Didascalicon, Book III: the art of study (discipline and method)
Chapter II. On the authors of the arts
The theologian among the Greeks was Linus, among the Latins Varro; and in our own time John Scotus, who treated of the ten categories as applied to God. Natural physics among the Greeks was discovered by Thales of Miletus, one of the Seven Wise Men; among the Latins Pliny describes it. Arithmetic was discovered by Pythagoras of Samos; Nicomachus wrote it. Among the Latins first Apuleius, then Boethius translated it. This same Pythagoras also made the Mathematic tetrad, that is, the book on the doctrine of the quadrivium, and invented the letter Y after the likeness of human life. The discoverer of music Moses says was Tubal, who was of the stock of Cain; the Greeks say Pythagoras, others Mercury, who first set up the tetrachord; others Linus, or Zetus, or Amphion. Geometry they say was first discovered in Egypt; its best author among the Greeks was Euclid. Boethius translated his art; Eratosthenes also was very sagacious in geometry, who discovered the circumference of the earth. They say that Ham, son of Noe, first invented astronomy. The Chaldeans first taught astrology, according to the observation of nativity. Josephus, however, asserts that Abraham first taught astrology among the Egyptians. Astronomy was restored by Ptolemy, king of Egypt. He also established the canons by which the courses of the stars are found. Some say that the giant Nembroth was a supreme astrologer, under whose name astronomy is also found. The Greeks say this art was first devised by Atlas, for which reason he is also said to have held up the heavens. The inventor of ethics was Socrates, of which he handed down twenty-four books according to positive justice. Then Plato his disciple wrote many books On the Republic according to both justices, the natural namely and the positive. Tully in the Latin language composed books On the Republic. The philosopher Fronto also wrote a book of Stratagems, that is, of military subtlety. The mechanical had various authors. Hesiod of Ascra was the first among the Greeks to apply himself to describing rural things. Then Democritus; Mago also of Carthage composed the study of agriculture in twenty-seven volumes; among the Latins Cato first made a work On Agriculture, which Marcus Terentius Varro afterwards polished. Virgil also wrote the Georgics. Then Cornelius and Julius Atticus Aemilianus, or Columella, the eminent orator, who embraced the whole body of this discipline. Palladius also wrote On Agriculture; Vitruvius On Architecture. The use of wool-working among the Greeks they say Minerva first showed. They say she also first set up the loom and dyed wool, and they believe her the discoverer of the olive and of the forge. From her Daedalus learned; and he himself after her is believed to have made the forge. In Egypt, however, Isis, daughter of Inachus, discovered the use of sowing flax, and showed how garments were made from it. Likewise she discovered there the use of wool. In Libya the use of wool first arose from the temple of Ammon. Ninus, king of the Assyrians, first made war. They believe Vulcan was the first smith. Divine history, however, asserts Tubal. Prometheus first, setting a stone in an iron circle, invented the use of the ring. The use of ships the Pelasgians first discovered. Ceres first in Greece, at Eleusis, discovered the use of grain; Isis in Egypt. Pilumnus in Italy the use of grain and spelt, and the rite of grinding and kneading. Tagus in Spain the rite of sowing. Osiris in Egypt discovered the cultivation of vines, Liber among the Indians. Daedalus first made a table and a chair. A certain Roman Apicius first composed the preparation of the kitchen, who at length, having consumed his goods in that matter, perished by a voluntary death. The author of medicine among the Greeks was Apollo. His son Aesculapius increased it by praise and work; after he perished by lightning, the care of healing was long interrupted, and lay hidden for almost five hundred years, until the time of King Artaxerxes. Then Hippocrates, born of Asclepius his father in the island of Cos, recalled it to light. Games are believed to have taken their beginning from the Lydians, who coming from Asia settled in Etruria under their leader Tyrrhenus; and there, among the rest of the rites of their superstitions, they instituted spectacles; this custom the Romans imitated, summoning craftsmen from there, and hence the games were called Lydian. The letters of the Hebrews are believed to have taken their beginning from Moses through the Law; those of the Chaldeans and Syrians through Abraham; the letters of the Egyptians Isis invented; of the Greeks the Phoenicians, which Cadmus brought from Phoenicia into Greece. Carmentis, mother of Evander, who was properly named Nicostrata, discovered the Latin letters. Divine history Moses first wrote. Among the Gentiles Dares the Phrygian first published the Trojan history, which they say was written by him on palm leaves. After Dares in Greece the historian Herodotus was first held. After him Pherecydes flourished in the same times in which Esdras wrote the Law. Fables are believed to have been first invented by Alcinon [or Alcman] of Croton. Egypt is the mother of the arts; from there they came to Greece, then to Italy. In it grammar was first discovered, in the time of Osiris the husband of Isis. In it also dialectic was first invented by Parmenides, who, fleeing cities and gatherings of men, settled on a rock for no little time, and so devised dialectic, whence the rock was called Parmenides’ rock.
Plato, however, after the death of Socrates his master, for the love of wisdom migrated to Egypt, and there, having learned the liberal disciplines, returned to Athens; and gathering disciples at his estate of the Academy he gave himself to the studies of philosophy. He first established rational logic among the Greeks, which Aristotle his disciple afterwards enlarged, perfected and reduced to an art. Marcus Terentius Varro first translated dialectic from Greek into Latin. Afterwards Cicero added to it. Demosthenes, the son of a smith, is believed the prince of rhetoric among the Greeks. Tisias among the Latins. Corax at Syracuse. This was written in Greek by Aristotle and Gorgias and Hermagoras, and translated into Latin by Tully, Quintilian and Titian.