Boëtius (more correctly BOETHIUS), ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS, a Roman statesman and philosopher, was born between 470 and 475 A.D. of a rich and illustrious family. His father had held the office of consul, but died while Boëtius was still a boy. Brought up under the care of men of rank, he studied with enthusiasm philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, translating and elucidating with laborious care the writings of Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, Nicomachus, and others. His talents soon attracted notice, and having gained the esteem and confidence of Theodoric, king of the Goths, who had fixed the seat of his government at Rome in the year 500, he was appointed by that monarch magister officiorum in his court. His influence was invariably exercised for the good of Italy, and his countrymen owed it to him that the Gothic rule was so little oppressive. Boëtius was made consul in 510, and his good-fortune culminated in the prosperity of his two sons, who shared the same honour in 522. But his bold uprightness of conduct, springing apparently from his strong faith in the truth of his philosophic ethics, at last brought down upon his head the unscrupulous vengeance of those whom he had checked in their oppressions, and provoked by his virtues. He was accused of treasonable designs against Theodoric; and the king, having become despondent and mistrustful in his old age, was induced to listen to the charges. Boëtius was stripped of his dignities, his property was confiscated, and he himself, after having been imprisoned for some time at Pavia, was executed in 525; according to long subsequent accounts, with circumstances of horrible cruelty. During his imprisonment he wrote his famous De Consolatione Philosophicæ, in which the author holds a conversation with Philosophy, who shows him the mutability of all earthly fortune, and the insecurity of everything save virtue. The work is composed in a style which happily imitates the best models of the Augustan age, and the frequent fragments of poetry which are interspersed throughout the dialogue are distinguished by their truthfulness of feeling and metrical accuracy. The Consolatio is piously theistic in its language, but affords no indication that its writer was a Christian; and if the doctrinal treatises ascribed to him are, as the acutest criticism maintains, not genuine, we must class him in religion rather with Marcus Aurelius than with his alleged friend, St Benedict. Boëtius was the last Roman writer of any mark who understood the Greek language and literature. During the middle ages his translations formed to a large extent the medium by which men became acquainted with Aristotle; and his manuals on arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music were generally used in the schools.
Four editions of the entire works of Boëtius appeared between 1491 and 1847 (Migne). Of the Consolatio (often edited, as by Peiper in 1871) many manuscript translations into various languages appeared long before the invention of printing. Among these may be mentioned that by King Alfred into Anglo-Saxon (ed. by Fox, 1864). Chaucer's version in English prose was published by Caxton in 1480. Colville's translation (1556) was re-edited by Belfort Bax in 1897; another translation is by H. N. James (1897). H. F. Stewart's Boethius: an Essay (1891), holds that the philosopher was at least outwardly a Christian, and inclines to believe that the theological treatises ascribed to him were actually his work.