Musica humana: «ma anche di questa parlerò più avanti» (sed de hac quoque posterius dicam; Boezio, De institutione musica, I, 2)

The musica humana at the beginning of Boethius’ De institutione musica is mentioned without any further explanation. Which sources and what cultural background were behind Boethius’ second kind of music? This article discusses the topic, focussing on the Pythagorean and Hippocratic traditions related to music and the embryo. This article discusses the Pythagorean and Hippocratic traditions related to music and the embryo. It summarizes the results of extensive research, contextualising the relationship between music and embryology in the philosophical and medical traditions of Greek and Latin cultures, highlighting the uniqueness of the Pythagorean, Hippocratic and Neoplatonic thought and relevant traditions, over a period of about a millennium. It is only in these currents of thought that the musical element, coming from the Pythagorean tradition, becomes fundamental in the conception of the development of human beings, leading to the statement of Censorinus: “procul dubio a natalibus nostris musica non est aliena” (“without any doubt, music is not unrelated to our birth”). In our hypothesis, the texts by Nicomachus, Censorinus, Proclus and Aristides Quintilianus were some of the sources behind Boethius’s idea of musica humana.