urpose, and for the sake of the light that it throws on
these scholars, and the desire for information that must have existed
very commonly since they were tempted to do the work, it seems worth
while to mention here their names, and those of the books they wrote,
with something of their significance, though the space will not permit
us to give here much more than a brief _catalogue raisonne_ of such
works.

Very probably the first who should be mentioned in the list is Boethius,
who flourished in the early part of the sixth century. He owed much of
his education to his adoptive father, afterwards his father-in-law,
Symmachus, who, with Festus, represented scholarship at the court of the
Gothic King, Theodoric of Verona. These three--Festus, Symmachus, and
Boethius--brought such a reputation for knowledge to the court that they
are responsible for many of the wonderful legends of Dietrich of Bern,
as Theodoric came to be called in the poems of the medieval German
poets. The three distinguished and devoted scholars did much to save
Greek culture at a time when its extinction was threatened, and Boethius
particularly left a series of writings that are truly encyclopedic in
character. There are five books on music, two on arithmetic, one on
geometry, translations of Aristotle's treatises on logic, with
commentaries; of Porphyry's "Isagoge," with commentaries, and a
commentary on Cicero's "Topica." Besides, he wrote several treatises in
logic and rhetoric himself, one on the use of the syllogism, and one on
topics, and in addition a series of theological works. His great
"Consolations of Philosophy" was probably the most read book in the
early Middle Ages. It was translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred,
into old German by Notker Teutonicus, the German monk of St. Gall, and
its influence may be traced in Beowulf, in Chaucer, in High German
poetry, in Anglo-Norman and Provencal popular poetry, and also in early
Italian verse. Above all, the "Divine Comedy" has many references to it,
while the "Convito" would seem to show that it was probably the book
that most influenced Dante. Though it is impossible to confirm by
documentary evidence the generally accepted idea that Boethius died a
martyr for Christianity, the tradition can be traced so far back, and it
has been so generally accepted that this seems surely to have been the
case. The fact is interesting, as showing the attitude of scholars
towards the Church and of the Ch