Transmission of the Greek Classics on music ("De institutione musica libri quinque", unfinished) contributed to medieval education. "De arithmetica", begins with modular arithmetic, such as even and odd, evenly even, evenly odd, and oddly even. He then turns to unpredicted complexity by categorizing numbers and parts of numbers. His translations of Euclid on geometry and Ptolemy on astronomy, if they were completed, no longer survive. Boethius made Latin translations of Aristotle's "De interpretation" and "Categories" with commentaries. These were widely used during the Middle Ages. In the Western Provinces (what today is considered the Western Europe's heartland), the collapsing Roman empire lost many Greek manuscripts
Pappus of Alexandria the time (but see below) at which he himself wrote. If no other date information were available, all that could be known would be that he was later than Ptolemy (died c. 168 AD), whom he quotes, and earlier than Proclus (born ), who quotes him. The "Suda" states that Pappus was of the same age as Theon of Alexandria, who active in the reign of Emperor Theodosius I (372–395). A different date is given by a marginal note to a late 10th-century manuscript (a copy of a chronological table by the same Theon), which states, next to an entry