Boethius
Boethius wrote the most widely read book of the Middle Ages while awaiting execution. Born in Rome around 480 into the aristocratic Anicii family, he was orphaned young and raised by Symmachus, whose daughter he married. He received an exceptional education in Greek at a time when knowledge of it was disappearing in the West. He set himself the project of translating all of Plato and Aristotle into Latin and showing their agreement. He completed only part of Aristotle's logic, and those translations and commentaries were the whole of what Latin Europe knew of Aristotle for six hundred years. He also wrote textbooks on arithmetic and music that were used in universities into the Renaissance, and coined much of the Latin philosophical vocabulary. He entered the service of Theodoric the Ostrogoth, ruler of Italy, becoming consul in 510 and master of offices in 522, the year both his sons were consuls together. He was then accused of treasonable correspondence with Constantinople and of magic, arising from his defence of a senator. Theodoric, an Arian growing suspicious of Catholic senators' loyalty to the eastern empire, had him imprisoned at Pavia and executed around 524, reportedly by having a cord tightened round his head. In prison he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, a dialogue in alternating prose and verse in which Philosophy appears as a woman and argues that fortune is by nature changeable, that true goods cannot be taken away, and that divine foreknowledge does not abolish free will. Alfred the Great, Chaucer and Elizabeth I all translated it.
- Lived: 480 CE – 524 CE
- Nationality: Roman
- Roles: philosopher, statesman, translator, theologian
