Allegory of Arithmetic, from 'Margarita Philosophica' by Gregor Reisch, 1503 (woodcut)

Pythagoras (c.580-500 BC) calculating with counters and Boethius (c.480-524 AD) with numbers; Anicius Manlius Severinus, Roman philosopher and statesman; the Margarita Philosophica was an Encyclopedia of knowledge intended as a text-book for youthful students, containing in twelve books Latin grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy, physics, natural history, physiology, psychology, and ethics; extremely popular late medieval and Renaissance textbook in schools and universities ; Gregor Reisch (1467-1525) German Carthusian humanist and writer;