The Consolation of Philosophy
Boethius
Translated by: W.V. Cooper
J.M. Dent and Company. London, 1902. The Temple Classics,
edited by Israel Golancz M.A.
Notes
1.
and
are the first letters of the Greek
words denoting Practical and Theoretical, the two divisions of
philosophy.
2. Anaxagoras went into exile from Athens about 450
B.C.
3. Socrates was executed by the Athenian state, B.C.
399.
4. Zeno of Elea was tortured by Nearchus, tyrant of
Elea, about 440 B.C.
5. Canius was put to death by Caligula, c. A.D. 40.
6. Seneca was driven to commit suicide by Nero, A.D.
66.
7. Soranus was condemned to death by Nero, A.D.
66.
8. Boethius means that his chief 'philosophical'
studies had been physics, astronomy, and ethics.
9. Plato, Repub. v 473.
10. Plato, Repub. vi, 488, 489.
11. Conigastus and Trigulla were favourite officers
of the Emperor, Theodoric, the Goth: they used their influence
with him for the oppression of the weak.
12. The Emperor Caligula.
13. Symmachus was executed by Theodoric at the same
time as Boethius.
14. Cp. Prose iv. of this book, p. 9.
15. The proverbially rich and happy king; defeated
and condemned to death by Cyrus, king of Media, in 546 B.C., but
spared by him.
16. The last king of Macedonia, defeated at Pydna,
168.c., by L.Æmilius Paulus.
17. Boethius's first wife was Elpis, daughter of
Festus: his second was Rusticiana, daughter of Symmachus, a
senator and consul, A.D. 485. His second wife was the mother of
the two sons mentioned below. (See Appendix, p. 169.)
18. This is an application of Juvenal's lines
(Sat. x. 19) which contrast the terror of the money-laden
traveller.
19. This story is told of Anaxagoras and Nicocreon,
king of Cyprus, c. B.C. 323.
20. Regulus was the Roman general in Sicily in the
first Punic War, taken prisoner in 255 B.C., and put to death in
250.
21. Britannicus, son of Nero's father, the Emperor
Claudius, put to death A.D. 55.
22. A mathematician, astronomer, and geographer of
Alexandria. Fl. 140-160 A.D. Boethius translated one of his
works.
23. Boethius is thinking of Horace, Odes iv. 9.
Ere Agamemnon saw the light,
There lived brave men: but tearless all
Enfolded in eternal night,
For lack of sacred minstrels, fall.
(Mr. Gladstone's translation.)
24. Fabricius was the Roman general whom Pyrrhus
could neither bribe nor intimidate, B.C. 280.
55. L. Junius Brutus, who led the Romans to expel the
last of the kings, and was elected the first consul, B.C.
509.
26. Probably Cato Major, the great censor, B.C. 184,
the rigid champion of the stern old Roman morals; or possibly
Cato Minor, who committed suicide at Utica after the battle of
Thapsus, B.C. 46, because he considered that Cæsar's
victory was fatal to the Republic and the liberty of Rome.
27. Boethius in this passage is probably thinking of
Empedocles's doctrine of Love which unites, and Strife which
divides, the two primal forces in the universe.
28. C p. Bk. I. Prose iv, p. 10.
29. Epicurus (B.C. 342-270) was the famous founder of
the Epicurean school of philosophy. His school had a large
following of Romans under the Empire. His own teaching was of a
higher nature than might be supposed from this bare statement
that he thought 'pleasure was the highest good.'
30. Probably Boethius makes a mistake in his
interpretation of Catullus (Carm. 52), as Nonius's surname was
very likely 'Struma' (which also means a wen); in which case
Catullus cannot at most have intended more to be understood than
a play upon the man's true name.
31. Decoratus was a minion of Theodoric.
32. Seneca, the philosopher and wise counsellor of
Nero, was by him compelled to commit suicide, A.D. 65.
33. Papinianus, the greatest lawyer of his time, was
put to death by the Emperor Antoninus Caracalla, A.D. 212.
34. Euripeds, Andromache,.319-320.
35. Referring to lines in the Andromache (419-420),
where Euripides says: 'The man who complains that he has no
children suffers less than he who has them, and is blest in his
misfortune.'
36. Alcibiades was the most handsome and brilliantly
fascinating of all the public men of Athens in her most brilliant
period.
37. Compare Philosophy's first words about the
highest good, p.
58.
38. Plato, Timœus, 27 C. (ch. v.) -- '
All those who have even the least share of moderation, on
undertaking any enterprise, small or great, always call upon God
at the beginning.
39. This hymn is replete with the highest development
of Plato's theory of ideas, as expressed in the
Timœus, and his theory of the ideal good being the
moving spirit of the material world. Compare also the speculative
portion of Virgil, Æneid, vi.
40. This reasoning hangs upon Plato's theory of ideas
and so is the opposite of the theory of evolution.
41. The modern Sarabat, in Asia Minor, formerly
auriferous.
42. Boethius is possibly thinking here of passages in
Plato's Republic, Bk. iv. (439-441) where Socrates points
out the frequent opposition of reason and instinct.
43. Plato's doctrine of remembrance is chiefly
treated of in his Phædo and Meno.
44. This is a verse from the poems in which
Parmenides embodied his philosophy: this was the doctrine of the
unity which must have been in Boethius's mind above. Parmenides,
the founder of the Eleatic school (495 B.C.) was perhaps,
considering his early date, the greatest and most original of
Greek philosophers. Boethius probably did not make a clear
distinction between the philosopher's own poems and the views
expressed in Plato's Parmenides.
45. Plato in the Timoeus says, 'The language must
also be akin to the subjects of which its words are the
interpreters'---(29 B.).
46. Orpheus's mother was the Muse Calliope, mistress
of the Castalian fount.
47. The dog Cerberus.
48. The Furies.
49. Ixion for his crimes was bound upon a rolling
wheel
50. Tantalus for his crimes was condemned to
perpetual hunger and thirst though surrounded by fruits and water
which ever eluded his grasp.
51 Tityos for his crimes was for ever fastened to the
ground while a vulture devoured his entrails.
52. Pluto.
53. This and some of the following lines allude to
some of the theories of the early Physicists.
54. From Plato's Gorgias (466). Boethius in
this and several other passages in this book has the Gorgias in
mind; for Plato there discusses the strength and happiness of
good men, and the impotence and unhappiness of bad men. Socrates
is also there represented as proving that the unjust man is
happier punished than unpunished, as Boethius does below.
55. P.84.
56. Cf. St. Matthew x. 28.
57. Plato, Gorgias, 472 and ff.
58. It must not be supposed from the words 'cleansing
mercy' (purgatoria clementia) that Boethius held the same
views as were held by the Church later concerning purgatory, and
as are now taught by the Roman Catholic Church. It is true that
St. Augustine had in 407 A.D. hinted at the existence of such a
state, but it was not dogmatically inculcated till 604, in the
Papacy of Gregory the Great.
59. Plato, Gorgias, 474 and ff.
60. Arcturus, the star in Boötes nearest to the
Bear, used to be thought the nearest star to our pole.
Boöoutes was also known as the Arctophylax, or Bearward, and
so also as the driver of the Wain.
61. The old superstition was that an eclipse meant
the withdrawal of the moon, and that by a noise of beaten brass,
etc., she could be saved.
62. Lucan, Pharsalia, i. 128. This famous line
refers to the final triumph of Cæsar at Thapsus, B.C. 46,
when Cato considered that the Republican cause was finally doomed
and he committed suicide at Utica rather than survive it.
63. The author is supposed to be Hermes Trismegistus,
who wrote in the third century after Christ. The word 'powers'
was used by many Neo-Platonic philosophers for those beings in
the scale of nature, with which they filled the chasm between God
and man. But Boethius does not seem to intend the word to have
that definite meaning here.
64. Homer, Iliad, xii. 176.
65. The Latin word 'virtus' means by its derivation,
manly strength.
66. Aristotle, Physics, ii. 3.
67. A phrase from Homer (Iliad, iii. 277, and
Odyssey, xi. 1O9), where it is said of the sun.
68. This sentence, besides referring to the
application of Homer's words used above, contains also a play on
words in the Latin, which can only be clumsily reproduced in
English by some such words as 'The sole power which can see all
is justly to be called the solar.'
69. Horace, Staires, II. v. 59.
70.Supra, Book IV. Met. vi. p. 135.
71. Cicero, De Divinatione, II.
72. Referring to Boethius's words in Prose iii. of
this book, p.145.
73. Zeno, of Citium (342-270 B.C), the founder of the
Stoic school, taught in the Stoa Poekile, whence the name of the
school. The following lines refer to their doctrine of
presentations and impressions.
74. Aristotle, De Cæelo, 1.
75. Boethius speaks of people who 'hear that Plato
thought, etc.,' because this was the teaching of some of Plato's
successors at the Academy. Plato himself thought otherwise, as
may be seen in the Timæus, e.g. ch. xi. 38 B., 'Time
then has come into being along with the universe, that being
generated together, together they may be dissolved, should a
dissolution of them ever come to pass; and it was made after the
pattern of the eternal nature that it might be as like to it as
possible. For the pattern is existent for all eternity, but the
copy has been, and is, and shall be, throughout all time
continually.' (Mr. Archer Hind's translation.)
76. Elpis is a Greek word meaning hope
77. This line is lost from the original Latin.
Boethius:
Consolation of Philosophy
