The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy

The Theological Tractates and
The Consolation of Philosophy

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Consolation of Philosophy, by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
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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