Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was born in Rome about 477 into the ancient Anician family. Orphaned young, he was brought up by the senator Symmachus, whose daughter Rusticiana he married. He set out to translate all of Plato and Aristotle into Latin and to show that they agreed; his translations and commentaries on logic, and his books on music and arithmetic, became textbooks of the Middle Ages.
He was consul in 510, and in 522, the year his two young sons were consuls together, he became master of offices at the court of Theodoric, the Arian Ostrogothic king of Italy. He also wrote short theological treatises on the Trinity and on the person of Christ. Accused of treason after defending a senator suspected of corresponding with Constantinople, he was imprisoned, probably at Pavia, and executed in 524.
Boethius in the library (3 works)
- The Consolation of Philosophy — 1902
Written in prison awaiting execution in 524, Boethius's dialogue with Lady Philosophy on fortune, happiness, evil and providence became one of the most read books of the Middle Ages. - De la consolación de la filosofía — 524; traducción de 1665, impresa en 1797 · en español
El diálogo de Boecio con la Filosofía, escrito en prisión, sobre la fortuna, la felicidad y la providencia, en la traducción en prosa y verso de Villegas. - Boethius: The Theological Tractates — c. 512–522; translation 1918
Boethius on the Trinity and the person of Christ, against Eutyches and Nestorius, with the Consolation in the 1609 translation; the source of the Scholastics' definition of 'person'.