Life and Death of Boethius

Roman Philosopher Boethius

The article presents a full description of the life of the great philosopher Boethius, his work and the reason for his execution.

Life of Boethius

Author: Jesus Ramos D'Osta, philosophy student

The earlier the famous philosopher was born, more difficult to state the date of the birth, in fact. So, talking about Boethius we can give more or less concrete date for that period of time, it is around 475 – 477 A.D. in Rome. His family was big and powerful. It was the period of ruling of the Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus.

So, the full name of future philosopher was Anicius Manlius Serverinus Boethius. But to the great misfortune or no, his father died and it was impossible to keep the family so Boethius was adopted. His new family was much bigger then h had and turned to be really positive factor. Now the boy was the member of the Symmachus family. In 495 A. D. he became a legal husband of Symmachus’ daughter Rusticiana. Well, his adopted father, Symmachus, was his father-in-law and his best friend. They were real friends till Boethius died. In fact, he was executed.

Let’s speak a bit about the main facts about the life of Boethius. So, his native family was big, his adopted family was bigger and the fact that he was a child of Rome gave him an opportunity to get good education and to the connected to the governmental affaires. He was a consul in 510 A.D. The same way his sons followed and at the year when his children became the consuls he took the post of Master of Offices. He earned such position due to doing some tasks proposed by Theodoric. His orders were different, such as creating of water or sun clocks; also he had to control the financial riches of the country
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But when he became a Master of Offices his task was to organize the meeting between the Gothic head and other officers.

Many historians believe that such promotion was one of the main reasons for the execution of Boethius. He was a person of honest conduct. He wanted to help the oppressed, did not support those who was connected to the cases of corruption. But such attitude was not accepted by the representatives of the government, I think it is not necessary to point the reasons.

The situation got worst when Boethius stood on the side of Ciprian who was blamed in the treason of the senator Albinus. In Constantine he was blamed in the work against with Emperor Justin. Well, sooner Boethius was blamed in the creating of provocation letters. He also was guilty as he tried not to show the evidences against Albinus. And as he was an inventor one more blame lied in the magic performance. Boethius tried to explain his innocence but it was too late. In 524 he was executed.

Arithmetic and Other Boethius Creations

If Boethius was connected to the governmental affaire it did not permit him to get good education. As he was born in great family it gave him more opportunities to be educated at high level. His spheres of education were interesting and in some way alike: Greek Neo-Platonism, Christian Literature, Philosophy, and Church grounds.

He was found of Aristotle’s and Platon’s works. He had an extremely desire to get acquainted with all their works, he found their works in Greek and tried to translate. But he could not bring all that to the end as he was executed.

His life and past were the major teachers for Boethius. He made an influence on the philosophy development and was noticed as great philosopher due to his experience and practice. The character of his books was various. For example, he created a set of books with mathematical character about the quadrivium, also concerning the questions of arithmetic, geometry and even music. All those issues were a kind of path to a definite logical destination.

The years were very cruel for his works and nowadays we can observe only some of his great works, such as Arithmetic and Principles of Music. Some scientists tried to develop Boethius’ point of view, but, of course, the real works can not be returned. For example, Cassiodorus tried to work on the works concerning geometry.

Let’s try to compare the vision of the affaires by Boethius and the vision of these very problems by our scientists through his existed work ‘Arithmetic’. Well, his Arithmetic looks like a paraphrase and explanation of the Art of Arithmetic by Nicomachus of Gerasa, a neo-Pythagorean. His vision of arithmetic was not like the vision of arithmetic nowadays. It was a simple understanding of the numbers and their connection, nowadays it became more significant problem and more precise.

Silverbeard	Latest page update: made by Silverbeard , Oct 1 2007, 2:32 PM EDT (about this update About This Update Edited by Silverbeard 1 image added 1 image deleted view changes - complete history)
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