Born: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, probably in Rome, c. AD 480. Family: Married to Rusticiana; two sons. Career: Consul under the Ostrogothic King Theodoric, 510; head of government and court services (magister officiorum), 520; accused of treason, practising magic, and sacrilege: sentence ratified by the Senate, and he was imprisoned near Pavia, 522. Also a Hellenist: translator (with commentary) of works of Aristotle, Plato, and Porphyry. Died: (executed) in AD 524.
Publications
Collections
[Works], edited by J.P. Migne, in Patrologia Latina., vols. 63-64. 2 vols., 1847.
The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy [Loeb Edition], translated by S.J. Tester, H.F. Stewart, and E.K. Rand. 1918, revised edition, 1973.
Works
De arithmetica, De musica, edited by G. Friedlein. 1867.
De consolatione philosophiae (prose and verse), edited by Rudolph Peiper. 1871; also edited by A. Fortescue and G.D. Smith, 1925, G. Weinburger, 1934, and Ludwig Bieler, 1957; as The Consolation of Philosophy, translated by ”I.T.,” 1609, revised by H.F. Stewart [Loeb Edition], with Tractates, 1918; also translated by Richard Green, 1963; V.E. Watts, 1969; R.W. Sharpies, 1992; P.G. Walsh, 1999; commentaries by H. Scheible, 1972, J. Gruber, 1978, and J.J. O’Donnell, 1984; as John Bracegirdle’s Psychopharmacon: A Translation of Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae, 1999.
De divisione, edited by Paulus Maria de Loe. 1913; as Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii De divisione liber, translated by John Magee, 1998.
De institutione musica, as Fundamentals of Music, translated by Calvin H. Bower. 1989.
De syllogismo hypothetico, edited by Luca Obertello. 1969.
De topicis differentiis, translated by Eleanore Stump. 1978.
In Ciceronis topica, edited by J.C. Orelli and G. Baiterus, in Ciceronis opera, vol. 5, pt 1. 1833; translated by Eleanore Stump, 1988.
In Isagogen, edited by Samuel Brandt. 1906.
In Perihermeneias, edited by Carl Meiser. 1880.
Tractates, edited and translated by E. Rapisarda. 1960; as Tractates [Loeb Edition], translated by H.F. Stewart and E.K. Rand, with The Consolation of Philosophy, 1918. [Commentaries on De interpretatione by Aristotle], edited by Carl Meiser. 2 vols., 1877-80. [Commentaries on Porphyry], edited by G. Schepss and Samuel Brandt. 1906; translated by E.W. Warren, 1975.
Translator, Categoriae, De interpretatione, Analyticapriora, Topica, Elenchi sophistici, by Aristotle, edited by Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, in Aristoteles Latinus. 1961-.
Critical Studies:
The Tradition of Boethius: A Study of His Importance in Mediaeval Culture by Howard R. Patch, 1935; Boethius: Some Aspects of His Times and Works by Helen M. Barrett, 1940; Poetic Diction in the Old English Meters of Boethius by Allan A. Metcalf, 1973; Boethian Fictions: Narratives in the Medieval French by Richard A. Dwyer, 1976; Boethius and the Liberal Arts: A Collection of Essays edited by Michael Masi, 1981; Boethius: His Life, Thought, and Influence edited by Margaret Gibson, 1981; Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy by Henry Chadwick, 1981; The Tradition of the Topics in the Middle Ages: The Commentaries on Aristotle’s and Boethius’ Topics by Niels J0rgen Green-Pedersen, 1984; Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in The Consolation of Philosophy by Seth Lerer, 1985; The Fate of Fortune in the Early Middle Ages: The Boethian Tradition by Jerold C. Frakes, 1988; Boethius on Signification and Mind by John C. Magee, 1989; The Poetry of Boethius by Gerard O’Daly, 1991; The Consolation of Boethius: An Analytical Inquiry into His Intellectual Processes and Goals by Stephen Varvis, 1991; Chaucer’s ”Boece” and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius, edited by A.J. Minnis, 1993; Clarembaldof Arras as a Boethian Commentator by John R. Fortin, 1995; Boethius in the Middle Ages: Latin and Vernacular Traditions of the Consolatio philosophiae, edited by Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen and Lodi Nauta, 1997.
As a member of the Roman senatorial class, which still kept its identity in the barbarian Italy of c. AD 500, Boethius expected to hold political and ceremonial office: he was consul and (fatally) magister officiorum, the dispenser of patronage at Theodoric’s court in Ravenna. But most of his time was his own. He lived in his town house and his country estates immersed in his books, and also entertaining his friends: see Sidonius Apollinaris’ letters and poems on the life of ”senatorial ease” in Roman Gaul in the later 5 th century. It was for these friends and proteges of his own family and class that Boethius wrote his literary and scholarly works.
Boethius’ interest in language and the structure of argument is seen in his many studies of logic and rhetoric. He translated some key texts from the Greek, and much of his analysis derived from Greek writers and teachers in the universities of Athens and Alexandria. These translations gave readers who knew only Latin access to mainstream philosophical discussion. In the same way Boethius’ highly technical writing on mathematics and musical theory made Greek thought available to a Roman audience. That is the context for his ”papers”—they are too brief to be called books—on Christian doctrine: Boethius’ careful definitions have a solid basis in Greek philosophy.
His masterpiece, De consolatione philosophiae (The Consolation of Philosophy), is his most readable and literary work. He had been informed on by his enemies and faced almost certain death. Could he face it? He argues through issue after conflicting issue, still the practised logician: but now he himself is a term in the problem. Why me? Why do the wicked prosper? Doesn’t God care? Can God care? His partner in the argument is the Lady Philosophy, who is the traditional literary, mathematical, and philosophical learning to which he has devoted most of his life. Later readers thought of her as the Wisdom of the Old Testament: ”Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.” But Boethius is not so easily brought into line. His argument with himself in The Consolation of Philosophy reaches the point of an omniscient God, who is fully in control of the universe. Because it is an argument—rather than, for example, a vision or a confession—it can go no further. The Consolation of Philosophy stops short of the Christianity in which Boethius, judging by his theological papers (above), was an informed believer.
Boethius was executed in 524. His books seem to have lain undisturbed until about the time of Charlemagne (c. 800), when Alcuin and succeeding medieval scholars with little or no Greek read and transcribed and discussed this treasury of material on argument and on mathematics. Above all they welcomed The Consolation, in which the great questions of justice, chance, and freedom were analysed by the man who, in a changed intellectual climate, was now regarded as ”Boethius, the Christian philosopher.”
