The Probert Encyclopaedia of People

BOETHIUS

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boerthius was a celebrated Roman statesman and philosopher. He was born about 470 AD in Rome or Milan, of a rich and ancient family and died in 525 when he was executed. Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, then master of Italy, loaded him with marks of favour and esteem, and raised him to the first offices in the empire. He was three times consul, and received the greatest possible honour from people, senate, and king. But Theodoric, as he grew old, became irritable, jealous, and distrustful of those about him, and was worked upon by some whom Boethius had made enemies by his strict integrity and vigilant justice. These at last succeeded in prejudicing the king against him, and he was accused of a treasonable correspondence with the court of Constantinople, imprisoned for a time, and then put to death.

He made translations of the Greek philosophers, particularly Aristotle, which, in the middle ages, caused him to be regarded as the highest authority in philosophy. There is no evidence that he was a Christian. His fame now chiefly rests on his Consolations of Philosophy, written in prison, partly in prose and partly in verse, a work of elevated thought and diction. We have an Anglo-Saxon translation of it by King Alfred, and it was early translated into other languages.
Research Boethius