Boethius — the Friedlein volume: De institutione arithmetica, De institutione musica, and the Geometria (Teubner, 1867)

Friedlein opens not with Boethius but with an argument about what is Boethius. The preface disputes whether the geometry books belong to him at all — "eos libros minime Boetio tribuendos esse" — cites Cantor's Mathematische Beiträge against himself, and leaves the question open: "sub iudice adhuc lis est", the case is still before the judge. He then names the Verona palimpsest as the manuscript that would settle it "si legi posset", if it could be read. An 1867 editor conceding in his own preface that his volume may contain a work by someone else is a better warrant than a confident attribution would be.

The dedicatory epistle states the whole programme in one clause: what is offered is not gold but "quae ex Graecarum opulentia litterarum in Romanae orationis thesaurum sumpta conveximus" — what we have carried over from the wealth of Greek letters into the treasury of Roman speech. Boethius is describing a translation project, and he describes it as a transfer of wealth between treasuries rather than as authorship. Every claim this volume makes about number and sound is a claim he is relaying.