United States or Kazakhstan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Boethius, like Savage in our own days, died in a prison; Terence was a slave, and Plautus did the work of a horse. Cervantes perished for lack of food, on the same day that our great Shakspere died; but Shakspere had worldly wisdom as well as heavenly genius. Camoens died in an almshouse.
In his prefaces, and in his amplifications and interpolations of the philosophy of Boethius, Alfred comes before us an independent author, and shows us something of his own mind on theology, on philosophy, on government, and generally as to the estate of man.
Jerome, Origen, Martianus Capella, Boëthius, and a few other later Latin authors; and were satisfied to use these interpretations without investigation of their exactness, or without understanding their meaning. Such a medley makes it certain that he knew neither Greek nor Arabic, and was willing to compound a third language, as obscure to his readers as the original was to him.
It follows therefore that through ignorance of poetry we do not understand Jerome, Augustine, Boethius, Lactantius, Sidonius, and very many others, a catalogue of whom would more than fill a long chapter.
He accepted, however, the intercession of the deacon Pelagius, and protected not only the female sex in general, but especially the noble Rusticiana, widow of Boethius and daughter of Symmachus. Amalasunta had restored their property to her sons, the younger Boethius and Symmachus; but the war seems to have consumed everything.
Then suddenly, against this type of the old world's departing WISDOM stands frowning the new world's grim genius, FORCE, Theodoric the Ostrogoth condemning Boethius the schoolman; and Boethius in his Pavian dungeon holding a dialogue with the shade of Athenian Philosophy. It is the finest picture upon which lingers the glimmering of the Western golden day, before night rushes over time."
As for the political conspiracy, we shall never know the truth of it. The 'Anonymus Valesii, meanwhile says, that when Cyprian accused Albinus, Boethius answered, 'It is false: but if Albinus has done it, so have I, and the whole senate, with one consent.
And I should like to see any man of sense accept the condition of Boethius in his prison, with some strangler or headsman waiting behind the door, upon the promised proviso that he should be translated, centuries afterwards, by kings and queens, and help indirectly to influence the minds of Northern barbarians, babbling about him in an alley, jostled by passers-by who never heard the name of Boethius, and who don't care a fig for philosophy.
Boethius' story is most probably true. One cannot think that that man would die with a lie in his mouth. One cannot pass by, as the utterances of a deliberate hypocrisy, those touching appeals to his guiding mistress, that heavenly wisdom who has led him so long upon the paths of truth and virtue, and who seems to him, in his miserable cell, to have betrayed him in his hour of need. Heaven forbid.
Some in the like manner have mingled prose and verse, as Sanazzar and Boethius. Some have mingled matters heroical and pastoral. But that cometh all to one in this question; for if severed they be good, the conjunction cannot be hurtful.
Word Of The Day