IAMBLICHUS.
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In Nicomachi Geraseni Arithmeticam introductionem et de fato. First edition in Latin of Iamblichus's neoplatonist commentary on Nicomachus's treatise on the mystical and divine properties of numbers, Introduction to Arithmetic, with explanatory notes by Tennulius and Camerarius. This copy is in a pleasing contemporary Dutch binding, with several blanks at front and rear likely added by request of an early owner for annotations.Nicomachus (c.50-150 AD) was a neo-Pythagorean mathematician and music theorist. Introduction to Arithmetic is his only extant treatise on the subject, which became very popular in the Late Antiquity and during the Middle Ages as a school textbook. A fascinating "theology of numbers", the Introduction focuses on the mystic rather than mathematical side of the arithmetic theory, for example associating numbers with different gods, or classifying them as "male" or "female". Iamblichus's commentary on the text of Nicomachus, composed in the third century, is the earliest known and one of the most influential.Samuel Tennulius (1635-1688), Dutch philologist and professor at Nijmegen, translated Iamblichus's commentary from the 15th-century Parisian manuscript BNF Gr. 2093. This edition, with the Greek and Latin text printed in parallel columns, is embellished with a finely engraved frontispiece depicting Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Euclid, Aristoxenus, Nicomachus and Iamblichus holding musical and mathematical instruments. The second and third part of this volume,
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