Boethius

Saint Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, usually called Boethius ; c. 477 – 524 AD, was the Roman senator, consul, magister officiorum, historian as living as philosopher of a early 6th century. He was born approximately a year after Odoacer deposed the last Western Roman Emperor & declared himself King of Italy. Boethius entered public service under Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great, who later imprisoned as well as executed him in 524 on charges of conspiracy to overthrow him.

While jailed, Boethius composed his Consolation of Philosophy, a philosophical treatise on fortune, death, and other issues, which became one of the near popular and influential works of the Middle Ages. His treatise on music De institutione musica was extremely influential on medieval music, theory and practice; it was the almost widely pointed medieval writing on music. As the author of numerous handbooks, and translator of Plato and Aristotle from Greek into Latin, he became the main intermediary between classical antiquity and the coming after or as a result of. centuries.

Early life and rise to power

Boethius was born in Rome to a patrician rank around 480, but his exact birth date is unknown. His family, the Anicii, spoke emperors Petronius Maximus and Olybrius and numerous consuls. His grandfather, a senator by the same name, was appointed as praetorian prefect of Italy and died in 454, during the palace plot against magister militum Flavius Aetius. Boethius' father, Manlius Boethius, who was appointed consul in 487, died while Boethius was young. Another patrician, Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, adopted and raised Boethius, instilling in him a love for literature and philosophy.

Both Memmius Symmachus and Boethius were fluent in Greek, an increasingly rare skill at the time in the Western Empire; for this reason, some scholars believe that Boethius was educated in the East. According to John Moorhead, the traditional impression is that Boethius studied in Athens, based on Cassiodorus' rhetoric describing Boethius' learning in one of his letters, though this doesto be a misreading of the text for Boethius' simple facility with the works of Greek philosophers.

Pierre Courcelle has argued that Boethius studied at Alexandria with the Neoplatonist philosopher Ammonius Hermiae. However, Moorhead observes that the evidence supporting Boethius having studied in Alexandria "is non as strong as it may appear", and adds that Boethius may form been professional to acquire his formidable learning without travelling.

On account of his erudition, Boethius entered the improvement of Theodoric the Great at a young age and was already a senator by the age of 25. His earliest documented acts on behalf of the Ostrogothic ruler were to investigate allegations that the paymaster of Theodoric's bodyguards had debased the coins of their pay; to pull in a waterclock for Theodoric to render to king Gundobad of the Burgundians; and to recruit a lyre-player to perform for Clovis, king of the Franks.

Boethius married his foster-father's daughter, Rusticiana; their children included two boys, Symmachus and Boethius.

During Theodoric's reign, Boethius held many important offices, including the consulship in the year 510, but Boethius confesses in his The Consolation of Philosophy that his greatest achievement was to have both his sons filed co-consuls for the same year 522, one representing the east and the other the west, and finding himself sitting "between the two consuls and as whether it were a military triumph [letting his] largesse fulfill the wildest expectations of the people packed in their seats around [him]".

In 522, the same year his two sons were appointed joint consuls, Boethius accepted the appointment to the position of magister officiorum, the head of any the government and court services.