biography
| name: |
Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus
|
pronunciation:
[boheethius]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (c.AD 480–524)
|
| biography:
| Roman philosopher and statesman, born of a patrician Roman family. He studied at Athens, and there gained the knowledge which later enabled him to produce the translations of Aristotle and Porphyry that became the standard textbooks on logic in mediaeval Europe. He became consul in 510 during the Gothic occupation of Rome, and later chief minister to the ruler Theodoric; but in 523 he was accused of treason and after a year in prison at Pavia was executed. It was during his imprisonment that he wrote the famous De consolatione philosophiae (Consolation of Philosophy), in which the personification of Philosophy solaces the author by explaining the mutability of all earthly fortune. The Consolation was for the next millennium probably the most widely read book after the Bible. |
|
|
