The Consolation of Philosophy

<p><i>The Consolation of Philosophy</i> is the best-known work of <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/boethius">Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius</a>, a Roman statesman and scholar who lived at the intersection of the classical and medieval periods. Identified by fifteenth-century humanist Lorenzo Valla as “the last of the Romans and the first of the scholastics,” and by <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/edward-gibbon">Gibbon</a> in <i><a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/edward-gibbon/the-history-of-the-decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire">The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</a></i> as “the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman,” Boethius was born in Rome around 476 to an aristocratic family, received a thorough education in Greek and rose rapidly to the ranks of senator, master of offices, and sole consul. He combined public life with scholarly projects, aiming to bring Greek learning to the Latin-speaking world through his translations of and commentaries on major logical and philosophical texts, especially those of Aristotle. In 523, having publicly expressed support for a senator who had been accused of treason, Boethius was stripped of all honors and exiled to Pavia, where he composed the work translated into English as <i>The Consolation of Philosophy</i>.</p> <p>Boethius himself is one of the work’s two main characters. At its beginning, he sits in prison composing a song of lament at his unjust detention, surrounded by the Muses of Poetry. The figure of Philosophy then appears to him, a woman of supernatural appearance who banishes the Muses from Boethius’ cell and begins a dialogue with the prisoner. Diagnosing his condition as the dire result of forgetting the nature of the universe and of himself, Philosophy intends to palliate Boethius’ distress by returning his attention to the rational order and government of the universe. To this end she leads him through disquisitions on the nature of fortune, true and false happiness, fate and providence, and the relationship between free will and divine foreknowledge.</p> <p>With sections alternating between prose and verse, <i>The Consolation of Philosophy</i> serves as one of Western literature’s foremost examples of prosimetrical composition. It contains in total thirty-nine poems—or songs, as they are called in the present edition’s translation by H. R. James—leading scholar Joel Relihan to describe it as “the mo

שנה

1902

שפה

English

הוצאה

Innovative Eggz LLC

מהדורות

2

ISBN

9781640322905

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata