The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy

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The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy

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Consolation of Philosophy, by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy
Author: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
Release Date: August 29, 2004 [EBook #13316]
Language: English and Latin
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BOETHIUS

THE THEOLOGICAL TRACTATES
WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY H.F. STEWART, D.D.
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
AND E.K. RAND, PH.D.
PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY
WITH THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF "I.T." (1609)
REVISED BY H.F. STEWART

1918

[Transcriber's Note: The paper edition of this book has Latin and English pages facing each other. This version of the text uses alternating Latin and English sections, with the English text slightly indented.]

CONTENTS
NOTE ON THE TEXT
INTRODUCTION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE THEOLOGICAL TRACTATES
THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY
SYMMACHI VERSUS
INDEX

NOTE ON THE TEXT
In preparing the text of the Consolatio I have used the apparatus in Peiper's edition (Teubner, 1871), since his reports, as I know in the case of the Tegernseensis, are generally accurate and complete; I have depended also on my own collations or excerpts from various of the important manuscripts, nearly all of which I have at least examined, and I have also followed, not always but usually, the opinions of Engelbrecht in his admirable article, Die Consolatio Philosophiae des Boethius in the Sitzungsberichte of the Vienna Academy, cxliv. (1902) 1-60. The present text, then, has been constructed from only part of the material with which an editor should reckon, though the reader may at least assume that every reading in the text has, unless otherwise stated, the authority of some manuscript of the ninth or tenth century; in certain orthographical details, evidence from the text of the Opuscula Sacra has been used without special mention of this fact. We look to August Engelbrecht for the first critical edition of the Consolatio at, we hope, no distant date.
The text of the Opuscula Sacra is based on my own collations of all the important manuscripts of these works. An edition with complete apparatus criticus will be ready before long for the Vienna Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. The history of the text of the Opuscula Sacra, as I shall attempt to show elsewhere, is intimately connected with that of the Consolatio.
E.K.R.

INTRODUCTION
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, of the famous Praenestine family of the Anicii, was born about 480 A.D. in Rome. His father was an ex-consul; he himself was consul under Theodoric the Ostrogoth in 510, and his two sons, children of a great grand-daughter of the renowned Q. Aurelius Symmachus, were joint consuls in 522. His public career was splendid and honourable, as befitted a man of his race, attainments, and character. But he fell under the displeasure of Theodoric, and was charged with conspiring to deliver Rome from his rule, and with corresponding treasonably to this end with Justin, Emperor of the East. He was thrown into prison at Pavia, where he wrote the Consolation of Philosophy, and he was brutally put to death in 524. His brief and busy life was marked by great literary achievement. His learning was vast, his industry untiring, his object unattainable-- nothing less than the transmission to his countrymen of all the works of Plato and Aristotle, and the reconciliation of their apparently divergent views. To form the idea was a silent judgment on the learning of his day; to realize it was more than one man could accomplish; but Boethius accomplished much. He translated the [Greek: Eisagogae] of Porphyry, and the whole of Aristotle's Organon. He wrote a double commentary on the [Greek: Eisagogae] and commentaries on the Categories and the _De Interpretatione of Aristotle, and on the Topica_ of Cicero. He also composed original treatises on the categorical and hypothetical syllogism, on Division and on Topical Differences. He adapted the arithmetic of Nicomachus, and his textbook on music, founded on various Greek authorities, was in use at Oxford and Cambridge until modern times. His five theological Tractates are here, together with the _Consolation of Philosophy_, to speak for themselves.
Boethius was the last of the Roman philosophers, and the first of the scholastic theologians. The present volume serves to prove the truth of both these assertions.
The Consolation of Philosophy is indeed, as Gibbon called it, "a golden volume, not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or of Tully." To belittle its originality and sincerity, as is sometimes done, with a view to saving the Christianity of the writer, is to misunderstand his mind and his method.