Boethius in Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities

(better Boetius), Anicius Manlius Torquātus Severīnus. A Roman statesman and scholar, born in Rome about A.D. 475, and one of the distinguished family of the Anicii, who had for some time been Christians. Having been left an orphan in his childhood, he was taken in his tenth year to Athens, where he remained eighteen years, and acquired a stock of knowledge far beyond the average. After his return to Rome, he was held in high esteem among his contemporaries for his learning and eloquence. He attracted the attention of Theodoric, who in A.D. 510 made him consul, and, in spite of his patriotic and independent attitude, gave him a prominent share in the government. The trial of the consul Albinus, however, brought with it the ruin of Boethius. Albinus was accused of maintaining a secret understanding with the Byzantine court, and Boethius stood up boldly in his defence, declaring that if Albinus was guilty, so was he, and the whole Senate with him. Thus involved in the same charge, he was sentenced to death by the cowardly assembly whose cause he had represented. He was thrown into prison at Pavia, and executed in the year 525. While in prison he wrote his famous work, De Consolatione Philosophiae, in five books, a splendid testimony to his noble mind and to his scholarly attainments. The editio princeps was published at Nuremberg in 1473 by Coburger. An Anglo-Saxon version made by Alfred the Great exists, of which an edition by Fox appeared in London in 1864. A good edition of the Latin text is that of Peiper (Leipzig, 1871). Besides writing the treatise De Consolatione, Boethius also translated many works on philosophy, rhetoric, and mathematics from the Greek, most of which are extant. His translations from Aristotle gave him much influence in the development of scholasticism; and his manuals of geometry, arithmetic, and music were long used in the mediæval schools. He was the last Roman writer of any note to show a good knowledge of the Greek language and literature.