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The Marriage of Philology and Mercury is, at the outset, a narrative of a wedding feast, abounding with the usual flurry and clutter of betrothal and nuptials. Yet, Capella's celebration is one of learning, and the unknowing reader soon finds herself in the midst of a textbook of the seven liberal arts: Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic (Logic), Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy. Capella's choices here are crucial, for his work is clearly under the influence of Varro's Nine Books of Discipline, (as well as the work of Apuleius ) yet, unlike Varro, Capella chooses to eliminate discussion of the arts of medicine and architecture. This elimination, and the framing of the remaining seven arts into the three verbal arts (Trivium, 'the three roads') and the four mathematical arts (Quadrivium, 'the four roads) remain throughout medieval history. Hence the contemporary conception of the 'Seven Liberal Arts' and not 'The Nine…" Capella's structural decisions are not solely responsible for this structure. The early Pythagoreans, to whom 'all [was] number' are considered the first to link the four arts of the quadrivium, as they perceived number as the foundation of morality, justice, and nature. Additionally, the arts of arithmetic and geometry became "…essential disciplines in the Platonic curriculum…" Yet, De Nuptii "…was the first work to set out the seven liberal arts as we know them, establishing the canon of medieval learning." The Marriage is structured in nine books, beginning with 'Book I. -The Betrothal.' The first book begins with Capella's own narration, interrupted by his questioning son, Martianus, leading into "…a story which Satire invented in the long winter nights and taught me by the dining lamplight…" , a tale of marriage. (Click 'Logica,' to view 'Logic,' 'Rhetorica' - 'Rhetoric', etc.)