The Marriage of Mercury and Philology, written by Martianus Capella.5 It depicted the seven liberal arts disciplines as bridesmaids in attendance at an allegorical wedding, much as Boethius personified our favorite discipline as Lady Philosophy in the Consolation. Martianus’ work was very popular in the early Middle Ages, and it was only one of several texts to bring the liberal arts to the attention of men like Alcuin. The curriculum appeared as early as the first century bc, when the Roman scholar Marcus Varro composed a (now
