Boethius
EN Lat Orig

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

Boethius

c. 477 AD – 524 AD

Latin

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was born around AD 477 into one of Rome's oldest and most distinguished senatorial families, at a time when Rome itself was ruled by the Ostrogothic king Theoderic. He received the finest education available — probably in Athens or Alexandria — and became the most learned Latin scholar of his generation. His ambition was to translate the entire works of Plato and Aristotle into Latin. He did not live to complete it, but what he did translate — Aristotle's logical works, Porphyry's Isagoge, and several original treatises on logic, arithmetic, and music — became the foundation of medieval education.

Boethius rose to become magister officiorum (chief of the civil service) under Theoderic, and saw both his sons appointed consul in a single year. Then everything collapsed. In 523 he was accused of treason — possibly justly, possibly as part of a factional struggle — imprisoned at Pavia, and eventually executed in 524. While awaiting death, he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, a dialogue between himself and the personified figure of Philosophy, written in alternating prose and verse. It is one of the most influential books ever written in Latin — read, translated, and commented upon throughout the Middle Ages by Alfred the Great, Chaucer, and Dante among others.

Boethius stands at the hinge between antiquity and the Middle Ages: the last Roman who could read Greek philosophy in the original, and the first to transmit it in the form the medieval West would know.

Works (6)

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