when the Arabs arrived there, having reached the West through the
Neo-Pythagoreans. There are two facts to support this second theory: (1)
the forms of these numerals are characteristic, differing materially from
those which were brought by Leonardo of Pisa from Northern Africa early in
the thirteenth century (before 1202 A.D.); (2) they are essentially those
which {64} tradition has so persistently assigned to Boethius (c. 500
A.D.), and which he would naturally have received, if at all, from these
same Neo-Pythagoreans or from the sources from which they derived them.
Furthermore, Woepcke points out that the Arabs on entering Spain (711 A.D.)
would naturally have followed their custom of adopting for the computation
of taxes the numerical systems of the countries they conquered,[248] so
that the numerals brought from Spain to Italy, not having undergone the
same modifications as those of the Eastern Arab empire, would have
differed, as they certainly did, from those that came through Bagdad. The
theory is that the Hindu system, without the zero, early reached Alexandria
(say 450 A.D.), and that the Neo-Pythagorean love for the mysterious and
especially for the Oriental led to its use as something bizarre and
cabalistic; that it was then passed along the Mediterranean