Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
Roman mathematician Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, imprisoned on charges of treason, wrote
The Consolation of Philosophy
, his greatest work, an investigation of destiny and free will, while awaiting his execution.
His ancient and prominent noble family of Anicia included many consuls and Petronius Maximus and Olybrius, emperors. After Odoacer deposed the last western emperor, Flavius Manlius Boethius, his father, served as consul in 487.
Boethius entered public life at a young age and served already as a senator before the age of 25 years in 504. Boethius served as consul in 510 in the kingdom of the Ostrogoths.
In 522, Boethius saw his two sons serve as consuls. Theodoric the Great, king, suspected Boethius of conspiring with the eastern empire eventually. Jailed, Boethius composed his treatise on fortune, death, and other issues. He most popularly influenced the Middle Ages.
People linked Boethius and Rithmomachia, a board game.
“And no renown can render you well-known:For if you think that fame can lengthen life By mortal famousness immortalized,The day will come that takes your fame as well,And there a second death for you awaits.”
“Men who give up the common goal of all things that exist, thereby cease to exist themselves. Some may perhaps think it strange that we say that wicked men, who form the majority of men, do not exist; but that is how it is. I am not trying to deny the wickedness of the wicked; what I do deny is that their existence is absolute and complete existence. Just as you might call a corpse a dead man, but couldn't simply call it a man, so I would agree that the wicked are wicked, but could not agree that they have unqualified existence.”
“Human perversity, then, makes divisions of that which by nature is one and simple, and in attempting to obtain part of something which has no parts, succeeds in getting neither the part- which is nothing- nor the whole, which they are not interested in.”
“If I have fully diagnosed the cause and nature of your condition, you are wasting away in pining and longing for your former good fortune. It is the loss of this which, as your imagination works upon you, has so corrupted your mind. I know the many disguises of that monster, Fortune, and the extent to which she seduces with friendship the very people she is striving to cheat, until she overwhelms them with unbearable grief at the suddenness of her desertion”
“Love binds people too, in matrimony's sacred bonds where chaste lovers are met, and friends cement their trust and friendship. How happy is mankind, if the love that orders the stars above rules, too, in your hearts.”
“Balance out the good things and the bad that have happened in your life and you will have to acknowledge that you are still way ahead. You are unhappy because you have lost those things in which you took pleasure? But you can also take comfort in the likelihood that what is now making you miserable will also pass away.”
“Your mind is likewise blocked. But the right road awaits you still. Cast out your doubts, your fears and your desires, let go of grief and of hope as well, for where these rule the mind is their subject.”