Trivium (liberal arts)

The word trivium, from Latin, is made of two parts. The first part tres meant "three" and the second part vía meant "way".

In antiquity and the High Middle Ages, there were different ways of teaching young men at the university. The trivium was three simplest ways to study the world, and so young men learned them first. After the trivium, they studied the quadrivium. Together, these subjects were called the seven liberal arts. The most difficult, and final subject studied was theology.

The three subjects were related to talking about the world. These subjects were grammar, logic and rhetoric. They were ways of preparing for the quadrivium, which includes arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy.