thius, was the trusted servant of Odovacar, and under that monarch filled successively the posts of præfectus urbi (this he held twice), præfectus prætorianus, and consul (in 487). He dying while his son was still a boy, the education of the young Anicius was intrusted to friends of high standing in the state. These friends were, according to tradition, none other than his own kinsmen, Festus and Symmachus, the latter of whom further testified his affection for his ward by bestowing on him the hand of his daughter Rusticiana. The tradition that Boethius was first married to one Helpes, daughter to Festus (was the name of his other guardian chosen for the sake of symmetry ?), has long been given up. It rested solely on the insecure foundation of a supposititious tombstone at Pavia, which bore witness to the virtues and wifely devotion of a Sicilian lady who was led to Rome by love for her lord, whose name, be it remarked, does not appear in the epitaph at all.

It will not, I think, be stretching conjecture too far to assume that Boethius's first acquaintance

must have been born after 475. Besides, Ennodius, born about 473, writes of him and to him in quite a fatherly way (Parænesis Didiscalica, Migne, 63, c. 254; Letters, Book vii. No. 13), which he could hardly have done to a man who was only a few years his junior. On the other hand, neither could his sons, who were elected consuls in 522, have been much less than twenty, nor their father less than forty at the time. He was therefore born before 483.

with Theodoric dated from the year 504, when, as a lad of twenty, he must have seen that celebrated entry into Rome, when the heretic conqueror was welcomed to the city of St Peter by the shouts of the people and the reverence of priests and Pope. A youth so distinguished by birth, fortune, and accomplishments would naturally command the early notice of the Amal, whose presence at Rome just then was in great measure due to his wish to win the favour of the leading men there, and who would be only too glad of the chance thus offered him of ingratiating himself with them by a ready recognition of the powers and promise of their rising generation. Besides, it is easy to imagine the charm which such a personality would exercise on the barbarian king, who could appreciate in others the culture that had been bestowed upon himself in vain. For Boethius, though young in years, was already old in learning. A born student, he chose to pass his hours of leisure with his books rather than in the spectacles and amusements, the battles of the Blues and Greens, that engrossed the Roman youth. The diligence with which he devoted himself to the pursuit of knowledge was rewarded by an unusual versatility and an encyclopædic erudition. No branch of science or art remained long

neglected or unattempted by him; and, thanks to the liberal training of his guardian, he enjoyed the rare privilege of being able to read the Greek philosophers in their own tongue.1

1

As Horace made it his chief boast

"Princeps Eolium carmen ad Italos
Deduxisse modos,"

so it was the literary object and aim of Boethius to import Greek wisdom into his native land. To this end he translated the works of Pythagoras on music, of Ptolemy on astronomy, of Nicomachus on arithmetic, of Euclid on geometry, of Archimedes on mechanics. Finally, he sought to bring the whole of Greek speculative science within the range of Roman readers; and though he did not live to see the attainment of his ambition, he managed to give to the world in something less than twenty years, of which several were absorbed in the discharge of public duties, more than thirty books of commentary on, and translation of, Aristotle. These embraced nearly all the logical works of the Stagyrite-

1 See Cassiodorus, Var., i. 45. There is not the smallest foundation for the tradition that he was educated at Athens. Cassiodorus distinctly says, "Atheniensium scholas longe positus [not positas] introiisti." The undoubtedly spurious 'De Disciplina Scholarium' is the only one of the works attributed to Boethius that breathes a word on the subject, and such an exceptional training would have been sure to receive mention, either by himself or by one of his friends.

the Topica and the Analytica,' the Categoria and the De Syllogismo '—and they further make good their author's title to the inheritance of the Academy in the West, and mark him as the pioneer of the scholastic philosophy. But Boethius did not confine his pen within the limits, however wide, of pagan learning. He rushed, with more ardour perhaps than discretion, into the lists of theological controversy, and endeavoured-not to identify the old philosophy with Christianity, as some of the new Platonists were inclined to do, but to apply its methods to the treatment of doctrinal difficulties.

The favour of the king and the traditions of his own family-the Anicii had been distinguished in the public service for the last six hundred yearscombined to bring him into early contact with great affairs. At the age of thirty he was introduced into the senate with the title of patrician, an honour usually reserved for faithful and tried servants on their retirement from public life; and the year 510 saw him elected sole consul. Undoubted as his qualifications both of character and intellect were for a high position of trust, it must be a source of unceasing regret that he felt himself bound to give practical illustration to Plato's theory that the happiest states are those which are governed by

1

philosophers, that he ever brought himself to exchange the seclusion of his own library for the turmoil of the Senate House. Within those walls, shining with glass and ivory, on which he had lavished all the adornment that taste could suggest or money could buy, he would have found a rest which the dusty struggle for office and distinction. could never give, and his beloved books would have proved more faithful friends to him than the cowardly colleagues who condemned him without a hearing to disgrace and death. Happily he had leisure even in the busy time of his consulship to continue his literary and mechanical work, and we find him called away from his ordinary duties, now to construct a water-clock for Theodoric's brother-inlaw, Gundobad, king of the Burgundians, now to select a harper for the court of Clovis the Frank, now to help convict the guards' paymaster of an attempt to cheat the men with light coin. Higher still and higher he rose in the esteem and confidence of the king, till in the year 522 the cup of his pride was filled by the elevation of his two boys, Symmachus and Boethius, to the dignity of the consulship. On this occasion he was chosen to pronounce the customary panegyric on his royal 1 Rep., vi. 487.