Birth in Rome
Born around 477 into a senatorial family linked to the Anicii, he lost his father early and was raised by the senator Symmachus, whose daughter Rusticiana he married.
Latin Neoplatonism · Aristotelian logic · c. 477 – c. 524
Boethius
Seek, in disgrace, the good that fortune cannot take back.
Rome · Ravenna · Pavia
Biography
The thread of a life.
Boethius was a Roman senator and scholar in Ostrogothic Italy who set out to translate and explain Aristotle and Plato in Latin and to show how far they agreed. His logical commentaries and theological tractates shaped the vocabulary of the Latin Middle Ages; condemned for treason, he wrote in prison the Consolation of Philosophy, a dialogue on fortune, happiness, providence and freedom.
Translating Aristotle
He translated and commented on Aristotle’s logic and Porphyry’s Isagoge, within a declared plan to make Aristotle and Plato available in Latin.
Consulship
He held the consulship in 510, without a colleague, under the Ostrogothic king Theodoric.
Theological tractates
He composed five short treatises on the Trinity, the goodness of substances and the person of Christ, amid controversies between Rome and Constantinople.
Master of offices
In the year his two sons were joint consuls, he became master of offices at Theodoric’s court in Ravenna.
Trial and Consolation
After defending the senator Albinus he was accused of treason and condemned without a hearing; in prison he wrote the Consolation before his execution, around 524.
Understanding a life in depth
01A Roman aristocrat in a Gothic kingdom
Boethius was born around 477, shortly after the deposition of the last western emperor in 476, into the senatorial aristocracy of Rome. His father, consul in 487, died while he was a child, and he was raised by Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, a learned senator whose daughter Rusticiana he married. Italy was then ruled by the Ostrogothic king Theodoric, who kept the senate and much of the Roman administration in place. Boethius acquired an exceptional command of Greek, though where he learned it is unknown. Letters drafted by Cassiodorus for Theodoric praise his learning and ask him to build a water clock and a sundial as diplomatic gifts.
02A programme of translation and commentary
In his second commentary on Aristotle’s On Interpretation, Boethius announced a plan to translate into Latin every work of Aristotle and Plato he could obtain, to explain them, and to show that the two philosophers agree on most essential points. He completed Latin versions of most of Aristotle’s logical treatises and of Porphyry’s Isagoge, wrote commentaries on several of them and on Cicero’s Topics, and composed short manuals on syllogisms, division and topical argument. His handbooks on arithmetic and music, adapted from Greek sources, introduced the term quadrivium. No translation of Plato survives, and the programme remained unfinished.
03Logic in the service of theology
Between roughly 512 and 522 Boethius wrote five short theological treatises, at a time when Rome and Constantinople were divided over how to describe the person of Christ. He applied Aristotle’s categories to the Trinity, defined a person as an individual substance of a rational nature, and in a dense tractate built from axioms asked how created things can be good without being goodness itself. Some modern scholars doubted that the author of the Consolation was a Christian until a fragment of Cassiodorus, published in 1877, attributed theological writings to him. Gilbert of Poitiers, Thierry of Chartres and Aquinas later wrote commentaries on these texts.
04Fall, prison and posterity
In 522 Boethius reached the summit of his career: his two sons were joint consuls and he became master of offices at Ravenna. Soon afterwards he defended the senator Albinus, accused of treasonable correspondence with Constantinople, and was himself charged with treason and sacrilege on the strength of letters he called forged. Condemned without a hearing, he wrote the Consolation in prison and was executed around 524; Symmachus was put to death soon after. His tomb at Pavia became the centre of a local cult of Saint Severinus Boethius, and Dante placed him among the wise in Paradise. Readers still debate how his philosophy relates to his faith.
Until the twelfth century his translations and commentaries were the main Latin route into Aristotelian logic; his answer on universals, his definition of person and his account of eternity were taken up by Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers and Aquinas. Translated by King Alfred, Jean de Meun, Chaucer and Elizabeth I, the Consolation became one of the most copied books of medieval Europe; how far it is a Christian work is still discussed.
Sources & reference points